I've been tracking the cost of our customer success team's time, and the recurring 30-minute onboarding calls for our new SaaS users were a significant line item. At an internal blended rate of $85/hour, each call represented ~$42.50. With 50 new users per month, that's over $2,100 in direct labor, not counting the opportunity cost.
I hypothesized that a concise, high-quality onboarding video could replace the initial call for a majority of users, freeing the team for complex queries. I evaluated several AI video tools and settled on Fliki for a two-week trial. The primary decision factors were the quality of the text-to-speech (crucial for professionalism) and the simplicity of the workflow.
My goal was a sub-2-minute video covering three core value propositions and one key action. The Fliki workflow was straightforward:
1. Wrote a 300-word script in their editor.
2. Selected the "Liam" voice (US, Neural) for its natural cadence.
3. Used their AI image generation to create cohesive, simple graphics for each section, prompted with "modern SaaS dashboard UI, clean, blue accent."
4. Added a subtle, non-distracting background track from their library.
The total project time was 45 minutes. The output was a 1:52 video. A breakdown of the cost:
* Fliki Premium Plan: $28/month (annual commitment)
* This single video used approximately 7 minutes of the 180 minutes of audio generation included in the plan.
* The per-video cost, amortized, is negligible if I produce 4-5 similar assets per month.
The initial results are promising. We've A/B tested it with our last 20 users (10 with the video, 10 with the traditional call). The video cohort showed a 15% faster time-to-first-successful-API-call. The team has reclaimed an estimated 20 hours this month. The ROI is clear, even when factoring in the Fliki subscription. The next step is to instrument tracking to see if the conversion to paid plans is affected.
Right-size or die