This AI Content Strategy Will Save You Time & Money [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 97]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy. 

 

00:00:00:17 - 00:00:10:19

Alex Winter

All right. Welcome back to Endless Customers. I'm your host, Alex Winter. And today we have a very special guest. We're live here at Impact Live. Kyle Jepson, he's a HubSpot evangelist. Welcome to the show.

 

00:00:10:23 - 00:00:11:19

Kyle Jepson

Thanks. Thanks for having.

 

00:00:11:19 - 00:00:27:11

Alex Winter

Me. I'm excited to talk to you. Thanks for being here. You're a huge influence in the HubSpot community. I feel like a lot of people know you. I've been following you for a while. You have amazing insights, but can we start off? What is a HubSpot evangelist? Can you just kind of let our viewers and our listeners know what you do?

 

00:00:27:12 - 00:00:44:17

Kyle Jepson

Yeah, that's all about it. Yeah. So it is it is a reasonable question because I'm the only one, they they created this job for me, which is really grateful and sort of surreal. And, I'm still sort of figuring out what it means, but I've, I've been on the HubSpot Academy team for a long time. HubSpot Academy content creators are called professors.

 

00:00:44:17 - 00:00:56:17

Kyle Jepson

We create these online courses that people can take. And I was doing that. But I got a sense that people really also just wanted some short form content. One quick tip about what can I do in HubSpot today? And so I started doing that on LinkedIn.

 

00:00:56:19 - 00:00:59:23

Alex Winter

Some of those certifications, which they're amazing, but they're involved.

 

00:01:00:02 - 00:01:17:05

Kyle Jepson

Yeah, they two hours. Right. You're going to clear your calendar. You're going to sit down and you're going to invest some time. And I highly recommend doing that for anyone who wants to get really good at the sorts of things HubSpot Academy teaches you. But for just like your typical everyday user of HubSpot, that's not a thing you're going to do every day, every week.

 

00:01:17:05 - 00:01:21:01

Kyle Jepson

Right? Right. And so and HubSpot is changing really fast all the time.

 

00:01:21:03 - 00:01:23:06

Alex Winter

And as are evolving at like lightspeed these.

 

00:01:23:06 - 00:01:41:03

Kyle Jepson

Days, right? Yeah. But literally multiple new features released every business day. And so the big question a lot of HubSpot users have is, how am I supposed to stay on top of that? Right. And so I just make these old daily videos, hey, here's something that's new today, right? And that helps people know, like, oh, well, I have access to that.

 

00:01:41:03 - 00:01:58:17

Kyle Jepson

Right. Like, oh cool, I should probably use that. So and as I did that, the people really started rallying around me were the, the HubSpot admins and super users. And it turns out those people really want to community connect with each other. So I start doing weekly webinars where they could show up and, and I would get someone from the HubSpot product team to teach them something.

 

00:01:58:17 - 00:02:08:18

Kyle Jepson

And, so we've been doing that for a couple of years. But if you're going to be running a weekly webinar and doing daily social posts, it doesn't really leave you a lot of time to do your actual job. And,

 

00:02:08:20 - 00:02:13:21

Alex Winter

It's more involved than I think people think. If you if you haven't done it, creating content is, it's a full-time job, right?

 

00:02:13:21 - 00:02:28:23

Kyle Jepson

It definitely is. And so I, had some very uncomfortable conversations with my manager. There's like, I'm afraid you're going to fire me because I'm not doing my real job because I'm doing all this stuff over here. Right. But everybody seems like the stuff I do over here. So I'm not going to stop doing that. So I'm missing all my deadlines.

 

00:02:28:23 - 00:02:43:14

Kyle Jepson

I'm supposed to be hitting. I don't know what to do. And instead of firing me, you just gave me a new title, took some stuff off my plate. Let me focus on that. Social media, community engagement side of things. So as an evangelist, that's that's what I do. I help HubSpot customers get more value out of the tools they're already paying for.

 

00:02:43:14 - 00:02:45:22

Alex Winter

Amazing. And how long have you been in HubSpot? Just out of curiosity.

 

00:02:45:23 - 00:02:47:12

Kyle Jepson

I will hit ten years this year.

 

00:02:47:14 - 00:03:03:23

Alex Winter

Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. Very cool. So we're at Impact Live, and I have to ask you this question because you were at the last impact at Hartford. You gave a great presentation, but you also ended up sticking around for a lot of the show. Can you talk about why you stuck around and what you learned? And just kind of some takeaways from that?

 

00:03:04:00 - 00:03:29:22

Kyle Jepson

Yeah, sure. Yeah. Well, I, love Mark Sheridan and the things he's been teaching. They ask you to answer now. Endless customers. I'll clear. Back in 2017, I was creating a certification course for HubSpot Academy, that came to be known as the sales enablement certification. And I, I did a video interview with Marcus, and that's included in the course, and you can hear him talking about some of these things, the the big five, the questions everybody's afraid to answer.

 

00:03:29:22 - 00:03:53:14

Kyle Jepson

And like, you need to answer and why you need to. And so since 2017, this is a I think I've been aware of, I've, I've been advocating to people but then discovering there's this event was just incredible and, and, I came, you know, six months ago. I'm back here. I'll, I'll be back as often as I can be because it's it's it's a Marcus has developed these very actionable ideas.

 

00:03:53:18 - 00:04:22:07

Kyle Jepson

And you can you can just read the book and put them into into practice theoretically. But I think what this is, is just three days of unbridled accountability, right? Like you are just going to hear all the things you could be doing better. You're going to be surrounded by people who want to improve also, and you're going to be able to share ideas and and get really excited about what you can do in the next six months and six months from now, you have another opportunity to come together and discuss what worked out, what didn't work out, what did you mean to do?

 

00:04:22:07 - 00:04:28:15

Kyle Jepson

But you didn't get around to it and just recommit yourself to to doing business in the best possible way. And I think that's incredible.

 

00:04:28:16 - 00:04:44:04

Alex Winter

It's it's cool for us to because we even though we like, set the tone and it's our event. We learn so much from our community, and people are doing things that even we aren't aware of. Yeah, that community feel and and the ability to share and just learn from each other is the best part is. Yeah.

 

00:04:44:06 - 00:05:10:11

Kyle Jepson

And I think this is an important thing and why community is so powerful for for any industry, no one person or company is ever going to have a monopoly on all the good ideas, and especially as quickly as as the world is changing, technologically and in other ways, like new stuff is always happening. It's it's someone over there who's going to figure out, oh, you know, if you do this, that really helps your customers out, or someone over here is going to be like, oh, you know, my customer asked why we didn't do this.

 

00:05:10:11 - 00:05:19:04

Kyle Jepson

I was like, why don't we do that? So we did it, you know, and and to be able to centralize those ideas and, and and share them with, with the community, I think is great.

 

00:05:19:07 - 00:05:24:23

Alex Winter

Yes. You have to tell them your story. You had a pretty amazing, story that came out of Impact Lab last time.

 

00:05:24:23 - 00:05:44:20

Kyle Jepson

Sure. Yeah. So I came to Impact Live, and I got all fired up on all that endless customer stuff. And then not long after, me and my wife and kids with some other families or friends with our church went camping, and we're just sitting around the campfire talking about stuff. And one of the women there said she had just started her own company.

 

00:05:44:22 - 00:06:02:23

Kyle Jepson

She we were based in Boston. She started this company called Haven Music Lessons, which is a marketplace model for music lessons. So there in Boston, there are plenty of music professionals, music students who want to teach lessons. And there are plenty of people who want to take lessons. But to get those two connected is is tricky, right?

 

00:06:02:23 - 00:06:27:21

Kyle Jepson

Like, do you mean like if you see a phone number on a pull tab on a, it's stapled to a pole. It's not what you do. Right. It's 5050. Yeah. So yeah. So she has set up this this marketplace where, professionals who want to teach come to her, and she has this vetting process. She goes through, and then if you want to learn, if you want in-home music lessons, you can, you can submit the form, and she'll figure out what you want and match you to someone.

 

00:06:27:23 - 00:06:31:12

Kyle Jepson

So it's almost like a dating website, right. But but for for music.

 

00:06:31:12 - 00:06:32:01

Alex Winter

For music.

 

00:06:32:01 - 00:06:52:13

Kyle Jepson

Yeah. Yeah. And, Yeah. And she was telling about this around the campfire and how she's really excited about it. And so she's gotten lots of interest from the music professionals who want to teach. She has this, this, this army of people she's ready to, to send out, but she's having trouble getting in front of, like, there aren't enough people coming to the website and discovering her and submitting the form to to get music lessons.

 

00:06:52:13 - 00:06:59:10

Kyle Jepson

Gotcha. And I was like, I have an idea, you know, and, figures.

 

00:06:59:10 - 00:07:00:00

Alex Winter

Started turn it.

 

00:07:00:00 - 00:07:27:00

Kyle Jepson

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like, I think and, and it was really the nexus of two different things because about the same time, HubSpot, you know, we were about six months into we're now a year into Content Hub and this thing of content remixes. And I was like, I wonder if I took, like, the big five and other questions, you know, and, and if we just recorded audio together, if I could put that into HubSpot and have it spit out all the, all the website content we would need.

 

00:07:27:00 - 00:07:48:06

Kyle Jepson

And so I said to her, I have an idea of how something that might help, can we just meet up some day, for lunch, and I ask you questions about your business, and I record it and make content for you. And she's like, sure. Yeah, I'm willing to try anything. And so we got together for lunch, and, you know, her kids and my kids are running around the background while my wonderful wife is trying to wrangle them.

 

00:07:48:06 - 00:07:50:11

Kyle Jepson

So, I mean, this what we can say.

 

00:07:50:14 - 00:07:51:16

Alex Winter

You know, it's it's gone.

 

00:07:51:19 - 00:08:11:02

Kyle Jepson

Ahead. And, and I had this full page of questions I was going to ask her and, and some of them very easy questions. Tell me about your business. What do you do? Who is this for? As I'm harder. Like, who is not a good fit for your offering? And, a lot of them were, you know, the, the, the sort of big five endless questions and endless customers kind of questions.

 

00:08:11:03 - 00:08:25:12

Kyle Jepson

Right. But a lot of them were also specific to your business. What what kind of instruments do you offer lessons for? What? What happens if you match me to an instructor I don't like? Or what happens if the instructor moves away? What then? How much does it cost? All those things. Right? Right. And she was great.

 

00:08:25:12 - 00:08:30:14

Kyle Jepson

I had no idea how this is going to go. A lot of really established business people have trouble answering these questions.

 

00:08:30:17 - 00:08:32:16

Alex Winter

These questions, and they. But they should know the answers.

 

00:08:32:16 - 00:08:48:01

Kyle Jepson

But they don't. And she she's just launched her business, you know, like a month before. And she, she knows all these things. She sat through them. She knows who the competition is in the area. She knows like her whole thing is on in-home music lessons. She had answers for, like, these are the people that in-home music lessons are not a good fit for you.

 

00:08:48:01 - 00:09:04:17

Kyle Jepson

You should maybe consider going to one of these other offerings in the Boston area where they where they have in studio lessons, right? Right. It was so good. We sat and talked for like an hour. The final recording I got was, I forget like 53 minutes or something, and I was like, okay, I will, I will turn this around for you as quickly as possible.

 

00:09:04:19 - 00:09:06:22

Kyle Jepson

And she's like, great. Yeah, let me know. And and are you.

 

00:09:06:22 - 00:09:08:10

Alex Winter

Recording, just out of curiosity.

 

00:09:08:12 - 00:09:11:23

Kyle Jepson

On my computer. Okay. Whatever. Basic recording app.

 

00:09:11:23 - 00:09:13:09

Alex Winter

Yeah. Okay. Cool.

 

00:09:13:12 - 00:09:30:17

Kyle Jepson

So if you install a free program like audacity, you can export out an MP3 array of or something, and that's that's fine. And I wasn't using a fancy mic or anything, just like the built in microphone on my laptop. Right? Recorded this conversation. I also recorded on the basic recording app on my phone as a backup, but I ended up not needing like, here's the computer.

 

00:09:30:17 - 00:09:47:12

Kyle Jepson

Did fine. Excellent. So I told her, I'll, I'll turn this around as quickly as possible. I didn't set any expectations for how long that would be, and I think she was probably expecting weeks, maybe months. Maybe. Kyle will never get around to this. Right. But I went home and I uploaded the audio into, content remixes.

 

00:09:47:12 - 00:10:05:20

Kyle Jepson

This tool in content HubSpot makes, and it transcribed it pretty quickly. And then, I said, I want you to just crank out articles. And, I had it in the end. I had to do 18. I forget what the max is. You can only do like 5 or 6 at a time or something. So I had to do a few rounds of this.

 

00:10:05:20 - 00:10:26:00

Kyle Jepson

Okay. But for each of them, you know, I said, take this audio and then output these things. And for each output in Content Remix, you can prompt the AI on what you want. And so I had my list of questions that I had asked her and so on. On this article I said, I want you using the information in this, in this recording, answer this specific question.

 

00:10:26:03 - 00:10:52:02

Kyle Jepson

Right. For this specific persona, at about this length. Right. And it just started spitting out these, these articles. And then I that all took, you know, maybe like 15 minutes or something, including, like they say, exporting the original audio file and uploading it and having HubSpot transcribe it. Right. Like in 15, 20 minutes, I get 18 first drafts, right?

 

00:10:52:04 - 00:11:02:09

Kyle Jepson

And then I spend the rest of the afternoon. It took me like five hours. I worked, I worked till end of day. Reading through these and revising them and changing them and editing them right.

 

00:11:02:09 - 00:11:02:19

Alex Winter

Making them more.

 

00:11:02:19 - 00:11:28:16

Kyle Jepson

Human, making them more human, making them more accurate. And it, you know, five hours is that's a chunk of time, right? That is, that's that's half a day. I, I'm not going to say this was like instantaneous it. But at the end of five hours, I, my 18 articles totaled 18,000 words. And if you take 18,000 words five hours, that is literally one word per second for half a day.

 

00:11:28:16 - 00:11:31:19

Alex Winter

That's insane. I've spent five hours writing one article. Sure, I can write.

 

00:11:32:00 - 00:11:49:02

Kyle Jepson

And so, like this is this is wildly fast speed. And and she was she's not, a HubSpot user. So I had to copy paste all these things out of HubSpot into Google Docs and share them with her. So all in all, like 6 or 7 hours of work, including travel time to and from her apartment and the lunch conversation we had.

 

00:11:49:02 - 00:11:59:21

Kyle Jepson

Yeah, I produced 18 on average, 1000 word articles for her, and I emailed them to her and she was like, how did you do this?

 

00:11:59:23 - 00:12:01:15

Alex Winter

Right? Just like totally blew her. Yeah.

 

00:12:01:15 - 00:12:21:15

Kyle Jepson

And it just like, now it's up to her to, to get those on, on the website in a format that they're findable, you know, but it just really opened my mind to the fact that if in a business you have a person can be the business owner, could be a sales rep, whoever it is knows the answers to whatever these questions are.

 

00:12:21:17 - 00:12:31:19

Kyle Jepson

And if you have the questions, then that's all you need. And you can just sit down and you can talk. You can record audio like we're doing right now. Right? And then you can feed it into.

 

00:12:31:22 - 00:12:32:16

Alex Winter

Into remix, it.

 

00:12:32:18 - 00:12:47:14

Kyle Jepson

Into remix and, outcomes, first draft of articles. And then you can revise those and, and you're done. Right. Like you, you have made your first step into this endless customer's world. Yeah. In in half a day. Right. That's that's pretty crazy. Yeah.

 

00:12:47:14 - 00:12:58:01

Alex Winter

And has she. How did you end up, like using these or repurposing them, like, did you start putting these on immediately? Did she space them out over time? Like, so she released these articles or like what happened?

 

00:12:58:06 - 00:13:00:08

Kyle Jepson

That's where the story gets less remarkable.

 

00:13:00:10 - 00:13:02:20

Alex Winter

Oh, no. Oh, no. Okay.

 

00:13:02:22 - 00:13:24:04

Kyle Jepson

She has put them on her website, but she has not done anything to update her navigation or anything. Okay. So it's really like, and I think this is probably part of, part of the problem is how I position this, because I told her, like, part of how I made, these endless customers questions make sense to her is the world of search is changing, right?

 

00:13:24:04 - 00:13:47:19

Kyle Jepson

People might go into Google and search something like, music lessons near me, but, on a platform like perplexity or ChatGPT, they're they're asking questions. How much do they cost? Like, who are the best in Boston? Like those sorts of things. Right. And so, these AI, search based programs, the LMS, they don't they don't care about your, your site authority, they don't care about your inbound links.

 

00:13:48:00 - 00:14:03:02

Kyle Jepson

They just care if the information is there. And so I told her, if you can have all this information, the LMS will digest that. And they will say to you and that. And so she put all these each of these got their own page, but there's no way to navigate to them. Like I think that I probably reads them and likes them.

 

00:14:03:02 - 00:14:09:02

Kyle Jepson

But like if you visit her web page and you want to know how much these things cost, or you want to know who is not a good fit for.

 

00:14:09:03 - 00:14:10:01

Alex Winter

It's not that easy to find.

 

00:14:10:01 - 00:14:27:22

Kyle Jepson

It's not that easy to find. And so, it's interesting she published all these, I think, all at once or over the course of a couple days or something, just put them out and like, within 48 hours, got like five new inquiries. And she's like, Kyle, you did it. You're changing like. But then it's just been crickets since then.

 

00:14:27:22 - 00:14:40:13

Kyle Jepson

As far as I know, at least she has not reached out to me to tell me any more great bumps and leads have happened. Yeah, I think there's probably just some very fundamental website mechanic things that could fix it, but it hasn't happened yet.

 

00:14:40:13 - 00:14:52:01

Alex Winter

If it was you, what would you do to try to fix her, to get it out in front of more people? So for our listeners and people out there, like they they use remakes, they get these articles right. What's the next best step for them to really make sure that it's as effective as possible?

 

00:14:52:01 - 00:14:57:17

Kyle Jepson

Yeah. Well, I think I think, just making them findable is.

 

00:14:57:21 - 00:14:58:09

Alex Winter

That would help.

 

00:14:58:10 - 00:15:19:13

Kyle Jepson

Yeah, yeah. Good start. I like it. And, and and, I think, I mean, for me, this whole thing was a really interesting exercise because generating those questions for her was really, really easy for me because I have an 11 year old son who is just obsessed with the piano, and I have sometimes thought to myself, I need to get this guy.

 

00:15:19:13 - 00:15:42:04

Kyle Jepson

So I'm like one on one tutoring, right? He's he's he's learning through these on demand online lessons. But, like, to have someone who could listen to him and, and critique his technique and point him in a direction of, of music or practice, techniques that would, help him more, would be really powerful. And so I have sometimes thought it'd be cool to have, like, one on one in-home lessons.

 

00:15:42:04 - 00:16:00:17

Kyle Jepson

I bet that's really expensive for me. And so, like, for me as a parent, it was really easy to just I didn't have to do, like, some, some, you know, imaginative exercise. What would it be like to be the person I am? The persona. Right. You know, like, what are the questions? Like, how do I know that this person is, like, not got a criminal background, right?

 

00:16:00:17 - 00:16:16:04

Kyle Jepson

Like, maybe they're great at music, but I might not want them in my home. Right. And all these tough questions. So I asked her all those and they were all in there. I think now if I was launching this or if she, I was like her website admin, if I had the ability to make changes, I would really structure the website around that.

 

00:16:16:04 - 00:16:37:08

Kyle Jepson

If I if I land on this, this website, however I land there, well, let's not even get into that. But like I, I somehow land on Haven music lessons.com. What is the first question I have? What do I need at that very initial, stage? And how can you make that the easiest thing to find? And now, like, maybe it's maybe I've, I've digested all that, I've been thinking about it.

 

00:16:37:08 - 00:16:52:06

Kyle Jepson

And I come back a few weeks later and I'm ready for the next step. Right. Like, yeah. Now how do I make that easy to write? And I know in this event at Hartford in particular, I assume we will again, this time around, we talk a lot about, you know, you got to put some of this stuff in the main tab.

 

00:16:52:06 - 00:16:56:12

Kyle Jepson

You can't put everything in. Isn't that right? And so making of those decisions.

 

00:16:56:12 - 00:17:13:11

Alex Winter

Navigation because people don't know what to click on. Yeah. So you have to be strategic about. Yeah. Yeah. But that's what we say. That's why the Learning Center is so important. Yeah. Right. Labeling is learning center or learn more or something that's like pretty simple and basic but inviting. And then having all this content in a central place that is app.

 

00:17:13:15 - 00:17:14:09

Alex Winter

Right. Navigate.

 

00:17:14:09 - 00:17:36:06

Kyle Jepson

Yeah. And and another thing is if I had had any notion of how competent and eloquent she was going to be answering these questions, I wouldn't have recorded just audio on my computer. I would have had a camera running right, because then not only could I have done everything, I didn't get written content, I could have also put it on YouTube, put it on Instagram, helped you start a TikTok account, right?

 

00:17:36:06 - 00:17:53:10

Kyle Jepson

Embed these videos on the pages with the text. And I think that was really a missed opportunity. Yeah, I was really going in expecting it to be like, oh, I don't really know, you know? But like, she was so dialed in and it was like I was blown away. And I wish I could share that with people who are visiting our website, but we'd have to do the whole thing over again.

 

00:17:53:10 - 00:17:53:23

Kyle Jepson

And yeah.

 

00:17:53:23 - 00:18:08:00

Alex Winter

That's a great point, though. And with these AI tools that are coming out now, you can repurpose content fairly quickly and effect. Yeah. So filming it, you can you can use these tools and be on YouTube and be on social and have it on your website. And it's a lot easier and accessible than it used to be. Yeah.

 

00:18:08:00 - 00:18:18:23

Alex Winter

For sure. Very cool. So I want to switch gears a little bit. That's an awesome story. Thank you for sharing. We just got through Spring Spotlight, which was a lot. Yeah, a lot, a lot two.

 

00:18:18:23 - 00:18:22:01

Kyle Jepson

Hundred plus, feature releases. Yeah. The best part.

 

00:18:22:04 - 00:18:39:01

Alex Winter

Is, yeah, it's a lot. And, we have a lot of HubSpot experts here. Jess Palmeri is on the show often, and even she was like, there's so much I don't like. I don't even I was like, what's your favorite thing? I don't even know. Oh, you're nesting everything. Yeah. But I'm curious for you. Same question. What what are you most excited about or what, like, came out that is just really intriguing for you.

 

00:18:39:02 - 00:18:57:08

Kyle Jepson

Yeah. So, HubSpot, not surprisingly, has been doing a lot with AI. We've done some things with agents recently. The prospecting agent was one of the things announced, at Spring Spotlight, but actually came out a couple weeks earlier. And it was it was announced that inbound to it's been a long time coming this thing that does prospecting for you.

 

00:18:57:10 - 00:19:12:00

Kyle Jepson

And like when I made my social video when when prospecting agent came out two weeks ago or whatever it was, man, I think blew up the most popular post I've had in a long time, and everybody sees how cool it is. I think prospecting agent is not the coolest thing. How has done with AI?

 

00:19:12:01 - 00:19:14:08

Alex Winter

Oh, okay. That dun dun dun, right?

 

00:19:14:08 - 00:19:31:10

Kyle Jepson

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And at Spring Spotlight they announced, but I noticed it's only in private beta, so most people aren't going to be able to play with this right away. But hopefully public beta comes to this new agent called Knowledge Base agent, which does not sound cool. Knowledge base is like it's it doesn't sound exciting. Yeah, but here's how it works.

 

00:19:31:10 - 00:19:50:14

Kyle Jepson

We have customer agent, which is an AI powered chat bot. You train it up, you feed in your, your your knowledge base and whatever other documentation you have. And then people ask basic questions, you know, what are your hours of operation or whatever. And it can just answer those. If for some of our customers, it's deflecting 60% of their inbound support questions, which is huge, right?

 

00:19:50:14 - 00:20:08:02

Kyle Jepson

That means the people who are actually answering your support questions can focus on the the really thorny issues that require like a collaborative troubleshooting, right. That's right for conversations. And it also means your customer's asking these questions get answers instantaneously instead of like waiting on hold or for an answer or whatever. Right? So yeah, customer agent is great.

 

00:20:08:02 - 00:20:25:12

Kyle Jepson

I think for people wanting, to start with AI, that's a it's a very simple place to get started. But one thing customer agent does is it has a section called Knowledge Gaps. When people ask you questions, it doesn't know the answer to it surfaces though, and it categorizes them. I'm getting a lot of questions about, you know, product.

 

00:20:25:14 - 00:20:42:11

Kyle Jepson

Wait or something and you can click into it and you can see all those specific questions. Yeah. And then you can if you want to type in a little answer. Oh, someone asks you to say this, right. That is how customer agent has been for a while. What knowledge base agent does that is so cool is it takes those knowledge gaps.

 

00:20:42:13 - 00:21:01:01

Kyle Jepson

It says, oh, we're getting a lot of questions about, wait, then it goes into your tickets and it reads all the tickets and all the phone calls your support team has been having with people to look for an answer. And if it finds it, it drafts a knowledge base article, and then you can just hit, publish.

 

00:21:01:03 - 00:21:04:07

Kyle Jepson

And now customer agent has that answer, right?

 

00:21:04:07 - 00:21:05:09

Alex Winter

And it's based off a real data.

 

00:21:05:09 - 00:21:22:02

Kyle Jepson

And it's based off of real conversations your team is having. That's cool. So what you get is this crazy AI loop where you have customer agent as sort of the the customer facing a front end, right, right. And, and it's like answering all the questions and any time it's like, oh, I don't know the answer, it can turn to knowledge base agent and say, hey, can you figure this out for me?

 

00:21:22:06 - 00:21:39:08

Kyle Jepson

And then knowledge based agent goes and digs into the back end, all that unstructured data, all those conversations and says, yes, here's a knowledge base article and then the only thing a human has to do is read through that knowledge base article, make sure it's accurate, do any touch up, hit publish, and next time customer agent gets that question, it now knows the answer right.

 

00:21:39:14 - 00:21:53:00

Kyle Jepson

And so you just get this spiral up right a positive virtuous cycle. Right. And and the AI is just making a self-starter. And it's all based off the real conversations. Your support team is having. And that to me is just that's wild. That's amazing.

 

00:21:53:03 - 00:22:06:12

Alex Winter

It will it plays into we call it assignment selling here. But yeah those conversations your sales team to having over and over and those questions that almost become like tedious. Yeah. Because it's like you can get ahead of that now and you can answer it in real time and real data. Yeah.

 

00:22:06:12 - 00:22:25:03

Kyle Jepson

No, I'm not I'm not a product manager. I don't build this stuff at HubSpot. But what I was thinking about during the event today is they were talking about assignment Sally is there's got to be some sales equivalent of the knowledge base. But right as, as, as your your salespeople are having questions and these calls or zoom meetings or whatever, they are recorded and logged in.

 

00:22:25:03 - 00:22:44:11

Kyle Jepson

HubSpot as the emails back and forth are recorded, logged in HubSpot. There could be an agent someday who's, like, analyzing all that and saying, this is a question you have to answer in literally every exploration call. These are the three questions that come up right in literally every negotiation. Right? And like, what if you made some content around that and sent it ahead of time, right.

 

00:22:44:11 - 00:22:56:11

Kyle Jepson

Like, oh, cool, that would be incredible. Yeah. Because now your sales conversation, instead of answering the same question. Right. Like, I don't think salespeople get into sales thinking, you know, I really want to do I want to answer the same five questions over and over.

 

00:22:56:13 - 00:22:57:09

Alex Winter

Every single call. Yeah.

 

00:22:57:09 - 00:23:11:12

Kyle Jepson

Exactly. Like like that's not that's not what they're hoping for. And so if you can turn that into some sort of content you can set ahead of time, hey, most people I talk to at this stage have these questions, review this so we can skip that and get to the part where I actually provide value to you.

 

00:23:11:14 - 00:23:12:08

Alex Winter

Way more meaningful.

 

00:23:12:12 - 00:23:22:15

Kyle Jepson

Yeah, like that would be incredible. And I don't mean this is like a product now. So as far as I know this is not something Hubspot's working on, but like, okay, that's the sort of thing I could do. Right? And that I think.

 

00:23:22:17 - 00:23:38:12

Alex Winter

What what a future. Wow. What a future. You have I feel like HubSpot has such a major focus on AI. Yeah, we're in a revolution. It feels like where you have to be on the leading edge of it, and if you're not, it feels like you're going to get left behind. And you guys are certainly on the leading edge.

 

00:23:38:14 - 00:23:41:17

Alex Winter

Is that like from the top down is that's just always been in your DNA or.

 

00:23:41:19 - 00:24:07:00

Kyle Jepson

I, I have a lot of thoughts on this actually from a lot of different directions. One thing that has really been interesting for me to watch is if you back up to, I yeah, like 2021, 2022, and you tuned in to any earnings call, HubSpot quarterly earnings were reporting to Wall Street. How we're doing. You would have heard our CEO Yamani say our next big focus is commerce.

 

00:24:07:00 - 00:24:24:23

Kyle Jepson

We're all in on commerce. We think that's the next big thing for HubSpot. 20th November 2022 happens or 2023 happens suddenly AI is everything right. And and HubSpot had to pivot. We could not be left behind on this. And so we have invested heavily in AI. But I'm really happy that we have not gotten distracted from other things.

 

00:24:24:23 - 00:24:42:10

Kyle Jepson

We're continuing to invest in commerce. We're continuing to make other parts of our platform good. We've come out with, with I mean, when we launched Content Hub, it has remixes, which is a really cool AI tool, but it has has like a case studies tool and like a podcasting tool that even though they have AI features in them, it's that we're not just doing AI all day, every day, right?

 

00:24:42:10 - 00:25:03:00

Kyle Jepson

We know AI is important, but what our philosophy is, is when people use HubSpot, we want it to be a delightful and productive experience. We want what the sales team is doing to be connected to what the marketing and service teams are doing. We want it all just be crafted together so nicely, and we are still really focused on that, and we see AI as an important part of how we achieve that mission.

 

00:25:03:05 - 00:25:08:22

Kyle Jepson

But we have not like throwing aside everything we were working on. Everything we knew was true previously. And just like, oh, we have to give everyone AI.

 

00:25:08:22 - 00:25:13:03

Alex Winter

Yeah. And if you not not bandwagon, right? Yeah, it's important, but it's not the end. All this.

 

00:25:13:08 - 00:25:29:23

Kyle Jepson

Yeah. And if you look at the, the, the wider field of, of CRM and marketing automation, I'm happy to hear you say you feel like we're on the leading edge. In some ways. I feel like we're a little bit behind. Right? Like, okay, I had ChatGPT happen and like Salesforce, it felt like same day was like.

 

00:25:29:23 - 00:25:46:23

Kyle Jepson

And we have agent four, right? That's true. And and it's just like as Zoho is doing its own agent thing and Microsoft is doing its own agents thing and like it's it's now 2025 and we're just finally coming out with some agents things. But like my understanding is and I say this as a person who has never used any platform other than HubSpot.

 

00:25:46:23 - 00:26:06:03

Kyle Jepson

So apologies and disclaimers there. Sure. But I think a lot of the AI features coming out and other platforms are pretty advanced. And like if someone's going to build an agent inside your CRM to do something like what I just described with with the customer agent and knowledge base agent. Yeah, like they're going to have to do some really technical work to get that up and running.

 

00:26:06:03 - 00:26:33:09

Kyle Jepson

Yeah. And, we don't want that. That's not oh, that's not what we're doing at HubSpot. Right. And so it took us a little while to get here. But customer, an agent, literally, you can turn it on with just a few clicks like you could have if you if you're not using customer agent today, you can have it live in your website in probably less than ten minutes if you want to do if you really want to put some effort into it, you could spend 20 or 30 minutes, but it's not going to be like days and weeks to to implement this thing.

 

00:26:33:09 - 00:26:52:14

Kyle Jepson

And we really want it to be easy for you to use the power of AI. We really want it to be fast for you to get to that value. And more than anything, we want to enable you to give a good experience to your customers. And so we're taking it a little more thoughtful approach to it. And I think we're still pretty fast, like ISO to for the quality of stuff we've come out with.

 

00:26:52:14 - 00:26:54:17

Kyle Jepson

I think it's really impressive how quickly we've gotten here.

 

00:26:54:20 - 00:27:13:06

Alex Winter

Well, it's also trying to find the balance, because when you release stuff super fast, especially when it's an emerging technology, yeah, you gotta find the balance because you might misstep, you might release something too soon. The kinks have been worked out. Yeah. There's all those sort of problems that can occur. So yeah, trying to be mindful of like, let's get this right.

 

00:27:13:07 - 00:27:14:23

Alex Winter

But also let's not get left behind though.

 

00:27:15:00 - 00:27:38:12

Kyle Jepson

Right. And another thing is HubSpot is an opinionated platform. Yeah, it's not really the case. You can sign up for HubSpot and use it to do business in whatever way you want to do business, right? We really believe they're right and wrong ways to do business, and we are trying to build the best practices in there. Yeah. And so rather than just give you access to AI to run your business however we want, we we really want to give you like guidance here.

 

00:27:38:15 - 00:28:00:06

Kyle Jepson

Yeah. Hey I on rails, right. We're gonna point you in the right direction. And so, yeah, I mean, it's still very early days for AI technology. And in some ways we are, just at the very beginning of this thing. And if there's anyone watching or listening who is like, I don't know if I want to trust my sales outreach to AI.

 

00:28:00:08 - 00:28:16:17

Kyle Jepson

Great. I'm glad you're being thoughtful about this. Right. And I really hope if you look at Hubspot's AI tools, you will realize, like, oh, this is this is a safe way to wade into the pool. Nobody's, like, tossing me into the deep end. And I just have to hope it works out. And it's a black box and I have no idea what's happening.

 

00:28:16:19 - 00:28:28:16

Alex Winter

You guys also take feedback very seriously, and I love that you do. Yeah. You really do it. Some companies say they do, and then you don't really know if it's actually getting implemented or if they're really taking that feedback. I feel like that's a major focus for.

 

00:28:28:18 - 00:28:49:14

Kyle Jepson

Yeah. So I mean, HubSpot is I'm massive company and and product is a large part of our headcount. And so certainly it varies team to team. And there are people reach out to me with ideas that hubspot.com, is really very much the backbone of how our product team builds their roadmap. But there are ideas that have been sitting there for 6 or 7 years.

 

00:28:49:14 - 00:29:13:12

Kyle Jepson

Right? And people reach out to me sometimes and say, like, Kyle, I've heard HubSpot cares about feedback, but clearly you don't care about feedback because I haven't. But like the reality is, every product team at HubSpot is fully autonomous. We don't have sprint schedules. We have some tentpole events like spring's not late and inbound, but honestly, like if a product manager feels like their team has built a product that's ready to ship, they can commit that code any time they think it's ready.

 

00:29:13:12 - 00:29:27:07

Kyle Jepson

And that's why we have new features literally every business day, because we have however many dozens or hundreds of product teams shipping stuff whenever they feel like it's ready. Right. And what I have found is some of those product managers are incredibly.

 

00:29:27:07 - 00:29:42:13

Kyle Jepson

Plugged in, right, I will I will publish a post on LinkedIn about some new feature. And the brand manager will be the first one to comment and say like, hey, if anyone has feedback about this, please DM me. I would love to hear it. And like people will answer asking questions and the PMS hopping in, they're like, oh, here's the answer.

 

00:29:42:13 - 00:30:02:16

Kyle Jepson

Like, oh, I haven't heard this one. Can we connect and discuss it further? And it's like, incredible how hungry they are. And and I have, I have I have posted videos, my favorite videos I've ever posted on LinkedIn. There's been a handful of times where I'm like, hey everyone, remember two weeks ago when I told you about this new feature and you all got in the comments, right, and said, Kyle, that's not what we wanted.

 

00:30:02:16 - 00:30:13:11

Kyle Jepson

We wanted to work this other way. Well, that works that other way because the product team was listening and they fixed it that fast. So there you go. Thank you for your feedback. And keep it coming. You know, that's incredible. And so. Yeah.

 

00:30:13:16 - 00:30:28:07

Alex Winter

Yeah. Very nice. So for the future, we heard that inbound is no longer in Boston. Is moving to San Fran. Yeah, that's really exciting. What do you like? Are you looking forward to that? Like, what's what's going to happen in inbound with this new this new setting in this new. Yeah.

 

00:30:28:07 - 00:30:37:07

Kyle Jepson

So, mostly, I don't know, I was just as surprised as everyone else when you haven't got on stage and announced it's going to be at San Francisco. I know from.

 

00:30:37:07 - 00:30:39:06

Alex Winter

Boston originally, too, so I was a little like I was a little.

 

00:30:39:06 - 00:30:45:07

Kyle Jepson

Heartbroken. See, I live in Boston, and one thing I love about inbound is I can sleep in my own bed every night.

 

00:30:45:09 - 00:30:46:09

Alex Winter

And that it is nice.

 

00:30:46:09 - 00:31:02:22

Kyle Jepson

To kind of be a little tricky here, but it's on the other side of the country. I don't know if this is, a new permanent home. I don't know if it's just 2025 and then we'll be back in Boston or if we'll rotate to other cities now. Yeah, I don't know what that long term plan is, but, I mean, San Francisco is famously such a hub for tech.

 

00:31:02:22 - 00:31:34:06

Kyle Jepson

For tech. Yeah. And a HubSpot. We've been around a while, and people who love us, love us. But I'm amazed there's still plenty of very serious businesses who have no idea we exist. Right? Or or think we're just marketing tools. Right. And, and so I think we're, we're trying to to make a splash in an area where hopefully people will sit up and pay attention and be like, oh, I had no idea HubSpot did so many things right.

 

00:31:34:08 - 00:31:34:21

Kyle Jepson

And sometimes.

 

00:31:34:21 - 00:31:36:21

Alex Winter

You got to change things up a bit. Yeah. To make that happen.

 

00:31:36:21 - 00:31:38:17

Kyle Jepson

Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll see how that goes.

 

00:31:38:17 - 00:31:52:07

Alex Winter

That's exciting. All right. So this is my favorite part of the show I call it the one thing. Okay. And this is we've covered a lot of ground in this car. Yeah. It's been awesome talking with you. What would you say to our viewers and listeners is the one thing they should really take away from our talk?

 

00:31:52:09 - 00:32:13:16

Kyle Jepson

That's great. So I will I'll just go with the first thing that pops in my mind, which is AI is a lot there are a lot of things happening both in HubSpot and outside HubSpot. And if you are not using AI at all, if you're more of a cautious kind of adopter of things, I would say you don't have to try all these things at the same time.

 

00:32:13:19 - 00:32:34:03

Kyle Jepson

Right? And you don't have to try the flashiest, biggest, brightest tools as your starting point. Right? I would say just find one simple place to, to start trying it out, to get a feel for what it can do. And that can even just be in your own, personal life. Right? Like, it's funny, a deep irony and a dark secret.

 

00:32:34:03 - 00:32:51:17

Kyle Jepson

Don't tell anybody is, even though I'm the guy who tells everyone about new HubSpot updates. Yeah, in my real life, I'm. I'm a technological laggard. I know I do not adopt things very quickly. Wow. I would have never guessed. Nobody knows this about me. But like my I, my kids and I, we watch movies on a VCR.

 

00:32:51:21 - 00:33:13:08

Kyle Jepson

Alex, this is. No, this is the real world that the Jefferson House lives in. And, And so, like, I get it, I it's changing so fast. It's hard to even know what it means to try it out. Right. But I last year started using perplexity as my default search, on my phone and in my web browser, instead of Google.

 

00:33:13:10 - 00:33:30:16

Kyle Jepson

And man, I love perplexity now, like, I fall in love with this idea that I can ask a question, will give me answers, and I can ask a follow up question. Right? And it'll keep going. And it's really like, I, I've a for me, as a person who does not jump to new tools very quickly, for me.

 

00:33:30:16 - 00:33:47:01

Kyle Jepson

And I was like, Google who like, why is that still a thing? Like I just, I talk to perplexity all the time. And so maybe for for you who are listening, if you have an adopted AI, there's something similar you can do. Don't don't try to uproot your entire sales and marketing process and make it all AI first like that.

 

00:33:47:04 - 00:34:08:06

Kyle Jepson

That's going to happen a step at a time, and it honestly is going to happen whether you want it to or not. Totally. But you, in your own life, you can you can use perplexity for search. You can use cloud or ChatGPT to like, brainstorm ideas. Right. There there are little things you can do, but just try to push yourself to having that moment.

 

00:34:08:08 - 00:34:27:05

Kyle Jepson

Because once you understand, once you feel it, once you've experienced what I can do in one little aspect of your life, then when HubSpot or Salesforce or whoever else says, we've launched this new AI tool that does this incredible thing, you can at least now understand what that means and why we're doing that. And and what the value of it is.

 

00:34:27:11 - 00:34:32:03

Kyle Jepson

And that will help you make a more informed decision about whether that's a thing you need to adopt in your business.

 

00:34:32:04 - 00:34:34:05

Alex Winter

Great advice Kyle. Thank you so much for being on the show.

 

00:34:34:05 - 00:34:35:04

Kyle Jepson

Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's.

 

00:34:35:04 - 00:34:42:09

Alex Winter

Really great talking with you all right. For everybody out there watching and listening, this is Endless Customers. I'm your host, Alex. We'll catch you on the next episode.