At Descript, we use Descript every day, for all sorts of video—sharing info, presentations, reporting on research, quick messages, and of course all of our marketing video. We kind of have to, but we also routinely find that video is just a superior way to communicate—and Descript makes it easy. Here's an example.

Kayla Gervais is on Descript's technical support team—in essence, she's who you're escalated to when you've got a really sticky Descript problem. The better trained our first-level customer support team is, the better their chances of fixing the problem before it gets to her. That's why Kayla makes a lot of training videos: to walk her colleagues through some of the most common but difficult issues customers might face.

She recently started using our newest feature, avatars, to create those training videos. We talked to her about how she makes them, the features that aid her process, and how video is important for training the team.

‎Take us through your workflow.

This video was one that I had made about a year ago originally. It was just me talking to the camera, quick and dirty. We've updated a lot of our UI and our systems since then, so I needed to redo it.

What I did was take the videos from my original project, port them over into the new one, retype my script and then give it to the AI speaker and avatar.

It was a lot easier doing it this way than making the video the first time around because the first time, I was recording my screen as I was speaking. If there were times where I misstepped or clicked the wrong thing, I had to go back and do it over again. This time I was able to type what I wanted to say, put my video in there and make sure it was cohesive the first time around. It made my edits a lot faster and better.

I used our lovely fire hydrant avatar because why would you not? I feel like he's the perfect persona for everybody. (If you disagree: I'm sorry, you're wrong.)

I've worked here for three years. I'm still absolutely terrible at video editing. But Descript made it so much easier. What would have taken me many, many hours on my own took about an hour, hour and a half—and that's just because I kept refining it and making edits.

Why use video at all?

We have an article that goes over the same stuff, but we have all different types of learners here at Descript. Some people are visual learners. They need to see it in order to learn it. We really want to make sure that we are accommodating for all those different learning styles.

It helps them to see where they need to click. I can tell you where to click, but sometimes it's easier if I just show you.

What Descript features were most valuable?

Smart transitions. I am not a good video editor. I'm really not. I try, but I don't know how to use transitions.

It makes me look like this is something that I get paid to do instead of just something that I wanted to do to help our team out. It looked really beautiful. The transitions came in there, they eased in, my hydrant got bigger, he got smaller.

What creative flair did you add to your video?

Mostly just making sure that I was represented in the video because I'm from Kentucky and I talk a little bit weird sometimes, especially when I get excited. Bernard is my favorite [AI stock speaker] because he sounds like me.

Even though I didn't want my face to be in the video and maybe not even my voice, I was able to make sure that I was represented because he sounds like he's from a holler. He sounds like he's gonna invite you over for some biscuits and gravy.

Our technical support team makes a lot of these videos for our users. They're kind of our love language. They are our way to give our users a little bit of extra attention and to make things a little bit easier. We can tell you in text, we can send you to our help center, but really we shine when we make those really great workflow videos for you so that your day is a little bit easier than when you first contacted us.