UserTesting's CMO, on the day the company announced a new name, explaining why testing AI products is a different job from testing software. In SaaS the question was whether a user could complete the steps; with AI, he argues, the question is whether people still trust it after it gets something wrong.
…there's a line in the press release, or maybe it was on the new website that really kind of crystallizes this shift. And it says, in software, we ask whether people can use it. In AI, we ask whether people can trust it. Can you talk about that? And what changes when trust becomes the question?
Trust is something I think is top of mind with the headlines around AI. It feels like everybody's talking about that right now. When we think,
…to you. So the barrier of user experience and that deterministic need to say like, hey, could they follow the steps, that falls away. And what's interesting now is this notion, we read these headlines about, you know, LLM, LLM experience experiments gone awry, where they break out of their sandbox and people are nervous and worried. And so when you think about the question, do you trust it, trust is non-deterministic. We've all had experiences where something's gone terribly wrong, but we still trust the company. I still fly with American Airlines all the time. I've had bad experiences, but fundamentally, I still trust them to get me to my destination. And I still like them as a brand and as a business partner for me. And so I think the thing that changes is we go from deterministic outcomes that are a very path-oriented thing to how does it feel? Do you still trust, even if things haven't gone well, do you still fundamentally trust that this thing you're interacting with is working in your best interest, that you have control over it, that it…
You've both spent a lot of time getting to this point. I mean, going back, really, even when you came aboard, Eric, two years ago and Johan, you knew that the company had to make some changes and evolve with where the markets were headed. But you spent a lot of time getting to this point. Now that…
That's a great question. I think for me, it's just all the interactions we're going to be able to have. I think that the new name, the new positioning, the new things we're doing, we are just increasingly, and I think we will see it turbocharging be even more. We're just having more and more really…
Johan?