Helpshift, a customer support platform, has announced that it has appointed Salesforce veteran executive Linda Crawford as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company.
Linda Crawford will take command immediately. The current CEO and co-founder of the company, Abinash Tripathy will become Helpshift’s new Chief Strategy Officer.
In her new role, Linda aims to help drive the company’s next stage of growth, leveraging her experience to rapidly scale the company to fulfill the need for the next generation of customer support. She said:
Joining Helpshift was an easy decision. Helpshift is truly a game-changer when it comes to offering consumers immediate, personalized and proactive service on an unprecedented scale. Helpshift is off to a great start, with over one billion consumers being supported by Helpshift’s platform. That’s why I am so excited about working with the incredible Helpshift team, as well as our board, to rapidly move the company forward and embrace the market opportunity before us.
Ram Gupta, Helpshift’s chairman said:
Linda Crawford is a visionary senior executive with a history of scaling companies. She has been in the CRM business since 1996, and her go-to-market expertise and track record of building multi-billion-dollar product and solution portfolios will serve Helpshift well.
Linda has extensive experience in cloud-based solutions and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Apart from several executive positions at Salesforce, she was a member of the board of directors at Demandware, and held executive management positions at Siebel Systems.
Abinash Tripathy, founder and former CEO of Helpshift, suggests Helpshift as customer relationship management (CRM) for mobile apps, and so it’s only right that Salesforce, a leader in CRM, would supply an executive to run Helpshift.
The startup was founded in 2010 by Abinash Tripathy and Baishampayan Ghose. It helps companies to engage with customers with their apps through targeted push campaigns, and proactively avoid any in-app frustration. It aims to provide a more conversational and “human” service experience.
Many Indian startups are now looking to have experienced CEOs to ensure better and stronger leadership and long-term success of the company, rather than having co-founder serve as a CEO. Established startups like Flipkart and Zivame have undergone such change and now Helpshift.