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Digital Solutions Company Uses AI Avatars to Boost Proposal Engagement by 760%
Oct 2, 2024
The Human Touch Helped Deputy Achieve Skyrocketing Growth
Overview
Who is Deputy?
Deputy was founded in Australia in 2008 after Steve Shelley asked Ashik Ahmed to develop a solution to his own business problems. The software soon became Steve’s “deputy” in the day-to-day running of the business, and together, Ashik and Steve set out to expand the software’s capabilities for other businesses. Today, Deputy is the ultimate employee management tool, simplifying scheduling, timesheets, tasks and workplace communication, helping businesses transform operations and empower employees to work the way they want. It’s used by 300,000 people and 50,000 workplaces across 70+ countries each day.
The company is growing by leaps and bounds. With a $25M in series A financing backed by OpenView and 140 employees across global offices in Australia, the UK, US and the Philippines.
Challenge
Even fast-growing tech companies need other technologies to support growth
Deputy’s growth has been fuelled by an exceptionally executed, one hundred percent inbound marketing and sales strategy that is all about achieving speed to lead.
“Our marketing team is phenomenal at building out viral and paid marketing channels and at turning out content to shine a bright light on who we are,” says Keith Jones, Global Revenue Operations Manager for Deputy. “This has resulted in thousands of trials of our software, from all sizes of clients from mid-sized businesses to large enterprises. Our sales team is running hard to convert as many as possible into paying customers.”
When the goal is rapid conversion, time is of the essence. “We run a pretty standard software as a service sales model. We have a team of sales development reps (SDRs) reaching out to sign-ups at a moment’s notice to engage the prospects while they’re in trial and set up time with account executive (AEs). Given the trial volume—our accounts executives are running up to 12 demos a day—writing one-off custom emails to follow up became very cumbersome leading to things falling through the cracks.” says Chuck Jones, Sales Manager, Americas at Deputy.
With high lead volumes, Deputy needed a way to connect with more prospects while keeping their messages personal, and traditional text-based emails just weren’t cutting it.
“It takes time to write a good email and form letters are just a no-no. Building answers to a customer’s questions is a time-consuming effort if you want to do it well and sending personalized emails to prospective customers is just plain hard,” explains Keith.
What Deputy needed was a fast, personal method for SDRs and AEs to connect with potential and current customers. They needed a solution that was easy to use and quick to implement, so reps could start seeing results right away.
We didn’t have to sell anyone at Deputy on Vidyard. We knew it would work from our past lives. It was just about how soon could we get it in our team’s hands.
Chuck JonesSales Manager, Americas at Deputy
Solution
Vidyard is bringing the human touch back into sales
Turns out, Deputy didn’t have to go far to find a solution to their sales problem. Chuck Jones and Keith Jones (and no, they aren’t brothers!) had both used the Vidyard Chrome extensionin previous roles to build personal video messages for sales prospects and customers.
“We knew Vidyard could help our sales teams achieve fast and better follow up, add a more personal touch to their emails, and create impactful messaging to customers and potential customers. We didn’t have to sell anyone at Deputy on Vidyard. We knew it would work from our past lives. It was just about how soon could we get it in our team’s hands,” says Chuck.
Now, instead of just using email or phone to reach out to prospects, SDRs create and send personal video messages using Vidyard to stand out and immediately engage their prospects. They are also notified immediately when their video is watched so they can follow-up in a timely manner.
“The videos put a face to the name. Nobody feels like their ‘Welcome to Deputy’ introductions are coming from an automated form email or scripted phone call,” says Keith.
Keith shares the story of Sam, one of Deputy’s top AEs. Sam is a former police officer who came to Deputy with very little sales experience. He’s also the first to admit he’s not technical. And yet, through his use of Vidyard, he’s become one of Deputy America’s top sales performers. Like many sales folk, Sam struggled to create emails that had a human element and allowed his personality to shine through. Using Vidyard, Sam was able to showcase his charm and knowledge of Deputy and established a huge win rate for converting demo users into paying customers. Chuck was able to use Sam’s track record of success with Vidyard to coach other salespeople on how they can use video to improve their numbers.
AEs also use Vidyard to quickly and easily handle customer questions in a more personalized way. “In the past, to explain something about the product to a customer, AEs would craft an email, take screenshots, use arrows to mark up the screenshot and highlight a feature. Anyone who’s done it knows this takes a lot of time and tons of clicks. Now, AEs use the Vidyard Chrome extension to record a video and they send over a personalized, user-friendly answer to customer’s specific question. And it takes just minutes versus hours to create,” says Keith.
Results
Life wouldn't be the same without Vidyard
Now that Deputy is using Vidyard, staff can’t imagine what it would be like without it. Vidyard has become such an integral part of their follow-up process and onboarding, life wouldn’t be the same, or as successful with any another system.
“I feel like today if I were to take Vidyard out of the stack, it would be like taking a limb away from our sales reps. It is such an integral way for our team to stand out from the competition. I wouldn’t do that to them, it’s too important to the sales process,” says Keith.
Since launching Vidyard, the tool has brought significant value and impact to Deputy’s business. Deputy’s SDRs have around 20 curated marketing videos they regularly leverage to help convert trials into customers. Vidyard has also become an integral part of the AEs’ follow up process—videos in their library are in the hundreds. It is now one of the biggest weapons in their arsenal. Conversion is up, sales performance is up, and Keith, Chuck, and their teams are realizing their “speed to lead” goals.
But at the end of the day, it’s Vidyard’s simplicity and effectiveness that has won the hearts of Deputy’s SDR and AE teams. “Vidyard is so intuitive, I wouldn’t want to onboard without it,” says Keith. “Adoption was really easy. We were able to stand up almost overnight and use it as a part of our sales and marketing stack. Really, for such a little amount of effort, we are achieving such a big impact.”
