The video frontier | David Gunn

[David] (0:00 - 0:16)

Customer experience with that personalization side. There's a huge benefit to the CSMs from that like video creation at scale side. Spend a few minutes to create that video and be able to send that out rather than walk through the help desk process every single time with the customer.

That's huge.

[Dillon] (0:25 - 0:37)

What's up, lifers, and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh, up-to-date information and fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man, Rob here. Rob, do you want to say hi?

Rob, you're on mute.

[Rob] (0:37 - 0:42)

What's up, people? I do my best. I try so hard. I try so, I get no respect.

[Dillon] (0:42 - 0:45)

And we've got JP with us.

JP, can you say hi?

[JP] (0:45 - 0:46)

Vita Valor.

[Dillon] (0:46 - 0:50)

Thank you so much.

And we have David with us. David, can you say hi, please?

[David] (0:50 - 0:52)

Hey, guys, great to be here. Really excited.

[Dillon] (0:53 - 0:54)

You couldn't have done any worse than Rob there.

[David] (0:55 - 0:58)

So, the bar was very low. The bar was really low, but golden.

[Rob] (0:58 - 1:02)

I want that to be my byline in my career. Put it on my tombstone. He set the bar low.

[David] (1:02 - 1:06)

And I'm just hoping I don't have 15 Slack messages pop up in the middle of this thing, so.

[JP] (1:06 - 1:08)

I bet you'll learn on your tombstone, you're on mute.

[Dillon] (1:09 - 1:18)

That's fine, too, which is ironic and a dark sense of humor, which fits Rob. And I am your host, Dillon Young. David, thank you so much for being here.

Can you please introduce yourself?

[David] (1:18 - 1:54)

Yeah, my name's David Gunn. I'm the VP of customer success at a company called SundaySky. We help customers leverage video to connect with their customers at scale, really personalizing all of that video in a way that is relevant to their customers that anybody can set up on their own without having the need for a full-fledged marketing and video department.

I've been doing CS here in Austin, Texas for about 15 years. Rob and I go way back, but really excited to get a chance to, yeah, it's fine. Once we got on the other side of the country from each other, it was a lot better.

But no, I'm really excited to be here and chat with you guys about this and go from there.

[Dillon] (1:54 - 2:07)

Yeah, really excited for you to be here despite your affiliation with Mr. Zambito. David, you know what we do here. We ask one simple question of every single guest and that is what is on your mind when it comes to customer success?

Can you tell us what that is for you?

[David] (2:07 - 2:27)

Yeah, right now it is really about leveraging video as a channel for customer engagement. It's something that I don't think enough CS departments are doing right now. And I'll be honest, myself included.

I think this is something that's kind of that next level or the next frontier of how CSMs are gonna be engaging with their customers and providing value at scale.

[Dillon] (2:27 - 2:50)

I've always thought about this, but I guess my mind has difficulty wrapping around the scale piece. Like logistically speaking, just straight up, like how do you personalize a message to that many people in such a way that actually saves time? It feels like it would take as much time.

So maybe that's my question before I kick it over to the guys is like, how do you envision that working logistically?

[David] (2:50 - 3:39)

Yeah, I think if you're talking to CSMs, the way I phrase it is it's the same philosophy is how you get your message out to all of your customers in a tech touch model by leveraging kind of a tool like Tatango or TurnZero or GainSight. You're doing that same thing. You're getting your message out, you're personalizing it based on form fields and usage information and stuff that you're tracking in your CSP.

This is just doing this in a video format. And that's one of the beauties of SundaySky is that you're able to do the same thing, connect to a backend like a GainSight, like a Tatango, like a Marketo and personalize the message that your customers are getting based on the information you already have about them. And so if you're already doing personalized email, it's not a huge leap to do personalized video.

[Dillon] (3:39 - 4:11)

And so what you record generic phrases and then have the software combine it together in a message to a customer. That's what I mean by logistical. Like, I don't know how you speak specifically about a customer's experience or their, let's just say they're down now, right?

Like say that's a success criteria for them. How then do you turn that into video and say like, you're doing a great job. It has increased by X percent and we've got this much further to go.

Like I'm using very generic examples but I can't wrap my head around how that works.

[David] (4:11 - 5:23)

Yeah, no, I get it. And I think the way I would encourage you to think about it because maybe you're not getting video messaging from your CSP or your CSM right now, but I guarantee you everybody in this room has probably gotten a Spotify rat by this time of this year, right? And it's telling you everything about your, yeah.

You know, your usage patterns, you know, your top artist. If you're like me, you know that your son has taken over your algorithm and has totally screwed up all your rankings but you've got that information in there and you're able to personalize that video with that kind of content. And so SundaySky does something very similar.

You're able to kind of connect to personalize that video and not just, hey, first name in brackets, right? But it's actually, you know, segmenting your audience by what you're using. So if they're, you know, a customer who's using you for customer onboard, right?

Well, you can tell in your Salesforce instance which packages they've purchased, you know, how many different licenses they have, when their next renewal date is. And you can kind of include that into the video messaging you're sending out and personalize it. And when I say personalize, I mean, different video scenes based on, you know, what you're saying in the voiceover.

You're including different talk tracks and you're leveraging, you know, AI voiceover to kind of give you that live script read that sounds realistic.

[Dillon] (5:23 - 5:26)

I wondered when that term was gonna make its way in.

[David] (5:26 - 5:28)

I know I was trying so hard.

[Dillon] (5:28 - 5:39)

Not begrudgingly, but because that's the only way I can see this working is by having that generative technology. Anyway, Rob, I wanna give you a chance to jump in here. I've wasted.

[Rob] (5:39 - 5:55)

Well, I was gonna ask that. Why does it require generative technology? I mean, video could be a lot simpler than that, right?

For those of anyone listening who just wants to get started. It's super easy to like start using something like Loom. But SundaySky, I mean, that's why we're here, right?

Future sponsor SundaySky.

[JP] (5:55 - 6:03)

Yeah, look, we got- You should have let me go first. You should have let me go first. Seamlessly integrating SundaySky into the note.

[Dillon] (6:03 - 6:10)

Rob's already ambushing me with talk about Loom. And here comes Rob to cut him off at the knees like, but you never need that to get started.

[David] (6:10 - 6:59)

No, but look, hey, that's fair, man. Look, I think there are some customers, some companies out there who are just kind of dipping their toes. And a tool like Loom is a great way to kind of step in, but doesn't allow you to get to that next level.

And I think the fact that you can do AI generated voice over these videos is really something awesome. Because it's not just like, hey, flash some text on the screen and fill in some filler words here, but it's actually generating a script based on customer usage, customer engagement, you know? And so having somebody read that out is crazy.

And again, I don't wanna go down the AI rabbit hole, but one of the things that we're looking at for next quarter is including AI generated avatars, you know? And having like your CEO speak a personalized message to every single customer. That's crazy.

But like, can you imagine how impactful that's gonna be?

[Rob] (6:59 - 6:59)

Super impactful.

[David] (7:00 - 7:01)

Rob, I wanna give you a second chance.

[Rob] (7:01 - 7:08)

Yeah, go for it. Well, my point is to say, there are simple ways. Look, I'm an old boy.

I've been at this game for some time.

[JP] (7:08 - 7:11)

He's young for both of us. Why are you?

[Rob] (7:11 - 7:50)

But I've been at this game for some time. And so- Old boy, that's an oxymoron. And I think, you know, I felt extraordinarily liberated the first time in my career when I was so busy with meetings and I was so tired of hearing myself talk and say the same things over again, that I just recorded.

I actually had this great coincidence where a customer canceled a meeting. So I was like, you know what I'll do? I'll just record what I was gonna say, send it to them.

And then I ended up using that video on repeat, on repeat for all my clients. This was like eight years ago or something like that. And then that ultimately became an LMS. And that LMS then ultimately saved us 10,000 hours in our first year of using it. 10,000 hours of training time, which like multiply that by hourly rate. And like, you've got clear and obvious ROI on that kind of thing. This guy gets it, yeah.

[JP] (7:51 - 7:52)

What's the name of your consultancy, Rob?

[Rob] (7:52 - 8:08)

I'm not in the game of self-promotion, Jake. But if anybody wants to talk. But no, no, no, I think there's good ways.

There's like really simple things people can do. Like I bet most people listening to this don't realize if you're using a Mac, command shift five, you can record your screen. Most people that I speak to haven't used that before.

Simple stuff like that.

[David] (8:08 - 9:12)

Yeah, it's simple stuff like that. You know, it's funny. One of the members of my team, we were just talking about this right now.

We go through onboarding with customers and they go through all the onboarding. They pay attention to everything that they're trained to do. And then the first time they've got to submit a support ticket.

They're like, wait, how do I do that again? And you know, they want you to kind of walk through, go to the help center, click on the link. Here's how you select your severity, do all of that stuff.

Our CSMs are doing it over and over again. That's the kind of thing where we create a video, we show it, we have it ready for you. And you can generate that in a couple hours, right?

And now next time you get a customer that's asking that question, boom, you have that ready to go. So there's our guide. Yeah, I was just gonna say that like, there's kind of two sides to what we're trying to do here.

There's the heavy, heavy personalization. And then there's the video creation at scale side. And yeah, you can combine the two, but there's a really great customer experience with that personalization side.

There's a huge benefit to the CSMs from that like video creation at scale side. Spend a few minutes to create that video and be able to send that out rather than walk through the help desk process every single time with the customer. That's huge.

[Rob] (9:12 - 9:25)

I just wanna say one quick thing. David, I think you were the first person who I heard say to me that tech touch was becoming a bit of a dirty term. And it has.

It has danced with that like dirty term territory. And then we started- I don't say tech touch anymore.

[David] (9:26 - 9:30)

Never, I haven't in years. Digital first CS is my favorite way of phrasing it.

[Rob] (9:30 - 9:55)

Whichever way you wanna say it. But that really stuck with me because it made me think, why is that becoming like a potentially dirty term? And I think it's because we haven't adopted it in full and we've adopted it somewhat poorly.

But one interesting application that ever since I heard you say that that I used was to start to replace QBRs with video updates and the adoption rate on that significantly higher than the adoption, than like people showing up to meetings, which was really cool.

-: 10:07

Rob, it's become clear to me that you're trying to ice JP out here. Got time. But I actually think JP may have the most valuable opinion here because he's got the largest book of business, right?

And so I'd like to hear- So large.

[JP] (: 10:07

From JP about- I had questions actually about SundaySky, surprise. Something I was actually wondering David is about, you talked about this technology. One was sort of like where you sort of see, because I'm thinking people who may be listening, like maybe about who some of your potential competitors may be, but in the sense of like, what you're doing is different.

And then the other part of that is like, the utilization. So you sort of touched upon you using your technology, actually like your CSMs leveraging SundaySky to reach out to customers. So I'm also wondering about like who your customer base is, like who do you sort of envision that to be or who has it been so far?

[David] (: 10:45

Yeah, yeah. I think for our customer base, we wanna work with customers who are already video ready, who have at least kind of dipped their toes in the water because then they can start to envision like, okay, I get the value of video. I get it.

I don't have to be convinced there. Now we can go ahead and talk to them about video at scale and video with personalization, right? And so I think that's a really big deal.

For us like Okta or Zoom Info, they're using us right now to boost customer engagement or drive product utilization. They're seeing that day in, day out. Financial institutions, credit unions and insurance companies, right?

Think about insurance companies saying like, hey, here's your onboarding video. Here's all of your premiums. Here's everything that you need to know about how to do things.

Or for a bank, our banks doing their equivalent of a Spotify wrapped a year in review video of here are your major spending categories. Here's how your accounts have been performing. Those are the companies who are really seeing value from getting like data-driven personalization.

[Dillon] (: 11:40

Yeah, that's interesting that just within this conversation, we've talked about so many different applications for it from the proactive communication to your existing customers in your seat, David, to onboarding what is often like B2C style customers. So like end user, almost like individual users and everything in between. It sounds as though, and this is not a sponsored podcast, but it sounds as though it's pretty flexible, pretty adaptable.

So that's interesting. And I guess let's wrap this up in a bow, David. Is there any, let's say a suggestion or a recommendation you would give to anybody who's just getting started with this, just thinking about it?

Maybe this is the first time they've ever heard about it. Or from my perspective, like you untangled a couple of things for me about how you go about it. Any recommendations for folks?

[David] (: 12:28

Yeah, I think especially for the CS audiences listening. I mean, I would really take a hard look at how you're currently creating content for your customers. Are you already doing a bunch of PowerPoint or Google Slides for your customers to kind of show things off?

Rob, you mentioned an EBR, like same slides over and over again. Videos, it's a more engaging customer experience. It's why I'm spending more time on TikTok than I am on any other app, right?

It's video, it's something that you wanna watch. And then I think if you're already using some sort of CSP like Gainsight, like Tatango, or even Appendo to capture customer insights, you wanna be able to take that insights and really send it back to your customers. Leverage it in a way that matters to them, not just to your own internal voice.

And then yeah, come talk to me. I'm on LinkedIn, you can find me and we'll chat and I'll be happy to talk to you about how we can make that work for you. Very cool.

[Dillon] (: 13:17

Well, that's our time, David. I love this conversation. I think it's really interesting.

And I learned some stuff, which is always all I care about.

[David] (: 13:23

Yeah, selfishly, I get it, yeah.

[Dillon] (: 13:25

So thank you so much. We'd love to have you back in the future, but for now we've got to say goodbye. All right, it's a pleasure, guys.

Great seeing you. Thanks, David.

[VO] (: 13:36

You've been listening to The Daily Standup by Lifetime Value. Please note that the views expressed in these conversations are attributed only to those individuals on this recording and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of their respective employers. For all inquiries, please reach out via email to Dillon at lifetimevaluemedia.com.

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