[Israel Business Series] The Ultimate Training Solution for Frontline Workforces With Eran Heffetz

Eran Heffetz is the Co-founder and CEO of Bites, a game-changing training platform that offers the ultimate solution for training, communication, and engagement of the frontline workforce. It is a revolutionary content creation app that enables managers to easily create media-based professional units and seamless delivery of the units to employees via existing channels such as WhatsApp, Slack, SMS, and Microsoft Teams.

With past successes in hospitality, real estate, and technology, Eran co-founded eight restaurants and bars, is a board member of fintech startup Obligo, and is the Co-founder and Board Member of City People, which specializes in urban renewal projects. He is also a veteran IAF F-16 fighter pilot with experience as an executive in various industries.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [04:24] Entrepreneurship lessons Eran Heffetz learned as an F-16 fighter pilot
• [05:23] The ideation of Bites and what it offers
• [08:35] Eran explains why he built a tech-based training platform for frontline employees
• [10:33] Building a product based on customers’ demands
• [15:40] Bites’ pricing model
• [17:24] How companies generate ROI using Bites
• [19:52] Eran shares Bites’ customer success stories
• [25:00] Bites’ business model
• [27:15] Tips for acquiring the first key clients
• [30:06] What’s the importance of partnerships?
• [31:35] Eran speaks about the lessons he learned from successes and failures
• [36:03] The value of having mentors as an entrepreneur
• [42:52] The benefits of joining Entrepreneurs’ Organization

In this episode…

Training and engaging the frontline workforce is part of increasing the overall performance of a company. But do you have the expertise, platform, or tools to streamline the training process and make it more efficient and effective?

Frontline employees are often the face of the company and are responsible for delivering the first impression to customers. Therefore, receiving the necessary training to perform their duties effectively is crucial. However, many managers struggle to train their frontline employees for various reasons, including a lack of time, resources, expertise, different backgrounds, experiences, and skill sets. Eran Heffetz recommends hiring someone who offers the ultimate solution for training, communications, and engaging the frontline workforce.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz is joined by Eran Heffetz, Co-founder and CEO of Bites, to discuss how companies can efficiently and effectively train their frontline employees. Eran talks about Bites, why he built a tech-based training platform for frontline employees, its business and pricing models, and customer success stories.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Eran Heffetz on LinkedIn
• Bites

Special Mention(s):

• Tal Nagler Almog on LinkedIn
• Hagai Horovitz on LinkedIn
• Thomas Vozzo on LinkedIn
• Roey Dor on LinkedIn
• Wanda Fish
• F*ck the Slides: Creating A Winning Pitch Using Storytelling Techniques by Nir Zavaro

Related episode(s):

• “[Israel Business Series] Crafting a Great Brand Story: Tips and Tricks With Nir Zavaro” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “The amount of information that you have, and the amount of training that you have prior to doing something, has a crucial part in everything you do.”
• “When talking about frontline employees, the more barriers, the more friction you will do in a way that will reduce engagement.”
• “Partnership should be mutually beneficial.”
• “Don’t fly too close to the sun.”
• “It’s OK to fail, but it’s not OK to fail twice the same way.”

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:01 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22 

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I have Eran Heffetz of mybites.io and Eran before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes, people should check out of the podcast. This is part of my top Israel Business Leader series. Some of the other people I’ve had on Eran, who you may know, I had Ran Geva him a founder of Webz.io. He helps companies with brand protection and monitor the dark web and security for companies I had Amit Oestreicher of Xtras and G-nie talk about how he lost all his clients overnight, not once, but twice. And actually how he bounced back from that. Orit Oz has run an agency for over 25 years in the b2b space and helps companies with their global expansion and consistent branding and how she did that and launch it across many, many locations in country. So check those out, and many more and inspiredinsider.com and this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships. And how do we do that we actually help you run your podcast, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run your podcasts we do the strategy, the full accountability and the execution. Eran we call ourselves the magic elves that work in the background and make it look easy for the host band for the company. So they can create great content develop great relationships, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I have found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and companies I most admire in this planet and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should, if you have questions go to rise25.com. I am excited to introduce today’s guests Eran Heffetz, is CEO and co-founder of Bites, you can find that mybites.io and the company has dedicated training and onboarding and upskilling frontline employees. I know Eran you describe it as if TikTok and corporate LMS had a baby. That’s what we’re looking at here. And Bites is a solution for training communication, engaging frontline workforce. And what it really is, it’s a revolutionary content creation app that enables managers to easily create media and creates a seamless delivery to employees. And what’s cool about it, Eran, in my opinion is it does it on existing channels, such as WhatsApp, Slack, the SMS, Microsoft Teams, whatever that company uses they can use because when I’m thinking of LMS, usually it makes you log into a separate place. And what I love about the philosophy of this is because you don’t try and change user behavior, right? It’s like wherever you live, this can live, My Bites can live. I know you have over 200,000 users around the world that consume and rely on bites for their training, communication. And really Bites makes companies successful by aligning the entire organization. Past clients include companies like Unilever, HP, Amazon, and Microsoft many more. And this is around first go around not first rodeo. he co-founded eight restaurants and bars as a board member of FinTech, startup Obligo and led one of Tel Aviv leading urban renewal companies through a merger with a public company. Right, and to top it off, he is a veteran, F-16 fighter pilot in his past. So Eran, thanks for joining me.

Eran Heffetz 3:58 

Thank you. Thank you very much for having me here.

Jeremy Weisz 4:01 

I want to start off, I want to talk about My Bites and what you do, but I wanted to just also have you share some lessons you brought in to your entrepreneurship journey, your company as an F-16 fighter pilot. What are some of the lessons you learned there that you take with your entrepreneurship career?

Eran Heffetz 4:24 

Yeah, so I think first and foremost is how important it is to be well informed. Well-knowledgeable about the things that you’re going to do. The amount of information that you have, and the amount of training that you have prior to doing something has a crucial part on everything you do. And it doesn’t really matter if you’re flying an F-16, or if you’re folding a t-shirt, or if you’re upselling in the counter or serving a dish, the amount of training that you will get prior and how well the training was delivered to you will have a crucial effect on the outcome, and I think this is in a bite-size training, what we’re trying to do and bring to the frontline employees justice workforce. Yeah.

Jeremy Weisz 5:13 

So talk about Bites for a second. And the idea, how this idea came about.

Eran Heffetz 5:23 

Okay, so first of all, you mentioned that the sentence as TikTok and LMS had a baby. It was actually invented by one of our customers. We adopted it fondly, because it accurately describes what we were trying to do. And she described it even better than us. So ever since she said it we’ve been using it.

Jeremy Weisz 5:44 

The best copy, Eran, comes from customers. The best copy.

Eran Heffetz 5:49 

Exactly, exactly, exactly. Once we heard it and said, okay, this is it. This is our new tagline. But this is exactly what we were trying to do. We are three co-founders Tal, Hagai and myself. Tal, Hagai are both learning and development experts. They’ve had over 15 years of experience each in instructing, teaching, managing instructors, and delivering content professional content to students. And they know the pain firsthand, I saw the pain first time when I owned bars and restaurants, I managed over a thousand or even more frontline employees, I could not get to them. I could not deliver the messages, I could not deliver the content and the training, like I wanted to do. And pretty fast, I understood that the training methods in the Air Force are not the same for frontline employees, they will not sit behind the laptop because they don’t get one and get hours and hours and hours of training. It needed to be adjusted to this generation that Gen Z the millennials, frontline employees working shifts, and most of them is temp jobs. So I felt the pain firsthand. And when I met Tal and Hagai together this idea this concept of Bites came to life.

Jeremy Weisz 7:13 

So how did you meet them?

Eran Heffetz 7:16 

Actually, by accident, like most by coincidence, like, like most things, most good things in the world, at least in my life. Tal’s sister was a simulator instructor in the Air Force. And she knew that Tal and Hagai have left her prior job. Actually the one who first thought of the idea and the concept of bikes, they thought about it more into education world into schools, elementary schools, high schools. And she said that maybe it’s worthwhile that they meet me, because we knew each other from the Air Force. And when I saw this idea, I immediately understood how a good fit is for the frontline workforce discuss workforce to my employees in general. It took a while took a while because I had prior obligations. As you said, I was a founder of a real estate company. And we’re just after an M&A So it took a while. But eventually I got to a place where I can leave my prior job and go full-time working at bytes. And ever since then we’ve been one big happy family.

Jeremy Weisz 8:23 

What was so attractive about this that you would want to join because based on your past experience, you could not do anything, but you have a lot of options of what you could do. Why this?

Eran Heffetz 8:35 

I think it’s a combination of my two biggest passions. First of all, is tech. I’m a nerd. I’m a geek, I like tech. I like to explore everything. Tomorrow we’re launching a new L&D wizard or L&D insight wizard from GPS, and hopefully to be the first one who launches these kinds of things. We’re very heavily reliant on AI. And we were there a lot before this AI revolution. But obviously, this is an asset. So first of all, it’s one of my biggest passions, tech always trying to be on the cutting edge of technology. The other thing is training. And mostly upscaling frontline employees when I managed over a thousand frontline employees, I think if you’ll go back and ask them, they will say that most of the time, I tried to understand them better or try to give them better options. And to give them a platform where they can evolve as a human being as a person and go towards the next stages in life. And Bites actually takes these two passions of mine and combines them into one which is technology designed for frontline employees training, onboarding and upskilling.

Jeremy Weisz 9:54 

Eran there’s a lot of moving pieces with a SaaS company. I’m wondering what features did your customers demand that has shaped what the product is now. I was talking to someone the other week. And you know, this actually, they may be a good fit for Bites specifically, but they were worried about the platform they’re using, and then the privacy part. So they want to keep it private with just people in their company, and not external people. So I’m wondering, maybe talk to the privacy piece, but just features in general that you’ve built in a Bites because of customer demands?

Eran Heffetz 10:33 

Yeah. So first of all, I think that the thing that is most appealing to companies, how these things has all the necessary features from a learning management system from an LMS, or corporate LMS. We do everything in the background. Like we integrate with HR systems, we integrate with communication channels, like you mentioned, text messages, I messages, WhatsApp and others. We integrate with different dashboards with different learning management system. But all of this happens in the background, and seamlessly. What appeals most to our customers is, first of all, how simple it is to create content, and effective and engaging content, they simply have to put up their camera and say, hey, this is our special dish for this week. This is our limited-time offer. This is our limited-time offer for Black Friday that is coming in a few days from now. So the simplicity of creating such an engaging and effective content. This is one thing that appeals to them. The second thing is, like I mentioned before, we do everything in our power, for it to be seamless, as frictionless to the company. The frontline employees do not need to install anything at all. They don’t need to get used to any new platform, there is no onboarding time. And there is even in, they don’t even need to log in to the platform, if you choose to do so. So from the point of view of the employee, this is as frictionless and seamless as possible, they get a push notification to the place they spend most of their time they’re most engaged to, and the most attentive to, they click the link, they click the bite. And that’s it pretty much in they see a short content, it’s not a pain for them. It’s not a hassle, and they learn from it. In terms of privacy, obviously, it differs dramatically between organization and how deep the technology and how deep the propriety is. Obviously, if a company is delivering a Bite on how to fold a t-shirt, this is not something that is too big of a pain if someone else from a different company will say but it’s very important for their front employees to know how to do so. But you can decide and you can choose all the login methods that you wish to apply whether it’s a simple link, which is pre-logged in, and all the way to Single Sign On Okta, One Login there AWS and obviously Microsoft term and in Google and even two-factor authentication, so you can decide the levels of privacy for each content, it’s doesn’t have to be for the entire organization. Because put in mind that when talking about most people in life, but definitely when talking about frontline employees, the more barriers, the more friction you will do in a way that will reduce engagement. And if someone forgets their password, they will simply not see the content. That’s it, they will not get back to this. So this is why we try to be as frictionless as possible.

Jeremy Weisz 13:35 

So a main piece has been really you focus a lot on integrations, because that’s what you’ve gotten demand from the customer. Well, this person uses WhatsApp and this person uses whatever. What’s another main feature that you had to include because of the feedback you’re getting from your clients and your big organizations too. And I’m sure they’re like, I wish you’d have this right. I’m sure you get requests all the time. So what’s another feature that helped shape the product?

Eran Heffetz 14:08 

Okay, so that’s a great question. And then we’ll get to a bit more than a feature. It’s a pillar in our program in our product, sorry. And that’s the content creation app because we started with a fairly simple video editor. But then we understood that this is only like 10 to 15% of the work to take the video when finishing videoing taking the video filming it. Now you have to make it a professional piece of content professional content unit. So this is all our AI efforts are most of them are focused on this part. That once you finish taking the video, we do all the heavy lifting for you. We do noise canceling if you take the shot in busy places like hospitals in restaurants and branches of retail, we add subtitles, we translate it to 150 languages, we add the question to summary cards, the quizzes the cover image, the title, there is approximately 50 processes that are running in the background. So later on, the content creator will not have to do anything at all, once they finished filming the video, they can sit back, wait for 15 seconds to 20 seconds. And that’s it. Everything is there ready for them.