BLOG

Unchurned is presented by UpdateAI.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Hey, Josh. Hey.

Jon Johnson:
We’re just gonna sit here in up.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Yeah. I’ll hold out. This is this is gonna this is a staring con the the podcast equivalent of a staring contest.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Hey, guys. This is Josh Schachter, founder and CEO of UpdateAI. And I have with me today John Johnson, My good friend, Jon Johnson. Jon, why don’t you introduce yourself?

Jon Johnson:
Hey, guys. I’m Jon, founder of, Measure Over Method and, principal CSM at usertesting.com. Okay.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Roll it back. Founder of Measure Over Method. I love it. I have no idea what it is. I haven’t heard that one before in your intro. You must have been I have? Oh, I just haven’t been listening. Okay. Well, then why don’t you tell us all what No.

Jon Johnson:
This is amazing because I’ve been doing this newsletter for a bunch, for a couple, like, months now, and I realized that, like, I’m on this podcast every week, and I never talk about it. Yeah. So, yeah, Measure Over Method is my, my newsletter that I’ve been rolling with on customer success. And, I think just kind of like, word dumping. Like, really, it’s it’s kinda like my weekly outlet for, Just kinda getting things out of my brain off LinkedIn. So

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
There’s a lot of them SEO people that were dumped on Sundays. Yeah. I am one

Jon Johnson:
of them. I do mine on Tuesdays. So it’s interesting.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Who’s reading a newsletter on Tuesday? Who, like, gets up on Tuesday, like, you know what? I’m just gonna procrastinate work for today and just read a newsletter.

Jon Johnson:
Well, there’s a 110 people that have Join me along my journey so far so far. It’s great.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
I’ll give you tactics. After the show, I’ll give you tactics on increasing that number. Yeah.

Jon Johnson:
I love that. Thank

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
you. Yeah. Alright. Well, we have with us a very special guest, a good friend of mine, part of the New York startup tech community, actually got to know this person by being a power user on their platform. That’s how our relationship evolved. I’d like to introduce Bethany Stockenfeld. Did I get it right? Bethany, did you get your last name right?

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
No? You kinda did. It’s just that we mispronounce it anyway, so I can’t even pronounce it correctly.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
How do you pronounce your last name?

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
I say Stattenfeld with a nice New Jersey sent, but I think it’s really like Stachenfeld.

Jon Johnson:
Stachenfeld. Very German. Lots of guttural throat. Yeah.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
I mean, my last name is really shocked there. So Yeah. Exactly. More phlegm, the better.

Jon Johnson:
The more phlegm, the better.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Yeah. That’s the I think that’s the the, the national, motto of of Germany. So, anyways, Bethany Stockenfeld, who is the founder and CEO of SendSpark, which is a product that I’ve been using for, like, two and a half years, which is great. And, Bethany, you’re gonna tell us all about Senspark, and we wanna learn about your journey and how your product and your journey currently relates to customer success, customer experience, all those cool things. So tell us a little bit about SunSpark.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Yeah. So SunSpark’s a video platform for creating videos for prospects and customers. And, you know, why we built this, my background is more in the marketing automation side of things. So I was trying to use other video platforms like Vidyard and Lima. It just felt like They were really good for really one to 1 communication, but when it came to, like, how do we build this into our marketing automation and into the customer journey and onboard a lot of people who, you know, have similar use cases, but things need to just be slightly tailored to different people. The other platforms were too manual. So we built Senspark so you can create, you know, custom videos where, you know, maybe maybe you are recording a video personalized for a person, but maybe it’s automated and built in your process or somewhere in the middle where, you know, part of it’s customized and the other part’s automated. So it’s just meant to be a lot more scalable.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
We’ve been working on Senspark. It actually it as of January, 2024, it’s been 5 years. So, really really excited about the product and where we are today and excited to share more about the journey.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Yeah. And and so, can you share a little bit about, like, About the company, you’re you guys are globally based. Right? Like, the the size of the team, some some some quant behind it, if you don’t mind.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Yeah. For sure. So we we’re globally based. Where are we? I mean, we’re mostly in the US time zones. So, like, think to different places in the US, Latin America. We have 1 guy in Israel, doing some SEO for us, but, I think we built a global team out from the beginning, which is great. We have well over 10,000 users now. And, you know, I I think trying to think.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
So we have 10,000 users. I don’t even know how many videos have been created on the platform. I looked it up before, and it was a lot.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
And you have revenue goals, but I’m not gonna push you into that because you’re a friend.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Yeah. No. All the revenue is confidential. Up. But, you know, one thing that’s exciting that we just built out more recently is an affiliate network. We just we just checked, and We have over a 1000 affiliates on the the platform, so that’s pretty cool too.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Oh, cool.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
That we’ve been trying to just invest a little bit more time in.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
So you are video for sales that scales. That’s your h one on your home page right now, which I like.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Mhmm. Soon to be changing, though. I like the tagline, but people were saying that it wasn’t clear what we did. So

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Well, let let’s get into a little bit about the product, because I I would love for you this is an audience. There are salespeople that into these podcasts, but we’ve got a lot of CX and CS people.

Jon Johnson:
Mhmm.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
And, I know you’re highly exposed to CS. How are customer success teams using SendSpark, or how can they use SendSpark to help them?

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Well, I think it really comes down to how do you add a personal touch at scale? And so I’ve seen, like, 2 ends of the spectrum. Up. Like, we work with some customer success teams that are very, very, very high touch, and they’re using Senspark. You know, less on the automation side for the video, but more on, like, creating really personalized videos. It’s still a huge time saver for both them and their customers just because they’re able to reduce the number of meetings, right, and help people faster in different time zones. I’ve also you know, so I’ve seen one thing that’s kinda cool is, one of our companies I’m not sure if I can say their names, so I’m not going to but they

Jon Johnson:
peep it

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
out. Up. John will talk over you and do a bleep as you say the name. Yeah. Ready? 123. Go. No.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
It’s a it’s a pretty big, like, global organization. But what their customer success team did, like, basically everything like, a lot of the international business is done in English. And so a lot of their marketing and and normal automated workflows are all in English. And one of the guys who I know is using SunSpark recorded personalized videos in, in Spanish to, like, all of his customers that spoke Spanish. I know a lot of people just really appreciated the personal touch, and so I’ve seen people really use video to go the extra mile. And that’s, like, one end of the spectrum. And then for the other side so this is probably less customer success teams and more, like, think you’re at a start up and The customer success person’s probably doing way more than they should. I’ve seen a lot of people build the videos into their automation.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
So think, like, automated onboarding, emails where it’s like, hey. Looks like you signed up, but you didn’t do this important step. You need to do that. Here’s a video to show you how and to build it out at scale. So I think the best companies are kinda doing a combination of knowing when to automate and when to personalize, and that’s something that I’m personally really excited about. So I love digging into these cases.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Now you guys have hit this AI wave over the past several months in your road map, and I think that’s also helping the personalization at scale. Tell us a little bit about, hey, AI. And it’s Gen AI as well, or is it I I don’t wanna mix up the semantics, but, like, tell us about how how AI has been incorporated because everybody wants to know How to use AI for their tooling?

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Yeah. For sure. The way I like to think about it is how do we how do we make your automated videos feel more personalized? Wise. So we’ve added AI so you can automatically greet your viewer by first name. So you just, you know, you record 1 video and it would automatically say, you know, like, Hi, Josh. Hi, John. Welcome to SunSpark in your own voice. We’re adding in other variables too, so you can really customize the experience and just Think, like, instead of having a normal automated video, it’s data enriched with what’s relevant to you and just feels more special.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
It’s not. Like, I think a pushback we often get is, like, oh, is this deceitful? You’re trying to to, like, trick your viewer. But I think it just comes down to the teachers adding more personalization and all kinds of things. And how do you make sure that, you know, what people are watching is really relevant and and tailored to them?

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Does it come across as, like, hi, Josh? Like like, some, like, robot, like

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
It’s really good. It’s, like, surprisingly good. It will also so the way we’re doing it right now is we’re just doing 1 word. So one word at a time. So you’d record your video and, you know, it’s like, hi, first name, and and then we’re just replacing the first name, so it’s totally seamless. I think it gets more fun.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Video as well. So the video also show you can actually show the video as you so what do you have them say? You have them say, like, Pineapple or something in the background. Isn’t that, like, the word that people oh, watermelon. Right?

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Watermelon. Yeah. So if you record saying, hi, watermelon.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Oh, you really do?

Jon Johnson:
Oh, that’s a Yeah.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Like, we really do. And Because we’re just changing one word, it’s, like, it’s almost perfect in your voice. You know, sometimes we like different languages and different accents. It’s a little bit trickier, but, like, For the most part, it’s surprisingly good. What we want to do in the future is more like full sentence generated. And that right now sounds a little bit flat. It, you know, it just sounds like a robot reading it. So we don’t have that live yet, but I I feel like we might, like, within a few months because at the pace of AI advancement.

Jon Johnson:
Everything’s moving so quickly. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Oh, John. I thought that was a segue. I thought you were introducing that your next question there.

Jon Johnson:
Well, yes. But then it looked like you were gonna say something. It’s this will they, won’t they. Like, with 2 of us, It’s there’s just a lot of effort space here. Yeah. I mean, I guess, you know, you’re the cofounder and CEO. I know we’re gonna get into Kinda your your journey and your path. But, why don’t like, give us the 5 year kinda rundown.

Jon Johnson:
Like, how are you feeling? How’s, does does the AI excite you? Does, you know, kinda leaning into the future of technology really, you know, start your start your day? Or is this kind of that, man, how do I How do I focus on, you know, the practical, you know, core business here?

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Yeah. I I think it’s a combination. So the way I think about building AI into our platform is, okay, if I if I’m to look at our perfect customer journey where someone, you know, signs up because they wanna do something with video, and then they’re going from point a to b to c. Where is there the most friction in that process? And then how could I fill that in with AI? So we’ve been using AI in in in a bit, but I’d say, like, none of it is really what you’d expect except for that, like, AI voice video cloning. It’s more like, okay. Before, people are self conscious with how they look on camera. Around. Like, you can say, hey, don’t worry.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Beat yourself. You look great. It doesn’t matter. We’re self conscious. It’s human. And so we added AI beauty filters to just, like, make you feel more comfortable on camera and reduce friction to recording videos. So we did that, like, last January. So a year ago, we added, AI, like, script writers to help you know what to say because a lot of people know they should use video, but they’re like, wait.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
What do I really say? So, you know, we’re just trying to get rid of of, like, friction so people can really leverage video because it’s an amazing way to communicate, but there’s a lot of places where people get, like, nervous or just hung up or self conscious. And so With AI, like, we can almost rethink, hey. What are the reasons that you wouldn’t do this, and how do we make it easier, you know, faster, more scalable for you and your team?

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Have you seen I love that you’re thinking about,

Jon Johnson:
Oh, go ahead, Josh.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
No. There’s this is you know, John, this is the last week of my computer of my freezing computer. After today, I’m going upstairs. I’m getting a new one. So

Jon Johnson:
I love it.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
No.

Jon Johnson:
I I was just gonna say, I love that you’re you’re thinking about not just, like, the front end, how to how to make it flexible and seamless for your customers, but also, like, look. Half of the CSMs that I I work with are just so uncomfortable filming themselves and sending a video to a person. Like, they’re, Yes. It’s great communication. It it’s it’s real like, the numbers are astounding when it comes to, like, retention and, and engagement, but It’s a very specific personality. It feels comfortable doing what we do every day. Right? So I love that you’re actually taking the human part of it and saying, The best way for us is not just penetration in the market, but also how do we get people comfortable and how do we give them the tools, not just the buttons to click and the email to send, But everything else that kinda goes into creating content, so that it can be digested in a way that customers respond. So I I like that.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
How how has the AI changed your usage, your engagement, your metrics? Have you have you tried any I don’t wanna put you on the spot here, Bethany, but, like

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
up.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Yeah.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
So, you know, normal a b test, like, for the last years years, this is coming from us, also, like, other video companies. What’s typical to see is a 3 times improvement in engagement when using a video and an email. And so

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
And and it sorry. Say that again because I wanna make sure people catch that.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
So, basically, if you have a text email that you’re using, you know, for sales outreach or even if it’s, like, warm leads or customer I mean, whatever it is. It’s normally 3 x higher. That’s what, like, a lot of large scale tests run. Of course, you can’t test, like, everything in If

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
you embed the video in your email.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
If you, yeah, if you embed the video in your email. So that’s like a

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
So the engagement is higher, but then but then Google puts you on spam easier. Is that right?

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
No. No. No. No. That is a misconception. No. Videos videos do not cause you to go to spam because the thing is they increase engagement. And the thing that spam filters, Like, spam filters are smarter.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
What they’re trying to figure out is is this message spam. So the ones that get the most engagement, that bumps you up. So, of course, you have to be worried about, like, Adding links and adding images are not good. Like, there are dings, but the benefit of video is so high that I mean, there’s a reason that people send it. You’re gonna get better engagement. If you just spam it out to, like, a totally unqualified list and the rest of your email is spam, that’s spam. But you don’t really have to worry about adding. I mean, unless it’s like you’re just sending a video with no text or doing, like, other weird stuff, it’s not good.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Well, this is great because I’m gonna use Senspark today. I’m I did this for for one of our events, like, 9 months ago. We had a One of these executive workshops, and I put a teaser video. And I used Senspark to create, like, the thumbnail animated GIF of the teaser video, and I put it in the bottom of my email. And it looked awesome. And I think people really liked it, but my concern was, well, is this gonna actually trigger spam quicker? But now that you’ve told me no and my email I first made wave of my next email is going out today, I’m gonna put it back in.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Yeah. And I would just say, like, it’s a ding for sure. So if you’re doing other ding things, like, watch how many dings you have. But, like so I wouldn’t necessarily have, like, a video and a GIF in your email signature and 8,000,000 links in your email signature. You know what I mean? So just, like, watch it. Obviously, with, like, cold email, you have to be careful in general. But, yeah, video video helps more than it hurts. So

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Have you but have you seen have you seen, like, number of videos Increased when people are using this new voice voice AI or or or viewership of that. What I

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
was gonna say about the, the the AI. So what we so it’s basically, the common a b test that people see is when they add a video, You get 3 x the increase in engagement on it. And what we were worried about is, like, okay. Well, if we use AI and you’re not actually recording the video, are you still gonna see that creased. That’s where, like, the increase I mean, that’s why I’m like, oh, no. The increase kind of goes without saying unless you’re doing weird stuff, you should get an improvement using video. But is Is it gonna have the same effect if you didn’t record it personally? And we’re pleased to say that so far in the early users, we just released this publicly, about a week ago, we’ve had it in private beta since Thanksgiving. And so for the 1st 2 months, like, the people have seen the same engagement, so think three x, up, but without having to do anything manually.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
So, yeah, it’s way more scalable because you just make the video once, and you can build it into your automation, versus seems like hours and hours. So, yeah, we’ve seen more videos created, but luckily, the same engagement metrics are holding with the AI generated videos.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
That’s John, you’re looking like you you’re literally we’re biting your lip a second ago.

Jon Johnson:
I’m processing it. It’s I’m I’m thinking through this because, you know, I so I’ve got, like, a marketing background as well. So I did some performance marketing. I did affiliate marketing, and I’ve got some, like, just general, like, Like, MarTech background. Right? And engagement and click through rate is so important. Just to kinda, like, put the filter of customer success a little bit on it. One of the things that I’m always curious about is, yeah, engagements is is great, but what you know, how are you kinda thinking about, Like, how do they retain information? Right? Is it driving behavior change? Is it if you can watch a video and it’s like, man, I love that guy. He made me laugh.

Jon Johnson:
And then right. What comes next? Right? So we’re looking at all these new tools and these ways to get attention. But how are we also bringing it down to I you know, yes, 3 x open rate or engagement, but is that gonna three x our usage and three x r or whatever that x Multiple is. Right? Mhmm. What are the conversations that you’re having right now about not just that engagement number, but what other metrics are you starting to kinda think about now that AI is really kinda cranking numbers up, and we have a lot more data and a lot more sample rates. We have a lot you can a b things through AI now. Right? So, you know, talk to me a little bit about how you’re thinking about the next step. Right?

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Well okay. So I’m gonna talk about what we’re, like, currently doing at SensePark team just because I was literally talking about it today. And I know a lot of companies do a lot of different things and I’m not necessarily a CS person, but I just I’m like, oh, this is cool. So the way we think about retention is it’s all about finding the leading indicator of retention. So what you’re trying to get someone to do when they first sign up is it’s hard to know, hey. Is this person gonna turn in 3 months unless you know, okay, what’s the thing that they have to do today? And that’s what you wanna optimize for. So, like, for us, we were talking about I

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
think what you’re saying is, like, what what activity or what threshold correlates To them retaining. Right? What x number of videos created or y number of videos watched is the correlation to, like, oh, there’s prob the probability this person’s gonna be retained.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Exactly. Okay. Right? So it’s like, what is that leading like, the thing that you can track today that they should do within a couple days of signing up versus something that buys me figure it out in 3, you know, 3 months or a year depending on your payment cycles. It’s too late. And so for us, We really want people to make these automated videos because if you can build if you can make the automated videos, you set it up, you’re setting yourself up for success. There’s a lot less friction than if you’re recording tons of videos. Like that’s, that’s just for our business, but whatever it is for you. And then once we know what that is, that’s what we’re building our email automation around.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
So we’re trying to to make sure, okay. If you sign up, we really want you to build an automated video. And then and then that’s where Senspark can be helpful, and then we can build that into our automation. Hey. Looks like you signed up, but you still haven’t, you know, made an automated video. Hey. Looks like you’ve signed up. We haven’t enrolled anyone video.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
And so the more we can help with, like, whether it’s a video of me or a tutorial or a video from our head of customer success or something, the more we can help people do that early, That drives long term success. So that’s what I think can be really powerful, in terms of, okay, we’re not just tracking, did they click or reply to the email, but did they take to action, but it depends on what are you measuring? What’s the action you’re trying to to drive for?

Jon Johnson:
Got it.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Love it. That leading indicator of retention is a really, Really strong framework. I mean, you and I both graduated from the same accelerator that that, like, evangelizes this, right, which is Mark Roberge’s first stage to capital. But the idea of, like, what’s that trigger event or cluster of events that you need your users to get to In order for them to have a high likelihood of retaining or I mean, honestly, it also is just, like, what’s the likelihood of them subscribing. Right? You could, like, Whether it’s the start or the end of that commercial relationship.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Yeah. For sure. And and because, like, once you know what it is, it makes it easy to optimize for the different drop off points. To, like, alright. Well, our, you know, website to sign up conversion rates x, and then our sign up to activation’s y, and then our, you know, activation to retention metric c. So once you know that, you’re like, alright. Where’s the biggest hole? And then you dig in there, fill that hole, and you got yourself 5.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
So what is it for you guys? It it’s creating, create a personalized video. Is it just 1, or is it, like, you have to create 5 to to be highly likely to subscribe?

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
What I wanted to be this is the hardest thing is we need to get the right tracking events for it. But I want it to be that you build your video into automation. So you you not only create a dynamic video in SendSpark, you literally set this up in, like, Zendesk or HubSpot or whatever platform you’re using so that automated videos are gonna send on their own. Like, when you have a new sign up, it’s sending a video. You know, taking the video, generating an AI personalized version for them, and sending

Jon Johnson:
it off, and I think that’s that’s, like,

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
the key, sticky factor for Senspark because, you know, it saves you so much time. You you’ve set it up, and it’s just gonna keep It’s gonna keep selling while you sleep.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
I love that.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
So that’s what we’re talking about now and, like, optimizing for that, but we don’t have a not tracking it yet.

Jon Johnson:
No. That I it’s really man, I mean, you you put it out in such like a simplistic way, and I know it’s not simple. But I I really love the focus on the fundamentals. Like, I know that we’re coming into or coming out of an economy that It’s pretty chaotic. Right? And and we’re hearing more and more folks say, like, just focus on, like, the core business and what you do well. Yeah. It’s interesting. Thank you for sharing that.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
I’m having we’re we’re having a stare together. People that are just listening and not watching the YouTube, they can’t tell that John and I are having a staring contest right now to see who’s gonna Talk and talk first.

Jon Johnson:
Oh, it’s so good. You’re up, Josh. I’m just gonna, like what’s that

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
No. No. No. So so my next question, though, is is I wanna stay on this this, this This AI train here, right, that’s the gravy train. Like, where do you you’re you’re in the primarily in the sales space, but also the tangential spaces, go to market spaces around that, like and CS and stuff. Where do you see AI going in bringing this next generation of productivity and tooling?

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Yeah. I will so one thing I I really see is just reducing more manual work. So my my theory on, like, whether it’s AI or just any type of automation is do it first to, like, figure out what you’re doing. And then as soon as you’re like, hey, I’ve done the same thing, like, five times. That’s when you wanna automate. So I was just talking to someone who was talking about, like, how they did research and, like, check that emails were valid. I’m like, okay. This could a thousand resume automated.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
So I feel like let’s like, anyone can think about what are the things you’re doing that you don’t need to do or a human doesn’t need to do, and that’s gonna be coming 1st. I think the research side’s easy. I think the tech stuff, with the emails could get better, but right now, it’s just not really good enough, and I don’t know if I really see that ever being the end all be all answer because, you know, when you write emails, it’s like communicating. It’s not that hard to write an email if you know what to say, but, like, you probably know better than you know, you probably know what you want to say more than you know what you put in a prompt to generate an email for. So, I think really more on the research side, automating manual tasks, way more on the image video generation side of things. And also, like, what I wanna do is more dynamic video content. So it’s not just adding, you know, a word to your mouth, but really showing the right information and helping people have more tailored relevant tutorials, onboarding videos, demos. Yeah.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Yeah. I was listening to a podcast actually this weekend with, and it was with Bill Gurley, The, you know, the the Mhmm. What’s is it Benchmark? Was that is that his firm? I think I was messing up. Yeah.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Maybe I know him mostly from the the Uber.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
From From the, yeah, from the Uber, sitcom or whatever. Its documentary or show. Whatever. Yeah.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
The board of director of Boopers of Uber. Anyway, he was saying he made a really good point. He said, you know, right now, AI is an advantage For us, it’s it’s saving us time. It’s shaving time off the clock. It’s it’s it’s giving us an edge over our competitors. But humans have this ability to adapt to technology, and that’s gonna happen. And What’s an advantage right now is going to become, well, if you don’t do it, you’re gonna die. And the analogy he used was This tennis player in the seventies eighties, really famous Swedish player, Bjorn Borg, he he won all these, major tournaments.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
He was, like, it was, like, him versus John McEnroe all the time. And he wanted to make a comeback. I would imagine it would be, like, the late eighties that he was doing this. And he was still stuck on using a wooden racket. But in the time that he’d been away, everybody started to use graphite tennis rackets. And as good as as as amazing a player as he was, he got smoked, Totally slaughtered

Jon Johnson:
Mhmm.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Because he was still stuck on the old tool, the wooden tennis racket, and everybody had evolved and adjusted to the new stuff. So, yeah. I mean, I don’t know the relevance to this, but it’s gonna become Other than the fact

Jon Johnson:
that you pay attention to eighties tennis.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Yeah. Oh, I do. I do. And it’s the Australian Open now. It’s good times. I

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
think so. I think people won’t even realize that we’re using it too. Like, I think it’s just gonna be in the subtle things like, oh, like, Mill and Senspark where it’s like, oh, your skin just looks nice. Like, you don’t even really notice it, or, okay. The audio just sounds a little bit crisper. You’re able to

Jon Johnson:
you know,

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
it’s like a joke in movies where it’s like, hey. Zoom in on that image. You know? Enhance. Yeah. And and hits the image like, you can’t. Like but you can now.

Jon Johnson:
And You can.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
And so I think it’ll be a lot of things where you just kind of expected stuff to work, and then it does.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Yeah. And that’s

Jon Johnson:
I think this is one thing that maybe sci fi didn’t do very a very good job at because, you know, we as I love Science fiction. Right? And and, like, a lot of the things that we saw growing up watching these old, like, the enhanced. Right? So, like, in minority report, like, We’re seeing the reality of what we used to think was magic. Now but it’s just not connecting. Right? It’s like, oh, I don’t feel comfortable with this. It’s like, you guys have been Comfortable with this for the last 30 years. You just don’t really know what it is. Right? And I think you to it gets to a point where how do we make it so you don’t Have to be educated to feel comfortable.

Jon Johnson:
It just is.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s cool. They make a lot of things quite easier too, like data analysis.

Jon Johnson:
My gosh. I’m such a data nerd, and, you know, we are baking a lot of stuff into our analytics when it comes to we we’re a research company, so we We, you know, help people, UI, UX designers, figure out what works and what doesn’t work with their customers. Right? And we’re seeing a lot of, benefits in AI to just We don’t need to ask the same question to a 1000000 different people time and time and time and time again. Right? We can bake those experiences into LLM. Right? Within reason, obviously, to really kinda speed up insight and to speed up how we digest data. And you can go I love some of these tools that are just saying, I want you to look at this dataset and tell me something. Give me a trend, right, instead of the deep thinking that is required, for a lot of people. So it allows access to these things in a way that that wasn’t necessarily there in the past.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
For sure. And, you know, that’s just part of you too. Like, it really enables globalization. Based. I was kind of making fun of the email writers, because if you know what you want to say, it’s easier to just say it. But where it’s really advantageous is when you’re writing in a language that’s not your first language.

Jon Johnson:
Totally. So

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
I’ve gotten emails from people, that I work with, where I’m like, oh, I know you use AI, but, like, I also know that you normally I know because you normally have a lot of grammar mistakes, and now you on half of them. And that’s really cool. And, you know, you’ve even talked about building like accent localization into Senspark, so you can sound like native speaker to whoever you’re reaching out to, and I think that’s that’s like Hitchhiker Guide for the Galaxy, kinda like the earworm. Right? Like, you really open you really remove a lot of barriers communication and all kinds of things.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. When we talk Mickey Mickey actually brought this up on kind of our end of the year podcast when we’re talking about, like, the like, what we see in the future. And this opens up markets in a way that has has never where we used to have a, you know, somebody sitting in the Philippines translating for us Or, you know, some other resource that had to be localized. We don’t have to do that anymore. Right? We have resources where we can sell and support, where technology exists. Obviously, there’s some boundaries, but, that allows you to expand your market and your TAM in a way that is just unheard of.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Yeah.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
And back to my analogy, Now it’s an advantage. If you don’t do it That’s weird. Now it’s an advantage. But if you don’t do it and everybody else is, then you’re the lazy one who who’s not using the tools that are are there to enable you. Right? So, you’ve talked a little bit about the user journey. I’ve I’ve literally seen your, like, HubSpot user journey layout about a year, year and a half ago and how comprehensive it was. And I know you really kinda Take a lot of care and consideration into the customer journey. In fact, a CS manager was one of your first hires.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
So I’d like to know, Bethany, what’s been your, like, biggest learning on the ways to Treat your customers and deliver good customer success to them as a small start up, but even early on, having such importance behind that.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s true. We hired for customer success before we hired for sales, because I think that’s I think if your customers are successful, then they’ll pay and be sticky. And so you may as well do the right thing first.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
I mean,

Jon Johnson:
that’s the end of the podcast right there. Right? I mean,

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
up. Without the mic.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Yeah. So huge believer in that. I mean, I think as a startup like, as a startup, your top concern is time, right, like, time and money, just allocating resources really effectively. And so what we’ve always done from the beginning is really try to segment, like, who are the people we we want to talk to, versus the people who, 1, you know, maybe we don’t want to talk to them, but also they don’t want to talk to us either. Like, They just wanna use the product and be successful. And so we’ve really emphasized, like, splitting that and having a really strong self-service journey so that people can treat themselves. And that kind of depends on the the person a bit too. Like, you know, some people, they they really just wanna, like, get in there, tinker, try stuff, and then we’ll have support, but it’s a lot more reactive, versus people who are trying to make a big decision that’s gonna affect a lot of people.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
They want to talk to you, and luckily, those are, you know, the bigger deals that that we want to talk to you too. So we try to split that, and make sure people are kinda getting the right journey. So they’re seeing the information relevant for them at the right time, and That way we’re not, like, annoying people who don’t wanna talk to us, and we’re also not, like, spending too much time in meetings where people could be treated self-service. I know a lot of companies that, like, really try not to do things self-service at all, and I think that can be, really tough on yourself because there’s only so many hours in the day you can meet with someone anyway.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, we’re seeing the same thing, like, this idea of doing more with less or doing better with what you have. I like the idea, and, you know, I’m a firm believer of giving a customer the opportunity. I wanna talk to someone or I don’t. Like Yeah. Or I wanna hybrid or, you know, kinda, like, set your own like, choose your own adventure, if you will. And I think that it still gives you know, as c as a CSM, it’s like, oh, man.

Jon Johnson:
It’d be really it’d be a bummer if people didn’t know my name or if they didn’t know that I was the one that helping them. And what I love about these personalizations is is that it’s not just a link to a KB article. It’s not just it’s actually that human element. It’s it’s multiplying The strength of what we have and allowing okay. I’m just gonna go watch this video from John because I need it. It’s on my schedule, and I’m gonna get to the value As soon as possible. Right? And then you did do get on a call with them, and and it’s almost the same. Right? They have that experience of learning your cadence or how you pronounce watermelon in your AI.

Jon Johnson:
I’m I’m really interested in how you train the audio models for these, but that’s a different podcast. But, yeah.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Yeah. And then, you know, that just reminded me too of an idea or, like, a thing that we implemented, which was actually the idea of our customer success person, so I can’t take credit for it. But we started, because, of course, we send, like, a couple emails to people to be like, hey. Set up a meeting. But the time when they really want help is, like, when they’re in the app trying to figure it out and get stuck. So we started putting, like, a little kinda, like, like a badge, in the product at points where we think things are complicated, and then they can schedule a meeting right there. So we’re not just, like, hoping, hey, 2 days is probably a good time to set up a meeting after You know, it’s like, okay. You’re in there.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
You’re trying to do it, and then you see, like, a friendly face, and they’re being like, you know, hey. You know, this can be complex. Here’s a through this tutorial, but if you need any extra hand holding, schedule a meeting right now or again.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. We we actually did the same thing. Like, we we came not with SenseSpark. And you’re talking through this, and I’m like, oh my gosh. How how could I do this? Because we do it with kind of, like, an automated Pendo journey that kinda pops and, you know, clicks to Calendly, But I really love the idea.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
But you do but you do it you do it in, like, a fixed journey. Right? Like, through your onboarding, like, your like, the flow and lands with, Like, here’s here’s the link to my calendar. Or do you do it, like, dynamically where it actually

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
For us, it’s not dynamic. It just points of the product where we know that people get stuck a lot, and then we have it there. So it’s it’s not like it’s actually not fancy at all. It’s like literally just like a It just says, like, hey. You know you know, it’s hard to and then there’s, like, a little video too, but the video the video is tiny, and then you can hit it and then watch the video large. And then it’s kind of a a button schedule a So And

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
have you seen have you seen people use it?

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Well, we we literally just did this, like, Friday, so I don’t have room data. But

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
So we’ll have it back next week, and you gave us the results.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Yeah. And Yeah. I’m excited I’m excited about having it there. We we did have video we always have videos in other places, but they were less about thinking where people get stuck. And too. Like, John, what you said, we definitely see the benefit of when people see the video, they feel like they know the team.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Like, a

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
lot of times, I’ll I’ll get messages from customers being like, hey. Selena is amazing, or Dan offered the best support, and I don’t feel like that’s normal. Like, I’m like, oh, that’s cool that you literally know our support person’s name, team, and you, like, emailed me about it. So I think that having the videos really does help build a personal connection. I don’t know if, like, a ton of data other than that. I’m like, that’s pretty cool. They gave him a shout out or gave Slain a shout out to me.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Cool. Yeah. No. I love that. I love the idea of using video to build a personal connection.

Jon Johnson:
That’s good. So this is your 1st c your CEO role. Right? I mean, you Yeah. You went from director of marketing, I’m looking at your LinkedIn into this pretty big role. What’s, you know, what’s kind of been your experience? How, how are you finding it? How are you finding the the top of the leadership structure? And, maybe what’s something that, you know, you’re, you’re learning still 5 years in?

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Yeah. I mean, I think it really comes down to, like, having great people on the team. So I think that, like you know, we don’t have a huge team. We have a small team, but I I really trust everyone on it. And we’ve just really good people. So

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Bethany is the prime I know about Bethany’s, you know, her her startup and her growth, and she’s, like, the model student for What start ups are starting to become and what they’ve needed to be, which is, like, let’s keep a low burn. Let’s do things the right way. Let’s build you know, if you wanna If you wanna call it what Gainsight calls it, let’s build durable growth. Right? Durable. Durable revenue, whatever. Yeah. Like, but, like, let’s not just go and raise Millions upon millions and try to, like, skyrocket and leapfrog. Yeah.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Just burn it. She’s doing things in a very sustainable way and environmentally friendly as well.

Jon Johnson:
I love that.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Environment. Yeah.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
I don’t know about that.

Jon Johnson:
Carbonate I don’t

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
think we have a big a carbon footprint.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Yeah.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s just there’s so much I’m learning every day, which I think is really is really fun, but, like I I just try not to have, like, an ego about it, I guess. Like, I kind of am expecting I have to make a lot of decisions. I’m expecting not all of them are gonna be right. So if things aren’t. It’s fine. Just, like, quickly learn and adapt, and, yeah, I can’t imagine anything else.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
I love that. She’s also John, she’s also younger than us, and she’s in the point of her career where, like, if it doesn’t work, And it’s gonna work. But, like, if it doesn’t, it’s her 1st act. So that’s why she could be all smiley. She’s like, oh, this

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
is I’m getting old. You know, today’s my birthday.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Oh my god. Is your birthday. Birthday.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
My birthday. Yeah. So I’m I’m aging by the day. I’m, like, other people. You know?

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Well, you don’t look a day past your last age. Up. Not that I know either of the ages, but Thanks. Yeah. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. That’s great. I think we should leave it at that.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
I think we should all wish Bethany, a happy birthday. As a birthday gift to Bethany, we should go to send spark.com Yep. Where I’ve been an avid user for years, And it sounds like they had some really cool watermelon personalization AI tools. I’m gonna check that out myself.

Jon Johnson:
That I had a flashback to, like, my musical Theater days, and I’m standing in the and that’s what they teach you to do is that if you’re having background conversations, you just say watermelon. You mouth watermelon over And over and over and over again, it looks like you’re talking. So I love that.

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
That’s that’s how I use it. Yeah. But

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
is that is is that literally what like, if you go backstage on like, that’s all people are doing? If, like, if you’re in the back of a set And you

Jon Johnson:
like, the extras. So my niece is an an extra. Like, that’s her career. She is an extra for these Netflix shows, and, like, she’s it’s watermelon or pineapple. Like, it’s It’s interchangeable. Whatever has, like, multiple syllables and you just You know? And, like, you get paid $400 a day. It’s great. Good job.

Josh Schachter (UpdateAI):
Love it. Love it. Alright, guys. Thanks. Enjoy the rest of your week. We’ll leave it all that. Monday. Happy

Bethany Stachenfeld (Sendspark):
all day. Thanks so much, guys.