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24 The Gunn Show: A Conversation on Customer Experience
166 Plays2 years ago
Today we talk to Melissa "Gunn Show" Gunn, Director of Customer Experience from Proposify, one of the more cutting-edge and useful tools in the BizzyWeb arsenal. With Proposify we're able to get proposals out the door and into customer's hands quicker with more personalization while making it easier to sign contracts and pay invoices. Melissa's team has been a big part of making that a reality and can do the same for you.
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Dial It In Podcast is where we gathered our favorite people together to share their advice on how to drive revenue, through storytelling and without the boring sales jargon. Our primary focus is marketing and sales for manufacturing and B2B service businesses, but we’ll cover topics across the entire spectrum of business. This isn’t a deep, naval-gazing show… we like to have lively chats that are fun, and full of useful insights. Brought to you by BizzyWeb.
Links:
Website: dialitinpodcast.com
BizzyWeb site: bizzyweb.com
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Dial It In, a podcast where we talk with interesting people about the process improvements and tricks they use to grow their businesses. I'm Dave Meyer, president of BusyWeb, and every week, Trigby Olsen and I are bringing you interviews on how the best in their fields are dialing it in for their organizations. Dave, you ever hear terms that sound purposefully vague in marketing?
00:00:29
Speaker
all the time. That's half of the point of marketing, I thought.
Understanding 'Customer Experience'
00:00:32
Speaker
Yeah. One of the new buzzwords that I think have really come into play in the last couple of years is the idea of customer experience. Yes. What does that really mean? Does that mean that you have to tip your waitress? Or does that mean that how does that function on a website? It really means anything to a lot of different people. Yes, for sure.
00:00:52
Speaker
And I know we're very blessed and we'll talk about, we're going to unpack this quite a bit, but one of the people that have been really unsung and pivotal to the success of Busy Web.
00:01:04
Speaker
has gotten promoted, I think, several times. She's now the director of customer experience for a software tool we use called Proposify. I love Proposify. For our listeners, I'm a little bit different. The experience that I had with her was always spot on and helpful.
Meet Melissa Gunn, Director of Customer Experience
00:01:26
Speaker
As we were talking about customer experience, I wanted to bring on somebody who I think really gets it.
00:01:30
Speaker
and figures out why. So our guest today is Melissa Gunn, who is with two ends. So we're going to be affectionately titling this, The Gunn Show. Had to be done. Had to be done. And Melissa is the head of customer experience for Proposify. Welcome, Melissa. Hi, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
What is Proposify?
00:01:54
Speaker
So for those people who are listening who aren't in the marketing, tell the folks what exactly is Proposify.
00:02:00
Speaker
So Proposify is a tool that helps bring visibility control to the sales process. We have a software that will make it easy and shorten your sales cycles for producing proposals. So it gets the job done. It gets the deal closed.
00:02:22
Speaker
Excellent. Another way to say that is that it's a way to get customers to electronically sign documents faster.
00:02:31
Speaker
Absolutely, that's correct. You did a better elevator pitch than me. Oh gosh, yeah. But for me, and this will be the proposal if I let go for a couple minutes, I'm sure, but for me, all of the templates and things that you have readily available get you started so much faster. When we were going through our document management tasks and trying to figure out how can we get this a little bit
00:02:58
Speaker
Cooler looking we just went through all of the proposal five templates are like we like that one and then as we've grown I know you guys have design services to help but you know we actually had one of our designers work really really hard on creating something that's just crafted and gorgeous and it really is a leg up in competitive advantage for our clients.
00:03:20
Speaker
So I think we've talked about the flywheel before and the flywheel is sort of a HubSpot concept and really the idea of it is the customer journey is for those people who are marketing nerdy like we are. What it really means is what is the quickest and most painless way for any customer that you want to deal with to get from I don't know you to hear some money.
00:03:44
Speaker
And what is sort of a unique talent, I think, is in the sales arena. Number one is asking for money and saying, this is how much it costs. And yes, I know it hurts a little, but it's going to be worth it. Can I have the money and then we will do the thing or build you
E-signature Tools vs Paper Documentation
00:04:06
Speaker
the thing?
00:04:06
Speaker
That's the first part of it is getting people to say yes, but any good sophisticated seller Will tell you that that is only about 60% of the battle because you still don't have a name on a dotted line and you still don't have money in the money on the door and to me that's when you really have closed a deal is when you have a check in hand and you've got something signed so
00:04:34
Speaker
Melissa, why is it advantageous for people to use an e-sign program? There's a number of different ones. I know some of your competition is like Pandadoc or the e-sign. I think Adobe has one too. What's the competitive advantage for your customer to have a tool like that?
00:04:56
Speaker
Well, in all honesty, I mean the days of sitting down with somebody to sign off on a document have passed. We're in the electronic age. Everybody wants to be able to get stuff in their hands quickly and have things move as smoothly and seamlessly as possible. So having a proposal that's in an online
00:05:19
Speaker
World allows that to be done so fast.
How Proposify Enhances Proposal Management
00:05:23
Speaker
We also break open moving past that like paper document
00:05:28
Speaker
Once you put a paper document in somebody's hand and you leave that meeting, you have no idea what happens after that. With Proposify, you have the opportunity that you can see when they've opened it. You can see how long they've spent on your different sections. So if you have a customer who just never gets back to you, but you see that they've spent an hour on your pricing, you kind of have an idea of what might be going on.
00:05:55
Speaker
You can also have the ability to easily follow up with them. And then after that deal is signed, make sure that you get the metrics and analytics to follow your sales team. You can collect payment. It just makes it really, really easy for sellers to connect with their clients, look good doing it, and get that sales process rolling.
00:06:16
Speaker
One of the things that I think is sort of a universal axiom and I think is certainly true at Busy Web is that salespeople are, to a large extent, overgrown children. And if things aren't easy for them, and I will raise a hand and say, I'm the head of that table. So if it's not easy for them, then they don't really want to do it.
00:06:42
Speaker
So yeah, what you said about the signing documents is great, but I think there's a couple other sort of universal helps, and I think one of which is tying into the CRM. So what's the value of having that tie into the CRM?
00:06:58
Speaker
Oh, honestly, your data hygiene, which that kind of sounds like a silly term, but data hygiene is so, so important. It just means one last step. Like if you can go ahead and you can put a proposal into a certain deal stage that links up automatically with your CRM, and then as the stages progress, everything just stays synced. It means that you don't need to go back, you know, back and forth or forget something or
00:07:27
Speaker
have to chase after somebody who's not doing those follow-ups within, you know, Salesforce, HubSpot, whatever to make sure that everything coincides with one another. So again, it's just that taking out that extra step with the integration just keeps the process smooth and seamless and keeps everything in check.
00:07:47
Speaker
So I know for us, we are unabashedly HubSpot, but Proposify doesn't just work with HubSpot, right? You work with all the different major CRMs. We sure do.
00:07:59
Speaker
Okay, cool. So for us, I think one of the things that we sort of get after we sign contracts is we get our operations team rolling their eyes going, Oh God, what did you guys do now? And so having then the opportunity for visibility,
00:08:18
Speaker
from the CRM for not just the administrator of it is helpful as well because a contract isn't just a sales thing. If you think about the flywheel and that full lifecycle of a customer, it has to be referred back to over and over by other people in the organization.
00:08:36
Speaker
That's right. Well, and the other thing that I think as you're looking at your sales structure and your team and how to help them do more faster, better, is to make their job, like Trigby said, as easy as possible.
Tips for Creating Engaging Proposals
00:08:51
Speaker
So having the ability to implant
00:08:53
Speaker
variables that come out of your CRM. So you can have company information. We actually have a playbook that we run from at busy web that auto populates our proposals. And then all we have to do is go in and fix and, or, and, or tweak it. So in the olden days when we had to put together word docs, my Lord, it took me maybe a couple hours to put together a good proposal. Yeah. And now I think I'm down to less than a half hour.
00:09:21
Speaker
and have it much, much cooler. So it's tremendously helpful. As you look at proposals, and I know that you've seen thousands of companies that are doing this and doing it well, I'm kind of curious, what are some of the best tips to either get quick approval of proposals or to really have that pop to stand out from the competition?
00:09:48
Speaker
Actually, I'm going to pull from one of our documents. So we create annually a state of proposals where we go through and we review all of our customers and we take a look at what really works the best and state of proposals 2023 is out. You can get that from our website.
00:10:10
Speaker
There's a lot of different things that you can really, really do to stand out and have that competitive advantage. And it does depend on industry. One thing that we're seeing trending now is actually using graphics, like using GIFs to draw the eye and engage your customers and your clients within your proposal.
00:10:34
Speaker
It's interesting right because it's nothing that you would ever think would belong necessarily in a proposal but again it's about that engagement it's about drawing the client and.
00:10:46
Speaker
Also making sure that you have a short contract, believe it or not. If you have to have a longer terms and service, linking that out to a separate area is actually a lot more beneficial to you than having it, you know, a 15 page terms and services attached directly within the proposal itself. Keeping it to the point, making sure that you're putting yourself on display without a lot of jargon, a lot of
00:11:14
Speaker
you know, bloat within that proposal. Overall, you got to understand that a proposal in the end is all about keeping attention and drawing that client into your business to close the deal. So anything that you can do to continue to keep them engaged, continue them reading that proposal is in your benefit.
00:11:35
Speaker
I think one of the things that was a big difference maker for us, and I'll just outwardly say this, is there, and I won't name the competitor, but there's a competitor that a tremendous amount of people in the marketing industry use.
00:11:54
Speaker
and they're all wrong and they shouldn't be. They should be using Proposify. One of the biggest things that we had a huge problem with is, and tying this back into your answer, Melissa, is not only can you create an online proposal, but then you also have to account for the people who don't want to look at it online.
00:12:14
Speaker
And so they would save it as a PDF and then print it out. And what we found in using with the competition is anytime that we would go to click on save it as a PDF, the pagination, which is the funky way of saying where's the end of the page and where's the start of the page, it was all completely screwy. So what we found is we had this great leap forward where we went from Word documents to online proposal making.
00:12:43
Speaker
And then we would end up spending less time than the word doc, but then half the time would be spending messing with the patch nation to get it right. That's so tough. Yeah, we had to get because you have in selling, you have to be prepared for anything. So you have to be prepared for the person you're sending to to might not be the decision maker. So how can you take it? How can you know whether or not they're looking at it or not?
00:13:11
Speaker
Well, if you have a software that tells you who they're forwarding it to and who's looking at it, then oh my goodness, then that's helpful information. Have they downloaded it and are they reading it? That's helpful information. So let's talk about you a little because I think we talked about this before we started recording.
Melissa Gunn's Career Journey
00:13:36
Speaker
You and I have been friends and have been work proximity associates for
00:13:42
Speaker
I think going on seven years and you were a customer service rep when we started working together. Yep. I started my career with Proposify. I was working as a, recall back then, a customer happiness expert, I believe my title was. I like that. Yeah, it was fun.
00:14:07
Speaker
I remember very vividly busy web coming on to propose a five and You had your customer success manager was Pam at the time and she told me she's like Melissa There's this guy. You're really gonna like him. She said just you wait until he writes into the queue the first time and here comes Trigby in and it's just a
00:14:33
Speaker
Friendly, larger than life personality, but strictly in text.
00:14:39
Speaker
And I grabbed it. And from there, we talked about everything because that's something that we actually really believe in at Proposify. Not only is it about supporting your customer, but it's actually creating a team and bonding with them because it's always best to celebrate your wins with the people that you like and get through the tough times with the people you like too.
The Importance of Genuine Customer Engagement
00:15:04
Speaker
Anyway, from there on out.
00:15:06
Speaker
It was all caps. Melissa exclamation point. Yes. Every time Trig came into the queue and it just came from there. We became friends. We got to know each other. We learned about each other's families and we spent time. You're still one of my favorite customers even though we don't talk as much.
00:15:31
Speaker
Thank you. And then it got to the point where, because she got promoted into the manager level, and then I would get the first level kids. And I'm like, no, no, no. Just go get mom. And I went as far to make sure that every time
00:15:51
Speaker
somebody new came in, they got like the idea. And I would personally hand. Trig the off to somebody and be like, make sure that this is a good personality match because we just mesh really, really well. And we got to talk about sports and everything like that. So I made sure that he was put in the appropriate hands. So he was always very, you know, well regarded and well kept with people that I knew he would like.
00:16:19
Speaker
Exactly. This is what I need more out of my life is women trying to make sure that my needs are met. This does not happen a lot. For the women who aren't actually taking care of me, Melissa, I'll tell you there are literally tens of minutes in each day where a woman is not telling me what to do.
00:16:40
Speaker
and making it better. But one of the things, I know Dave's got a question, but I want to ask one thing. I think one of the unique experiences that I've had with you was that
00:16:53
Speaker
You very plainly would tell me when I did things wrong and not in like an artful customer service way. So was that a conscious decision of yours or the company's to just speak in plain terms? Or is that something that you all had to evolve into? Because that's a very unique, well, you can't be very unique. That is a unique experience that I've had with Proposify.
00:17:22
Speaker
It's, um, honestly, so prior to working at Proposify, I worked in a corporate job. It was very, I worked with customers. I was doing sales management at the time, but my entire history was always working customer facing. And I didn't love the idea of treating. I don't like, I don't like, okay, hold on, we're going to cut.
00:17:49
Speaker
I don't like the idea of not treating people actually like people just because you're a customer doesn't strip away the fact that at your court, you're a person. Um, and I thought that it was always important to be genuine and to be honest. So when I came on, we always had a very kind of loose conversation style, but I was like, you know what? If somebody is mad, if something happened, why aren't we
00:18:18
Speaker
Why aren't we sending that desk flip gif where somebody is smashing their computer and relating to them? Uh, when somebody has messed up, why aren't we just telling them you messed up, but let's fix it. I just think connecting on that human level is what makes us special. We treat people like people. And, uh, I don't think enough people in the industry understand
00:18:45
Speaker
the importance of treating people like people. You can be professional and you can be nice, but if you treat people like people, all of a sudden it becomes less of a business transaction and more of a team, like a team sport. We're working on it together. Right. And that, that's actually why I love working with you guys as well.
Proposify's Empathetic Culture
00:19:05
Speaker
And that was, that leads into the question I was going to ask for is empathy seems like one of the,
00:19:13
Speaker
competitive advantages of certainly Proposify, but as a customer success manager and what you do on a daily basis is literally to empower your customers to like you more and that ties directly to brand.
00:19:30
Speaker
How do you help foster that? Because we have a lot of folks that are on our listener base that are managers, C-suite level folks. How do you foster that sense of caring and empathy for your customers? It's an interesting question, Dave. So one of the big things that we do for our team
00:19:56
Speaker
And as important as numbers are, as important as efficiencies are, as important as everything is, the one thing that we do with our staff is we treat them like people. And that may sound like wild, but within the context center realm or within a lot of the service industries, treating your staff like people isn't something that necessarily happens.
00:20:23
Speaker
So it really does start from the top down. We treat our people with empathy, kindness, we understand when they need something, we work hard for them, they work hard for us. And in turn, because we create that environment that is super supportive of our staff,
00:20:41
Speaker
Our staff treats our customers in the exact same way So we basically model the behavior acting as our staff as our customers They model that to our customers. So the melissa sitting at the director level Is the same melissa that? Trigby has spoken to like it's it's never different we're always very very real and very uh, You know supportive and and
00:21:09
Speaker
and there for our people. So that's how it works. That's the secret sauce, honestly. Treat people like people and they will work for you and do as you model.
Using Video for Better Customer Understanding
00:21:22
Speaker
I think one of the other interesting things that I experienced that I think you pioneered is that Proposify was very much on the leading edge of using video screenshotting as demonstration tools. If I made a mistake,
00:21:45
Speaker
A, it would be called out, B, which was unique, and then B, I would be told what I did wrong, so I wouldn't do that again, and then C, I would get a video on how to do it correctly. So how did that come into play?
00:22:00
Speaker
So in my previous years, I was actually a trainer at my last job. And I understand the different styles of adult learning, right? And to sit back and say that people all learn in the same styles is just silly.
00:22:16
Speaker
Some people are visual learners, some people are listeners, some people are doers. And if you're not providing that complete overall learning experience to the customers, how are you expecting them to grasp the concept and learn it?
00:22:33
Speaker
for future use, right? So making sure that that complete answer, including showing you how to do it, is how we set up our customers for success. And in all honesty, as busy as we are, right? We want customers to write in, but even less, we want customers to not be frustrated and we want customers to be successful. So making sure that people are in a good position to solve their own problems.
Melissa's Expanded Role and Leadership
00:23:02
Speaker
That's the best way to do it. So you got promoted. I think you've gotten promoted three times since I've known you. Yeah. Three, four maybe. Yeah.
00:23:12
Speaker
Yeah, so the first, I want to say this because I think this is funny, because the first time you got promoted was really on the beginning of COVID. And so the person that I was starting to work with was a guy named George, who isn't with happening anymore. And George was incredibly knowledgeable, incredibly helpful. And just a super great guy, great representative of the company, George is a
00:23:41
Speaker
And so my first COVID experience a lot in dealing with people on video camera was talking to George and I was going, is this a camera thing or is he a dwarf? And finally I asked him and he was really cool about it. But you've said it's grown in your role to director of customer experience. So what does your day-to-day look like?
00:24:07
Speaker
So from my start here as a customer happiness expert, I have gone and increased my reach within the company. So now not only am I running our support team, but I run our customer success managers. I also run our professional services team and I sit on the executive leadership team now. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So Kyle really is starting to listen to you.
00:24:34
Speaker
I think so. I mean, Kyle is wonderful, actually, because if there's somebody who always has an open door to listen, even if you need to knock on it and be like, this is not it, Kyle, he's always there for it. But yeah, I've been so passionate about proposed guys since I started here. And to have a seat at the table to now not only just
00:25:03
Speaker
help with the company moving forward but actually point it in the direction. It's wild. I'm super excited every single day that I go into work of what's the next thing that I'm going to learn and what's the next thing I'm going to teach somebody. What is Proposify's definition of customer experience? Oh, man. That's a good question, Trig.
00:25:29
Speaker
Well, I'll let you know, it's something that chat GPP is never going to replicate as much as we'd like to think because in all honesty, human first customer experiences is what we excel at.
Human-First Customer Interactions at Proposify
00:25:45
Speaker
And that's at the heart and soul of it. It is everything is human first. It may not always be the customer's always right.
00:25:54
Speaker
but it is human first and creating that environment for people to establish trust, for people to establish a partnership, and to have a genuine sense of care. That's in my eyes and what we stand for, for our customers is customer experience.
00:26:18
Speaker
Also, quick, knowledgeable, like not all just the lovey-dovey stuff because we do like to talk, but we want people to get on with their day too. So make sure that your answers are full, quick to the point, you know, and that that customer is able to move on with their day knowing that whatever issue they encountered, they are ready to go.
00:26:44
Speaker
What are, what does the training look like if you're going to bring on a new happiness person? Oh, did they go to this hotel? So, um, I'll let you know with, um, a lot of our people who come on with us, they are coming from kind of that contact center, a corporate type world.
00:27:12
Speaker
And we always used to say that we were kind of like the SPCA or the ASPCA. We take kind of like these people who have been just kind of sucked of their soul from corporate life. That's a rough gig in that kind of role. It is. Yeah.
00:27:38
Speaker
and put the passion back into it because in the end you don't work with people unless you actually like people like it's really hard not it's hard to you know so we talk to them about we start off talking to them about our values so one of the biggest values that a lot of people that we have that actually works super well with our team is start with a full trust battery
00:28:01
Speaker
So people aren't used to autonomy. People aren't used to being themselves. And that is the first thing that we kind of have to nail into people. Throw away your corporate tone. Throw away that like contact center voice that you speak in because people have contact center voices. And be you. Be true to you because we trust you to be true to you. We didn't hire you if we didn't trust you to do the position.
00:28:29
Speaker
So we rip out conformity from their lives. We put their personalities back into them and then we start trusting them to do really awesome stuff.
00:28:43
Speaker
Outside of that, we have like standard onboarding, but I'll let you know that one thing is probably the hardest thing that we have to do. And it's kind of a constant reminder within the first three months of you don't need to be professional bank tone or you don't need to be, you know, contact center, be you. Right. Yeah.
00:29:03
Speaker
Do you have people from all over the world that you work with? And how does that work? Because you guys are, you know, Proposify is based out of just out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. And so a Canadian company and I'm sure
00:29:19
Speaker
Beautiful space. Is it all North American or how do you space that out? I'm sure as international as we are in just the business world now, you probably have folks all over the world, right? We do.
00:29:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, we do so the majority of our our team itself is located Uh within canada.
Remote Work and Online Proposals Post-COVID
00:29:46
Speaker
We do have one superstar overnight Agent his name is andre. He lives in the philippines. He's been with our company for three years now um, and he is
00:30:02
Speaker
absolute joy and it's so funny because just from his own background again I think that we still need to revisit like Andre it's okay to be like be you like you don't you don't need to put that hat on just be you and so yeah that's that's how we manage it and then honestly when it comes to different people from different backgrounds and a customer base within our world and stuff like that
00:30:32
Speaker
They all seem to, I don't know. Maybe it's the Canadian us. Everybody just likes everybody just likes us. Um, you know, we say please and thank you all the time. So that must be it. But, uh, it's true though, because we just say sorry 16 times and then you have to forgive us. So for, for
00:30:59
Speaker
Back on Proposify for a second, I know that one of the big things that you do as a service in Proposify is to literally save time. And another is, of course, to make the presentation more professional.
00:31:17
Speaker
It occurred to me and you mentioned at the beginning the state of proposals for 2023 that you guys did. Is there anything that you really want any either salesperson or revenue officer to know or to understand? Are there things that are changing? Like even post COVID now, are there some things that are swinging back or any trends that you can spot? Hmm. Well, I mean,
00:31:47
Speaker
It's hard because in the changing state of the world, we went completely remote. Our office space doesn't exist anymore. There are more and more people who are working remotely. They don't have a home base or anything like that, which is why it is such a good benefit to have
00:32:05
Speaker
an online proposal solution because it means that you can reach out to anybody at any point in time. They've got it in hand whether they're in an office or not.
00:32:18
Speaker
Um, also the mobility aspect of it. So just having that. Be able to, you know, maybe you're emailing a job site, not necessarily in you guys's world, but like, let's say blue collar, you're doing landscaping. You have, um, somebody who's on site, the boss on site, and they need access to something, want to sign off at it immediately. They can access it from anywhere. Um, so getting it in the hands of people, no matter where they are at any time.
00:32:47
Speaker
I think is one of the true things to understand. I don't think our world is going to go back to just being office spaces anymore.
00:32:56
Speaker
For sure. And that's probably one of the more surprising things that I've noticed is I'm seeing people that are opening proposals at all hours of the day and night. So making sure that you have something that's instant and that's easily accessible is super helpful. Can you help us settle a bet? Trigvi and I have very different front pages on our proposals.
00:33:26
Speaker
I'm more traditional and I'm a little bit older than Trigby. I'm like a year older. But Trigby likes putting video on the homepage of the proposal and I'm a text guy. So which is better?
Enhancing Proposals with Video Content
00:33:43
Speaker
I'd have to see the video. Oh, you know Trigby's video. I know. They're very fun. I'm setting him up as an easy gimme.
00:33:54
Speaker
I like a video. Again, you have to think about engagement. Also, attention spans aren't what they used to be. In our world today, all the different facets of multimedia and everything like that. TikTok generation, I mean, those people are coming up into the business world. You have to grab attention. I'm not going to lie, I like a good video.
00:34:17
Speaker
It shouldn't be like a 15 minute video where you're droning on. I think one of my favorites that Trigby ever did was it was literally a three minute run through on the proposal. He said, here's what we're talking about. Here's why we're awesome. Here's the deal. Here's what you're going to have to pay. And here's where you're going to sign because you're smart enough to hire us. And that was it. It was brilliant.
00:34:40
Speaker
I think that's great. I honestly, again, like engagement and bringing that customer in. And honestly, if you can save somebody from having to like, again, we're not having those in-person conversations as frequently as possible. He basically reached his hand through the screen and was like, here's, here's my elevator pitch. Right? Yeah. Well, I just, I, you know, I just feel like people, people who need people,
00:35:09
Speaker
Those are the luckiest people in the world. Now we're going to have to pay commission to some... We're going to have to pay licensing. I think one of the reasons why I use video is a couple of reasons.
00:35:25
Speaker
More to the point, Dave, there's a couple of things that we very purposefully do in our proposals. Number one is if you don't have a good sense of humor, you're really not going to be a long-term fit for working with us because we are, I forget how Melissa rephrased it, but we are an island of misfit toys unto ourselves. And so if you don't, if you can't laugh at that thing, boy, that's going to be hard for you to work long-term with us.
00:35:53
Speaker
And second, one of the things that we have a problem with is our sales staff is almost exclusive, is exclusively male and 85% of the rest of the company is exclusively female. And so when in our proposal, we have the best of the best of
00:36:15
Speaker
women staff on there, so you know, hey, once you get past me, there's a whole lot of really smart ladies who are going to be telling you what to do. But I think the value of the video is it's another way to show who you're going to be working with and who you're going to be dealing with.
00:36:35
Speaker
Yeah, you can't, you can't always express that through text and you know how much of a challenge that can be. And I think that that's actually really, really amazing that you do that.
Improving Customer Service at Proposify
00:36:46
Speaker
And good on you guys for having all those ladies behind you because love a good woman's staff.
00:36:51
Speaker
Right? Yeah. And we have a great women's staff. So great staff period. So what are some of the customer success initiatives and customer experience initiatives that you are undertaking in your new role?
00:37:08
Speaker
Oh, there's a lot of different things that we're working on all the time. So we currently have something that we're working on that's called collaborative accounts. So we have a subset of accounts that don't currently have customer success managers.
00:37:25
Speaker
But we do want to give them an added level of touch. So additional touch points, outreach for optimization calls, specialized messaging to them that would give them a better look at what we're doing within Proposify and how to use Proposify. We also have an increased, or I'm sorry, a decreased SLA for them so their response times are quicker.
00:37:53
Speaker
So, for example, when BusyWeb writes in to Proposify, you guys have first response 10 minutes or less. These customers would get something like 15.
00:38:03
Speaker
because they are of a higher caliber than our small, small accounts, but not as important as you guys. But yeah, that's one of the big things that we're currently working on to get them that extra touch and just that extra sense of care. There's some initiatives going on regarding our knowledge base.
00:38:30
Speaker
and making more content for that and making it a bit more inclusive to all learning styles and accessible. So that's another thing that we're working on. And then there's some other stuff under the hat that I can't quite release just yet, but you'll see soon. You made it funny about chat GPT earlier, which is disparaging a former guest of the pod, by the way. Oh, sorry.
00:39:00
Speaker
We did an episode where Dave and I literally asked chat GPT interview questions for 45 minutes and then had somebody read out the answers. It was actually really fascinating. Do you find that AI is going to be helpful in providing a better customer experience or are you evaluating it? How are you looking at that as a potential solution?
AI in Customer Support at Proposify
00:39:23
Speaker
We are looking at it. There's been some interesting integrations that have come out within our platform. So we use Zendesk for our customer support platform. There's been some interesting integrations. I will be very honest, AI is scary to people who are in our world.
00:39:42
Speaker
You know, AI can generate really great responses. AI can mimic that humor and stuff like that. So while we're looking towards it as a means to help,
00:39:57
Speaker
maybe make our lives a bit easier for agents when it comes to locating really great answers or anything like that. I'm going to be cautiously optimistic about introducing it because while I don't think it could ever replace us, it is a little, it's intimidating. It's intimidating when you're in a customer facing position with AI.
00:40:20
Speaker
There's a real opportunity or a real danger for a race to the bottom with AI, at least as it's set up right now.
00:40:29
Speaker
if it's an echo chamber and everybody's talking about the first version of chat GPT that came out and GPT three was very circular and it was based off of at least two or maybe three year old data. So everything that you were asking it was sort of out of date. And so what I've found, and we're in the middle of writing our own guidance for our clients and internally, but
00:40:57
Speaker
I think the proper use and knowledge to understand
00:41:03
Speaker
It's a tool, it's not a solution, and it's not the end result, right? So I'm all about if you need help to brainstorm a topic or if you need help in consolidating a few things that are all there and that you've got real data sets that it can use, but just asking broad-ranging questions or trying to let it do too much is very, very dangerous. So I agree completely.
00:41:30
Speaker
Yeah, I, uh, one thing that we tend to use of horror and it's just, we use it as a second set of eyes. So if you have maybe a knowledge base article, is this written as clearly as it could be? Is there any kind of terminology, you know, stuff like that? So while we're relying on ourselves to be the creator and then like AI, just to be sort of that check and balance, I think it's an incredibly powerful tool because I, I do believe that it,
00:41:59
Speaker
makes everybody a better writer. It makes everybody just a little bit more... They come off just a little bit smarter. Right. I kind of feel like it's like having a robot butler, not a robot chef. I don't necessarily want someone to create my food and think about it, but if they want to bring it on by and drop it on my table, cool. I'm glad, Dave. Now I want a robot chef.
00:42:27
Speaker
Let's figure something out. I'm also kind of hungry because it's almost lunchtime where we're recording. I want to sort of wrap up because I want to give a shout out to Proposify and talk about a bad time in their life.
Handling Layoffs with Kindness and Respect
00:42:42
Speaker
There was a time where you had a layoff. What did the company do to the people that... Well, I need to rephrase that because that sounds vindictive. The company was...
00:42:58
Speaker
incredibly notably kind to the people that had been laid off. What were some of the things that the company did to soften the blow as much as possible?
00:43:12
Speaker
Well, we were very lucky because not in this day and age, not everybody is lucky, but we were lucky enough to be able to provide severance to the people that were included in that layoff. I know some companies nowadays just don't have the ability to do that. So that was something. My CEO, Kyle, got out on LinkedIn.
00:43:35
Speaker
and put people's names out and got people connected with opportunities.
00:43:43
Speaker
We were also, and I don't know if I can phrase this as lucky because I don't think there's any lucky with it, but... Fortunate. Fortunate, yes. We had our, what we would like to call a right sizing. We right sized at that time towards the, like before everyone else was doing their layoff. So there was still, the job market was still quite
00:44:08
Speaker
good at that time so because we kind of did that in advance of the downturn of the job market we were able to get people into jobs pretty quickly you know reaching out to people that you knew i don't know how many times i was a referral for people to tell them just how wonderful they are because it wasn't about performance it was just about.
00:44:31
Speaker
making sure that we had the right size to move forward and continue to be successful. It was hard. I lost one of my entire departments. I had a knowledge management team and they were gone.
00:44:44
Speaker
It still hurts. It makes me sad, but you know what? Those people now looking back, they're in new positions and they're doing well and they're being successful and it sucks it's not with us, but I'm so happy for each and every one of them for landing on their feet and finding a new path.
00:45:06
Speaker
I think what you just said is an incredibly classy way to sort of sum up the experience you get with Proposify is even though it sucks that it wasn't with you, but you're still happy for them. And that's the human feeling and I'm sure it didn't work out, but please go be successful and we want you to be as successful as possible. So that's it. As a longtime customer, it was great to see.
00:45:33
Speaker
I'm going to say that again, as a longtime customer, it was really great to see a company that I have leveraged in my professional world to be so kind to people.
Connecting with Proposify
00:45:44
Speaker
And that's really, I guess, what I'm taking away from this, Dave, is that the technology is available and make your life better, but it doesn't replace the human connection. Absolutely. Yeah.
00:45:59
Speaker
And Melissa, it's so great to have met you and thanks for your continued partnership through Proposify. How can folks find you in Proposify? You can find us online at Proposify.com. And that's where all of our information. We also have a YouTube channel. You can check us out on our socials too. So we're located on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, all that wonderful stuff. Does the guy with the bow tie still work there? For now.
00:46:29
Speaker
Excellent. We love you. No lies. Go on the website and see if you can find the guy who looks like Bill Nye, the science guy, but slightly Canadian. I love it. And we did mention the state of proposals, and that's available at Proposify.com. And then if you go to the resources section, it's right on the top of the screen. Super helpful. If you take away anything from that, take a moment and go download that because it will change how you think about online proposals. Melissa, thanks so much.
00:47:21
Speaker
Thank you.