Marketers of Technology
00:13:00 · Jeremy Byars
[00:13:00] S0: So a lot of what we're doing on the software side is relatively new. So when I got here, my main job was to rebuild this UPM concept and turn it into what it is today. So showcasing it up to this point has only been with our current customers and getting them to upgrade from our legacy software to this new thing that really just completely expands the operational benefit more so than they've ever thought about before. Now moving forward, pretty soon we're going to be rolling that out into areas that don't know us from software. They may know us on the metering side of things and they most likely do, but they don't necessarily have experience with our software. So the way that we showcase is we get a ton of video on-site when we have customers, we get a ton of audio because at the end of the day, we can send our salespeople there all day long and knock on the door and go in and say, you're using us for this, try using us for this other side as well. But really and truthfully, is that down home testimonial from someone on the other side of the state that they're in, or maybe in a similarly sized utility, or maybe has nothing to do with the utility itself, but the pain point is the same. Or maybe it's the goals that they're trying to reach. Maybe they're trying to not necessarily reduce staff, but not hire more staff as they continue to expand. There's all these different things that they're looking for. The best way to do that is don't take our word for it. I wish you would, I'd love for you to take my word for it. But the best thing to do is use the feedback and the testimonials. And also for our company in particular, for the forty some odd years, forty nine years that we've been in existence, our support is considered second to none against our competitors. So a lot of times having our support and the evidence of how we're able to help them again in maybe another vertical, because we have multiples, we do manage the IT and networking for customers. Again, we've got the relationship with Itron and other metering providers. We do a lot of things. So we do have the advantage of obviously cross selling every single day, but ultimately it's that old school, hey, let's get somebody on camera. Let's get them to just speak their mind. I will tell you, being the CMO here, I also still have a foot in the product side.
00:15:22 · Jeremy Byars, Andres Figuera
So those testimonials are, they have so many benefits for me because then I can take some of the product feedback and say, okay, you can hear it from me, product team, and I can tell you that this is not the best way to build this. Or here's Jenny with Stewart, someone that I spoke to a couple of weeks ago, North Stewart County in Tennessee, not far from Nashville. This is her precise feedback about this particular feature, right? And so it helps us as a company as well to build out the next best thing. The next thing that is really going to improve not just her daily life at the utility, but those in similar situations as her. [00:16:00] S1: Okay. No, I understand now a lot better. And Jeremy, you mentioned then that your service is second to none in regards to your competitors, but when you're telling me that this is an underserved underserved technology industry, how is it that... Or how do you feel that the competition is? Is there a lot of companies that are trying to do this and you're placed as the leaders in the market? Or how is that looking for you guys?
00:16:25 · Jeremy Byars
[00:16:25] S0: So the market's interesting. Our direct competitors are generally of our size, maybe a little bit bigger, particularly when you go into some of the bigger utility software providers in Texas and further West than we are. And then you get the Oracles and people like that are also in this space. Obviously they don't care about it like we do. This is no shade to Oracle. It's just they've got a million irons and a million fires, right? So the competitive landscape is interesting and you don't want to on day one go after Target Oracle, for instance, as your number one competition. And I will never speak negatively of any of our competition, But I will say, it blows my mind how much every single year the feedback that we get is our customer service is number one. And know if they want me to say this, but I'm not entirely sure how we do it. And again, it's nothing against the team. It's just, that's amazing feedback year in and year out, unchanging. And you know how it goes. You roll out new product and maybe you miss a few things in the development stage and your service suffers as a result. It is negatively affected by whatever the product is that you're providing, but it doesn't seem to be the case here. But we've also had very good luck in rolling out good products as well. But yeah, our service, time and time again, when we, a marketing team or the support team themselves goes out and gets that feedback, it's incredible. It's incredible. And also too, I used to work in customer service, I mentioned at the beginning. So I understand how important it is to hear that. Because most of the time people aren't going to call you or email you on a daily basis because everything's going great. That's not why you're there. You're there to deal with the negative stuff. So it definitely makes me feel great to know that they seemingly always have that to look forward to. It's like once again, we're top dog when it comes to support.
00:18:24 · Andres Figuera, Jeremy Byars
[00:18:24] S1: That is so cool. And I love how you mentioned that you're not sure how you're doing it, but that just tells me that it's something that's coming naturally to the team and that you have an amazing team that is able to give the best customer service without actually having to work towards it. But it's something that's happening. [00:18:39] S0: Well, tell you, one of the things, one of the secret sauces is that everyone, just about everyone rather, on the team sounds like me. So you get that southern sort of hospitality and maybe that gives us a little bit of a leg up as it were. [00:18:55] S1: I love it because me as a Venezuelan, when I speak Spanish, people also get, like, that warmth and that hospitality that you're mentioning from the accents that we have. So maybe it just could be that. But it's so nice that you're getting that feedback and being able to just have that reassurance that you're doing the proper job. And Jeremy, another question I do have is, how are you guys leveraging AI to help you out in your regular day or with the work you're doing?
00:19:18 · Jeremy Byars
[00:19:18] S0: Yeah. So the development team definitely leverages AI to help with their QA testing and also with their what the product team will help with their basically as much as they can with their story creation and everything that follows after that and the acceptance criteria and all that, AI helps. I don't know in-depth how deep they use it. For marketing, use it every day. I have a very small team. It's me and one other person. I use it for copy editing. It makes me feel a little bit it saddens me. Let's just say sometimes when I've got three English degrees and here I am still making mistakes in my copy and having Claude or ChatGPT point out the most basic of errors. But also I use it for idea generation, of course, and also use it for image generation because sometimes you got an image in your head and then you sketch it out or you try to go into Illustrator or Photoshop and try to mock it up and it's just garbage. I can send it through Gemini in particular, but also ChatGPT has come a long way and have that sort of mock up display in a few seconds. And it saves me a half a day or more of work if it's a really important image like that. They have a long way to go when it comes to vector illustrations, I get that. So I use a lot for graphic design as well, or at least the early stage designs, and then I go and put it, like I said, into Illustrator or InDesign or something like that. But also, we're a HubSpot company, so HubSpot has a very strong AI component. So we try to utilize as much as we can with HubSpot's Breeze intelligence. Now some of it I'm less than warm to because it's not, it still needs work. But... And they know that. I tell them that any chance I get. So, yeah. So anything that's adjacent there around, like I said, the Breeze AI component of HubSpot, we try and do as well.
00:21:10 · Andres Figuera
[00:21:10] S1: Okay. I know. I understand. And, yeah, it's pretty much what I feel everybody's using AI for, but I love that you're doing, like, graphic design and image creation, but this is something that I felt since the AI started its whole boom, and it's the fact that anybody can do anything because the barriers of entry towards these different skills that we didn't have before have been lowered, and therefore, you can meet a product designer or a graphic designer halfway there with your idea, at least in a more tangible way, what's called, delivered to them, and then they understand a lot better what you need from them, and they can tweak it out, make it a lot prettier, or use their graphic design knowledge to really just then revamp it in a proper way. But it's