Product Thinking Podcast – Episode 259

Simplifying AI for Global Customer Impact with Srinivasan Raghavan

Host: Melissa Perri
Guest: Srini Raghavan (Chief Product Officer, Freshworks)
Release Date: December 3, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode, Melissa Perri speaks with Srini Raghavan, Chief Product Officer at Freshworks, about the evolution of product management in an AI world and how “product builders” are shaping the next wave of customer and employee experiences. The conversation focuses on Freshworks’ global AI strategy, simplifying enterprise software for a massive customer base, and cultivating a relentlessly customer-focused product culture. Listeners get a behind-the-scenes look at building scalable, AI-driven products for over 75,000 companies and learn actionable strategies for navigating rapid industry change.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Srini’s Path to Chief Product Officer (CPO)

• Accidental Product Manager: Srini describes his unconventional journey, starting as a support engineer (fixing critical issues at all hours) before moving into roles across engineering, finance, strategy, and acquisitions.
  • “What this taught me is how to build great products, not just design them on a slide. Over time I found myself more and more drawn to the why behind what we are building.” (03:04)
• Diverse Experience: Experience in roles spanning product strategy, corporate development, and acquisitions gave Srini a 360-degree understanding of B2B SaaS, culminating in product leadership roles at 5/9, RingCentral, and now Freshworks.

2. Product Philosophy at Scale

• Customer-Obsessed Simplicity: Serving 75K+ customers in 120+ countries, Freshworks’s core philosophy is to deliver a seamless, uncomplicated user experience for every persona—from small businesses to major enterprises.
  • “The number one thing … when we are designing anything is how do we deliver seamless and uncomplicated experience… Simplicity, user experience… is at the core of everything we do.” (05:55)

3. AI’s Catalytic Impact on Product Roles

• Product Managers → Product Builders: AI condenses traditional, sequential PM workflows—user research, prototyping, architecture, engineering—enabling PMs to become “product builders” who can rapidly research, design, prototype, and iterate.
  • “What AI has allowed is to collapse this whole thing… Product management will morph into a product builder where you can do user research, design, build specs, stay close to customers, connect everything we do—strategy, roadmap, design, AI—and back it by the real outcomes.” (00:00)
• Blurring Roles: AI tools help UX, user researchers, and developers work together more fluidly; boundaries between roles are softening in favor of skills versatility and nimble iteration.
  • “All these roles are starting to blend. I think in the future…a really good product builder will have the skills of user research, UX, design, building product, working with engineering…” (11:15)

4. Hands-On AI Adoption & Training

• Rapid Experimentation: Srini describes building internal apps—like a live roadmap app using Gemini—without needing full teams, demonstrating how PMs can now prototype and test ideas much more autonomously.
  • “This morning, I presented our 2026 roadmap… Why not do a fun little project? So I used Gemini and… in a day or two I created the app and published it… I went from being a product manager to a product builder…” (08:51)
• Formal Training Programs: Freshworks is designing formal programs to help PMs and teams transition from traditional roles into “product builders,” fully leveraging AI tooling.

5. Evolving Prototyping and UX Collaboration

• Role Hybridization: Srini and Melissa reflect on the early “product designer” hybrid roles and how AI is reviving the blend of PM and UX skills, especially valuable for rapid prototyping.
  • “I always thought that was very strange… It was like, if you do UX, you don’t do product… But the nimbleness that smaller companies have… is going to come to the larger companies as well.” (13:08)
• Potential Pitfalls: Melissa expresses concern about PMs without UX skills relying too heavily on AI tools, leading to “disjointed” user experiences if they abdicate responsibility for design logic.
  • “If you don’t actually tell it how to do the experience… it could be very disjointed. I worry about product managers advocating all of that…” (14:10)

6. AI as a Force Multiplier for Customer/Employee Outcomes

• “People-First AI” and Connected Experiences:
  • Three models of AI support:
    1. AI Agent: Handles repetitive tasks—auto-triaging IT tickets, answering simple support questions, boosting deflection rates up to 70–85%.
       • “We have seen customer satisfaction improve, we have seen deflection rates improve…” (16:13)
    2. Copilot: Assists human agents with faster response, summarization, and insights—streamlining complex workflows.
    3. AI Insights: Functions as an “analyst”—sifting through tickets, logs, and conversations to surface critical trends.
  • Unique to Freshworks: Bridging external customer-facing and internal employee-facing support for unified, “connected intelligence” across the enterprise.
    • “Our AI is… a bridge between external communications and the employee communications… it’s a connected tissue across the enterprise.” (18:40)

7. Building AI Agent Studio: Design and Guardrails

• Outcome-Oriented, No-Code Delivery: AI Agent Studio enables business users (not just technologists) to build, configure, and monitor AI agents and workflows using unified knowledge sources and robust security.
  • “No code, low code first… agents need to access the right knowledge… the business and operations team should be able to design, configure and maintain the agents with minimal engineering support.” (19:49)
• Iterative Feedback and Human-in-the-Loop: Real-world scenario testing, including intentional “hacking” attempts, to validate robustness and guardrails; staged rollout with internal teams as initial users.

8. Scaling from SMBs to Enterprises—with “Uncomplicated” Experiences

• Universal Simplicity: Both small business and global enterprise users seek and benefit from simple, easy-to-use solutions that don’t require extensive setup, training, or consulting.
  • “Ultimately, whether you are Seagate or Databricks or Gale’s Bakery… the end user wants an uncomplicated system… You can just get it up and running in a few hours.” (27:32)

9. Maintaining Relentless Customer-Centricity

• Direct, Frequent Customer Feedback: Srini and his team (200+ PMs and UXers) regularly speak directly with end users—not just buyers or procurement—to capture real insights for product decisions.
  • “I personally talk to at least 5 to 10 customers per week and… a third to half of my time every week is talking to customers.” (29:41)
• Outcome Focus & Adaptability: Tools and trends may change, but the mindset of measuring everything against real customer impact is timeless.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On AI shifting PM roles:

  “Product management will morph into a product builder where you can do user research, design, build the product specifications and the design, stay close to the customers... and back it by the real outcomes that we deliver for them.” – Srini Raghavan (00:00)

• On AI-augmented workflows:

  “Previously it used to take like months and months. Now you can do this in like a day or two and that’s an amazing outcome for customers.” – Srini Raghavan (09:44)

• On product roles blending:

  “All these roles are starting to blend… Instead of a really good product manager or a user experience designer, a good person, that’s called a product builder.” – Srini Raghavan (11:12)

• On principle of ‘People-First AI’:

  “We call it People first AI... people make decisions and people are driving AI to be more effective according to how their pace of AI adoption should be.” – Srini Raghavan (25:31)

• On universal user experience:

  “If you ask any IT team in the world who is your customer, they would say, my employees are my customers... customer satisfaction is the most important thing, whether it’s internal or external.” – Srini Raghavan (28:55)

• Srini’s career advice for PMs:

  “Fall in love with the problem, not your solution. And learn the language of business early—revenue, margins, unit economics—so that you can connect your product decisions to business impact… Be comfortable with ambiguity and change. The best opportunities often look messy at first... Product management is a team sport.” (30:47)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Srini’s background & path to CPO — [02:32-05:29]
• Freshworks’ product philosophy of simplicity — [05:48-06:53]
• The rise of product builders & new AI-powered workflows — [07:10-08:51]
• Rapid internal prototyping; making AI a team sport — [08:51-10:26]
• How product/UX roles are blending in the age of AI — [11:00-14:10]
• Direct user research and the limits of automation — [14:52-16:13]
• How Freshworks deploys AI for customer and employee experience — [16:13-19:30]
• AI Agent Studio design and rollout — [19:49-22:35]
• Scaling simple solutions for small and large enterprises — [27:14-28:27]
• Ensuring customer-centricity in fast-moving markets — [29:23-30:39]
• Srini’s best advice for product managers — [30:47-31:32]

Conclusion

This episode offers a compelling look at how AI is transforming not just product functionality, but the very structure, skillsets, and mindsets of product teams—placing the customer’s actual experience at the heart of every decision, no matter the scale. Srini Raghavan’s actionable insights and anecdotes provide a roadmap for organizations striving to deliver powerful, “uncomplicated” impact in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Find Srini on LinkedIn: srinivasan28 and Twitter: @sriniyer.
Show notes and resources: Product Thinking Podcast