How Skodel uses HowdyGo to automate their product demos
Skodel is a psychosocial risk assessment platform for workplaces. They help identify, assess and address workplace issues like conflicts, job demands and dynamics in line with Australian government regulation.
Why look into demo automation?
Skodel noticed that while prospects came in to solve their regulatory compliance problems, a real lightbulb moment occurred when their prospects were taken through a live demo, as seeing Skodel’s functionality in action helped them connect the dots between compliance, and the practical implementation.
Julian and Ian, identical twins and co-founders of Skodel, wanted to experiment with bringing this moment earlier in the sales funnel. Their hypothesis being that with an automated demo they would be able to better explain their problem space and product, therefore driving more conversions.
“Your product should be a really powerful lead generator for you… you can build out your own demo environment and do all of that but that's hugely expensive to maintain whereas with HowdyGo it was much easier to show off the product for people that wanted to see it”
-Julian Fagan
Results
“I had a prospect turn around and say that they viewed [our demo] and that was the first time that they actually understood what was being asked of them in the legislation”
- Ian Fagan
Since placing interactive demos in front of prospects before their first sales call, the Skodel team has noticed some major changes in behaviour within their sales funnel:
- Prospects better understand the platform and ask more informed questions when they jump on their first sales call. This has given the Skodel sales team more time for strategic conversations with prospects over showing features.
- The demo better positions them as subject matter experts by providing clarity on their problem space and solution. This has resulted in fewer custom feature requests and demo calls that avoid discussions on “nitty-gritty” feature details.
- Sharable demos help prospect champions to get senior leadership on board, without additional demo calls.
Launching their first demo on their landing page
The Skodel team’s first demo was short and focused - highlighting just the main aspects of their platform in 10 steps. We provided support by reviewing their demos and suggesting improvements to both the demo itself and how to get the most out of it.
“One of the things I've really liked is that from a customer support standpoint you're not just giving us a product and going ‘figure it out’ - you've been almost more caring in making sure that we're using HowdyGo in a successful way than we have been ourselves.”
- Julian Fagan
As the team was looking to generate more leads and demo calls from their inbound traffic, they ended up embedding the demo straight on their home page with a lead capture form at the end.
Expanding to outbound and leave-behind demos
With the success of their landing page demo, they’ve started using demos across more touch-points in their funnel such as outbound emails and following up on sales calls as a self-serve recap of their product that can be shared across an organization to get buy-in.
If I compare other ways in which we could show off our product… HowdyGo is both easy to create from a demo perspective and interactive enough that it's actually showing off your product… for me personally it's a more engaging way [to consume content] and I'm assuming others would feel the same way as well.
- Ian Fagan
Iterating their demos over time
While Skodel’s initial demos were feature-focussed, over time they’ve been restructured to be more outcome-focussed. This allows the demos to more clearly call out the the benefits of the Skodel platform and clearly show why a specific feature exists and the value it delivers.
I think that's where our mindset has shifted a lot in not showing off features but showing off the outcome… so for example we might have a radar graph as a way to visualise data and we show that off but the reason that we show that off is because companies will have quarterly meetings and part of that will involve a review of psychosocial risks across the organisation and we say: in that quarterly meeting you've got five ten minutes to go through psychosocial risk - this is the visual that you use to do that.
- Julian Fagan
The HowdyGo feature that enabled this were video bubbles. Skodel makes use of these throughout the demo to narrate more complex steps where text tooltips just aren’t enough. They also add a nice personal touch to the demos that simple text can miss.
Why is HowdyGo an alternative to Loom videos?
The Skodel team lists 3 main reasons as to why they moved from Loom to HowdyGo for their product demos.
1. Ease of making adjustments over time
Whenever you make changes to a HowdyGo demo, they are automatically pushed to anywhere you’ve shared or embedded it. This ensures your messaging and product captures are always up to date, without having to dig up every place you’ve ever shared a demo to switch out the links.
“A benefit over recording videos is that it's way easier to update because you just take a screenshot of each page… so if your platform changes you don't have to redo the whole thing you just update the one screen and you keep the same URL.”
- Ian Fagan
2. A more polished and interactive experience
HowdyGo demos feel like you’re clicking through the actual product. They give your demos a more polished, higher production value look without spending hours in post-production.
3. Less retakes
HowdyGo allows you to capture your app screens in seconds and then separately refine your messaging for each screen as many times as you need. No need to spend hours recording the perfect 2 minute demo using traditional video recorders like Loom.
“The thing that I find with Loom is that you can do a two minute video that turns into a three hour process of nah that didn't work… yeah just maybe remove that word… And every change you need to start from the beginning.”
- Julian Fagan
Skodel’s demo
This is Skodel's landing page demo, giving an overview of their product and the value it delivers in only 6 steps. Turn on your audio and fullscreen it for the best experience!