How BrightHire sped up sales and onboarding with Dock

The hardest part of selling and implementing BrightHire’s AI interview platform wasn’t the pitch—it was navigating the maze of stakeholders that came after.

Hear the Sales perspective from Brad Ansley, Account Executive at BrightHire:

And then get the Customer Success story from Porter Williams, VP of Customer Success.

Overview

Here's the TL;DR:

Challenge: BrightHire needed a better way to manage a complex, multi-stakeholder sales cycle and tailor customer onboarding across varied tech stacks—without burning out their lean GTM teams.

Solution: With Dock, Sales centralized deal follow-up and compliance docs in one shareable space, while CS created modular onboarding workspaces tailored to each customer.

Results: Dock helped BrightHire increase average deal size by 20%, close 22% more deals, and improve SMB onboarding time-to-value by 25% with half the effort—all without adding headcount.

"It's really, really helpful for our team to have both the sales and implementation process being run through Dock. During the sales process, we can set the expectation of how well-organized our team is and the types of resources that we're able to provide. It's something that I can use as a selling point for my prospects."
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— Brad Ansley, Account Executive at BrightHire

The Challenge

BrightHire is an AI-powered interview platform that records, transcribes, and analyzes job interviews—giving hiring teams smarter insights. While champions were excited about the product, closing deals meant navigating complex internal hurdles.

"While every organization is trying to take advantage of AI, it's also very new," said Brad Ansley, Account Executive at BrightHire. "Regardless of how excited the business stakeholders may be, they still need to get the buy-in from legal, compliance, and IT. We need to show that using BrightHire is safe, responsible, and compliant."

That complexity didn’t end post-sale. According to Porter Williams, VP of Customer Success, onboarding was equally challenging due to every customer bringing a different tech stack—ATSs, video platforms, SSO providers—all of which shaped the implementation plan.

"We’re landing new customers constantly, and my team is very small," said Porter. "The details of each tech stack influence every part of the onboarding plan. It’s tricky for our team to mode-switch from project to project."

As BrightHire’s deal volume grew, their CEO started looking for a more scalable way to manage follow-up and onboarding. That’s when they found Dock.

"Dock gave me a way to standardize all the information we shared with prospects," said Brad. "It made the follow-up process and deal management so much easier than it was before."

Brad said the positive feedback rolled in immediately.

"A prospect responded almost immediately to my follow-up email from our initial call, saying, 'Wow, this is awesome. This is super helpful. This is everything I need.' That’s not a reaction I ever really got from my follow-up template email."

"We didn’t look back," said Brad. "We just went full steam ahead and made it a standard part of our process."

Here’s how Dock helped solve challenges across both Sales and Customer Success.

1. Building buy-in across multiple buyer stakeholders

Selling AI-powered hiring tech means navigating questions around legal, security, and compliance—especially when you're recording and transcribing interviews.

"It's very sensitive information. So there are usually a lot of questions," said AE Brad Ansley.

Before Dock, managing that complexity was manual and messy.

"There was definitely a lack of visibility into who was reviewing any of the resources. There was a lot of time spent digging through endless email threads trying to figure out what had been shared, and what we had spoken about with this specific prospect."

With Dock, Brad now uses a single, centralized workspace to organize and share everything—making it easier for champions to sell internally.

"We’ve put a lot of thought into how we handle compliance... Dock makes it really easy for us to share that information. And it gives our champions a lot of confidence in us and in being able to really advocate for BrightHire throughout their organization."

From the very first call, Brad sets up a tailored Dock space with templates specific to each prospect’s use case and tech stack.

"It cuts down the time it takes me to get them the resources that we talked about in our conversations," said Brad. "It's really a one-stop shop that we use throughout the sales process."

That space becomes a home for everything—from compliance docs to ROI calculators to business cases, which Brad co-builds with his champions.

"It's really important for us to work closely with our customers on developing the business case. They have projections and targets that they need to meet, and they understand the time involved today. We can come to them with the results we've seen from our customers to make this real for them when they go to present that business case to the rest of the organization."

Where BrightHire’s ROI calculator once got buried in emails, Dock now brings it front and center—and allows them to track how customers are using it.

"Dock has been a game changer, allowing us to know how it's being used across the organization as we arm our champions."

Brad coaches champions to use their Dock workspace to drive internal momentum.

"I make it very clear in how I present the Dock to them… 'This is something I want you to bring to others in the organization so that we can get more people involved.'"

The result: faster deals, fewer meetings, and better internal alignment.

"It really helps speed up the sales process. Instead of having to set up a call with an IT resource…the person I'm working closely with can share the Dock and they can have all their questions answered."

And unlike before, Brad now has visibility into how deals are progressing behind the scenes.

"It's super helpful for me to understand how much this is being socialized and how much momentum we have. It removes a lot of friction from the process for the person who's selling with me internally."

2. Crafting personalized sales follow-up

Brad’s follow-up workflow used to be slow and manual—digging through folders, copying links, and writing long recap emails from scratch.

"Before Dock, I knew the types of things I wanted to send as part of my follow-up after an initial call based on my notes. I had a folder where I’d drag and drop a ton of things into an email, list it all out in bullets…"

Now, follow-up is baked into Brad’s sales process. With Dock templates, the right materials are already in place—ready to send with a single link.

"With Dock, it's already there in a template—all ready to go, easily accessible. I can just send them the link and I don't have to do that every single time."

Brad still adds personal touches when it makes sense, but Dock keeps everything organized and repeatable.

"I can highlight certain things for sure, but I know exactly where all those resources are."

The BrightHire Sales team uses shared templates as a baseline, while still giving reps the freedom to customize their approach.

"Our team has a set standard of the types of templates and sections that we all use, but everyone also sells a little bit differently and can kind of iterate off of that in their own voice."

"When we create something and find that it really works, we'll kind of level it up to the team templates as well."

3. Simplifying complex onboarding

As BrightHire grew, onboarding became a key driver of customer retention—but also a major operational challenge.

"Our team's North Star is net revenue retention," said Porter Williams, VP of Customer Success. "One of my big priorities is customer onboarding because we’re in growth mode."

That growth brought complexity. Each customer came with a different mix of ATSs, video tools, and SSO providers—making it nearly impossible to standardize onboarding.

"Each of those tech stack variables influences every part of the project plan," explained Porter. "The overall shape of the onboarding plan might be the same, but the details vary."

While Porter’s team had the right resources, they lacked a consistent way to package and deliver them.

"We had all the resources in our knowledge base, but it was very hard to deliver them to customers in a way that was cohesive and useful. I really just felt like I needed building blocks or Lego blocks of the components of an onboarding plan. And that’s how my team has started using Dock."

Dock gave BrightHire a more modular approach. Now, their CS team can spin up tailored onboarding workspaces filled with checklists, videos, and FAQs—mapped to each customer’s systems and stakeholders.

"[Dock] has really helped us with the smoothness of our onboarding. It makes us look like a much bigger organization than we are."

Onboarding was also slowed by the sheer number of rotating stakeholders—like IT admins—each responsible for just one tool, often joining with zero context.

"We have a number of stakeholders who come into the project for a very brief period of time. The admin of Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or Okta comes in for a day, usually with zero context about what BrightHire is. And it's really hard for our stakeholders to explain because they're just barely getting familiar with us as well."

Before Dock, onboarding content lived in messy Google Docs full of scattered links—frustrating for both customers and the team. Now, Porter’s team uses structured workspaces to give every stakeholder just enough context to take action.

"It’s very easy to swap out the building blocks of each tech stack for a different customer. Before, all you end up doing is putting links in a Google Doc. That’s what we were doing before, and it sucked. Now we can actually have a video to help give the Zoom admin context in one minute… so now they can go, "Oh, okay, now this makes sense. Yes, I’ll do my job.'"

The result is a smoother, more self-serve onboarding experience that saves time for both the CS team and the customer.

"Now my team can mode-switch from onboarding call to onboarding call, and everything they need is right there. It’s made things very easy for them."

The biggest proof of success? One SMB customer completed onboarding entirely on their own.

"I showed up to an onboarding call we’d scheduled only a few days before. I pulled up the customer’s Dock, and everything's checked off," said Porter.

"I was like, 'Whoa, wait, what?' I looked in their account and sure enough, everything was done."

"When the customer showed up a few minutes later, they said, 'Okay, so when can we go live?' And I’m like, 'Does tomorrow sound good?'"

"They could do everything on their own. They just needed it arranged in a useful way that held their hand through it. I absolutely fell in love with my decision after that call."

Porter says Dock’s impact has been felt across their customer base.

“Dock has enabled us to run a much swifter onboarding for our SMB customers by empowering them to take ownership of more of their work, and it has smoothed out friction for our large enterprise customers.”

4. Bridging sales & onboarding

An unexpected benefit of using Dock? Helping Sales close deals by showcasing what implementation will actually look like.

"It's really, really helpful for our team to have both the sales and implementation process being run through Dock," said Brad. "Because during the sales process, we can set the expectation of how well organized our team is and the types of resources that we're able to provide."

Brad now uses BrightHire’s onboarding plans as a selling tool to give prospects a preview of what post-sale success looks like.

"It's something that I can use as a selling point for my prospects. 'Look, this is the type of plan that we have in place to make sure that they have a really seamless onboarding experience that's really well supported by the experts on our team.'"

"Before Dock, I had tried to communicate that to prospects with a slide deck, but it wasn't nearly as dynamic or complete as what the team has put together in Dock. It allows me to show an extra level of polish that I wasn't able to before."

"[Buyers] are always really impressed with just how well put together it is, and how accessible it is for them to collaborate and make changes in real time."

Brad has also started borrowing pieces of the CS team’s workspaces to support smoother trials and pilots.

"I can actually take elements of our implementation team's Dock and bring that into my Dock for the sales process to help those trials go a lot more smoothly."

The result is a seamless, consistent experience from the first sales call through onboarding.

"They're used to that [Dock] experience, then, when we share that with them during the implementation process," said Brad.

Results

Sales Impact

• 20% YoY increase in average deal size
• 22% YoY increase in deals closed
• Shorter sales cycles and faster follow-up

Dock replaced the heavy lift of manual follow-up with faster, more consistent communication.

"Dock plays a meaningful role in being able to manage a higher volume of active opportunities," says Brad. "I'm able to be a lot more responsive. I can get back to customers and prospects faster, and not spend as much time crafting giant follow-ups after every major call."

With Dock keeping all resources in one place, deals moved faster—no more waiting on Brad’s schedule to get answers.

"It's definitely decreased the amount of time it takes for us to close deals. Having all these resources in a single place helps buyers avoid waiting on my schedule and allows them to get the answers they need quickly."

And with Dock’s stakeholder engagement insights, Brad could track momentum and spot blockers early.

The result: a 20% lift in average deal size and 22% more deals closed year-over-year.

Onboarding Impact

• 25% faster time-to-value for SMBs
• 50% reduction in SMB onboarding effort
• Smoother enterprise onboarding experience
• Improved net revenue retention

Dock also delivered meaningful impact on Customer Success—speeding up time-to-value for SMB customers and smoothing out complexity for enterprise accounts.

"Dock has reduced our time to value for SMB onboardings by about 25%," said Porter. "Onboarding took a solid month before. We can usually knock them out in two, usually three weeks now."

Even more impactful: it halved the effort needed from Porter’s team.

"Everything is arranged upfront for the customer. They can do a lot more things on their own… We don't have to get on as many calls for it to happen."

That efficiency gave Porter breathing room to scale without new headcount.

"It’s allowed our SMB team to go for a lot longer without needing to hire more resources."

On the enterprise side, Dock elevated the entire onboarding experience.

"For enterprise onboardings, it hasn't sped things up, but it has definitely smoothed things out. It's not just a series of checklists—it's the combination of rich resources plus checklists that make it look really polished and really help them feel very supported."

Dock also became the team's single source of truth—driving consistent execution at scale.

"When a best practice changes, the answer is always to go change the Dock. That helps us all stay on the same hymn book so that we're all singing the same song."

The ultimate impact: stronger retention and more confident execution.

"We're seeing an overall climb in our net retention rates. There are a lot of factors that go into that, but Dock has definitely become an indispensable part of us running a smooth, professional, and repeatable onboarding process."

One Dock Tip

We always ask customers for their best Dock tip. Here’s Brad’s advice for other AEs:

"My main advice for using Dock as an AE is to spend some time building out your templates and make sure that you're iterating on them constantly.

If you find yourself making some tweaks and changes for a particular customer, templatize that and save it. Make sure that you can reuse all of those elements because that just compounds the speed and the time that you can save.

When you make any of those changes or updates for a really special situation or a prospect, make sure that you have that available as a resource moving forward as well."

One Sales & Customer Success Tip

We also ask customers to share their favorite career tip. Here’s what Brad and Porter had to say:

Brad’s sales tip:

"One of the most important things that you can do as a seller is to remove as much friction from the process as possible. Do not get in the way of someone who wants to buy and use your tool. Make sure that they have the resources available. That's really important for me in how I use Dock.

Everyone can go and do their own research on the internet, and your job is to make sure that you can actually be a trusted partner, bringing them information that they can't find anywhere else so that they can go and do some selling on your behalf internally to really bring things over the line."

Porter’s customer success tip:

"One of my long-held beliefs about customer success is that the vast majority of customer problems can actually be traced back to onboarding. And so if you can nail onboarding, you preemptively get rid of a whole lot of problems."

Want to close deals faster and onboard smarter?

‍See how Dock can help you streamline stakeholder buy-in, personalize your sales follow-up, and deliver onboarding that scales. Book a demo or create your first 50 workspaces for free.