The reviews are in. Let’s make a list of how you can improve your CX.
When Peter Roget was faced with tragedy he did what all of us hope to do—he turned it into triumph. When life gave him lemons he didn’t just make lemonade. Instead, he invented a water filtration system to make all of London’s lemonade more hygienic. From mastering medicine to inventing a pocket chessboard Peter was one of the original “jack of all trades”. But one of his biggest accomplishments, successes, and achievements was creating the first ever thesaurus.
When it comes to creating opportunity out of adversity, Peter did it more than anyone. A company doing the same today is Birdeye. David Lehman, the President and COO of Birdeye, joins us to talk about how your biggest struggles can become your company’s greatest successes. And how CX is the first step in that journey, expedition, and endeavor.
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“Happy customers are so much better at promoting my brand than anybody else can be. ” - David Lehman
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Time Stamps
* (0:00) History of the thesaurus, wordfinder, wordbook
* (7:19) What is Birdeye?
* (9:07) Utilizing bad reviews
* (11:09) The secret to referrals
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Sponsor
This podcast is presented by Oracle CX.
Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at Oracle.com/cx/perspectives
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Links
Connect with David on LinkedIn
Narrator: Edinburgh, Scotland, 1796. 17 year old Peter Mark Roget observed his professor's lecture at the University of Edinburgh’s medical school. After his father passed away from tuberculosis, he knew he wanted to help prevent other children from losing their parents too soon.
The lesson of the day was on bandage application. After jotting down pages of notes, Peter stared at the heading he had written. “Bandage Application” it read. In a small gap on the page, Peter squeezed in a list. “Bandage, swaddle, dress, swathe, wrap”, he wrote. He put down his pen and continued listening to the lecture.
London, the turn of the 19th century. In his early 20’s, Peter, now Dr. Roget, had just invented the first water filtering system in London. Seeing how unsanitary water negatively contributed to his patients’ health, he knew he had to do something.
A group of men surrounded a table carrying the prototype. Their eyes were filled with amazement. His colleague demonstrated the sand technique filtration system to a group of government officials. Peter watched quietly from the corner of the room. He wrote down another list. “Official, beaurocrat, agent, civil servant, administrator”. He then closed his notebook and joined in on the demonstration.
After the presentation, he returned to his London office. A young woman in torn clothes waited outside. She begged for Peter’s help in treating her baby suffering from a high fever. Peter did so without any compensation, as he always did for those who could not afford it. Once the fever subsided, Peter walked the woman and her baby home. Once he returned to his office, Peter pulled out his notebook. “Child, bairn, baby, cub, youngster” he wrote.
By 1819, middle-aged Peter looked for his next project. Most mornings he sipped a cup of tea in his drawing room as he brainstormed. One day, he decided to watch the carriages go by with the window blinds down. Through the gaps in the blinds he could still see the carriages.
The visual was fascinating to him. What he noticed will contribute to the invention of the first cinema camera. Soon, he will realize that the image of an object stayed in the retina for 1/16th of a second after the object had left the view. In this case, a carriage wheel. In his notebook he squeezed in another list on a nearly full page. “Perception, view, sight, appearance.”
The truth is I could give you a dozen more examples of Peter’s brilliance. He also created the first math slide rule for exponents and roots and discovered the basis for persistence of vision theory. Oh, and I forgot to mention, Peter Mark Roget even designed the first pocket chessboard.
Frederick Douglas once said, “without pain there is no progress”. No one demonstrated that more than Peter Mark Roget. From treating the poor, filtering water, making math faster, and movies possible, Peter Mark Roget’s purpose in life was to make life easier.
But by 60 years old, Peter decided it was time to retire. This was the one thing that he was really bad at. He felt that there was something else missing that he needed to accomplish…
By now I am sure you are wondering why he wrote down so many synonyms. In his retirement, Roget curated all of the lists and published them into a little old book that you might have heard of. The Thesaurus.
Welcome to Often Imitated, a podcast about remarkable experiences from the past, and how they inspire people to create great customer experiences today.
This episode is all about helping your customers view adversity as an opportunity. How Peter Mark Roget channeled his hardships into good by making the world an easier place, and how that can impact CX leaders today. In this episode we’ll hear from David Lehman, President and COO of Birdeye, about how he and his team help companies attract new customers. But first, a word from our sponsors.
Often Imitated is brought to you by the generous support of our friends at Oracle. Make every interaction matter with Oracle Advertising and CX. Connect all your data and empower your entire business to deliver exceptional customer experiences from acquisition…to retention…and everything in between. Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at oracle.com/cx.
Narrator: You see, Peter Mark Roget was more than just a renaissance man. Peter believed in the right for every person to fully enjoy the wonders and complexities of the world. Through words, he gave us an expansion to expression. Peter Pan’s creator, J.M. Barrie even put a copy of the Thesaurus in Captain Hook’s cabin so he could write: “The man is not wholly evil -- he has a Thesaurus in his cabin”. The use of a thesaurus represented the desire for intention.
But that is not the only reason Peter made lists— or made anything really. The truth is, Peter faced incredible amounts of tragedy in his life that motivated him to make the world better. Like I mentioned, at age 4 his father died from tuberculosis. His mother suffered from severe mental health illnesses throughout his life. His closest uncle and father-like figure died in his arms. His wife and one true love, Mary, passed away at only 38. On top of it all, his work as a physician exposed him to further pain by witnessing the constant suffering of others.
Because of this, Peter dedicated his life to make a difference. As an inventor, he sought to understand and control outcomes. Historians believe that Peter made lists throughout his life in order to cope with so much tragedy. Since he could not change the outcome of the past, he did everything he could to improve the future.
Peter channeled the sadness from the adversity he experienced into power. He was a prime example of how sometimes our biggest hardships are opportunities for our biggest successes.
Today we are talking about adversity. And what we as CX leaders can learn from it.
Our guest today also sees adversity as opportunity. As President and COO of Birdeye, David Lehman, helps his customers take their struggles and turn them into power. We’ll dive into that, but first, here’s David introducing Birdeye.
David: BirdEye helps over 70,000 customers and businesses every day with their customer experience, we're essentially a digital hub for them to help them attract new customers. Do that the right way through things like listings and reviews and referrals, help them convert those prospects into actual customers through web chat appointments, new things like payments, uh, and then really help you delight your customers with messaging surveys, ticketing, insights, really giving you the full life cycle journey to, to help your customers.
Narrator: Birdeye supports thousands of local businesses to Collect reviews, convert leads, run surveys, and get referrals.
David: It was really to help businesses really help everybody. Be able to offer the same experiences to their customers that everybody else could really help democratize, you know, technology things like, you know, reviews and how do you have a better brand online, right? Like every company should be able to have, you know, if they're a good company, you have five stars on Google, right.
And represent themselves appropriately on, on Facebook and every other sort of social. Platform out there. So, you know, we started it with, Hey, let's, let's start with helping you manage your reviews and reputation and then have really grown from there. And how do you help create great experiences for your customers?
Narrator: Nobody likes a bad review. Heck even this very podcast has a few.
But David sees challenges as potential for opportunities. But in this case, to improve customer experience.
David: You know, you take something that doesn't sound like a very sophisticated business, like a, you know, a pizza place, like a blaze pizza and, and, you know, they're out there and they've got, um, I think there are close to a hundred hundred locations, but for them they're like listening to their customers and it's, and it's awesome because they, again, individually, an individual pizza.
Join, uh, you know, at an individual restaurant, you know, you can get some feedback on, but when you can look across all of their data and for them, they look at these insights, they take all of the, there for them, mainly reviews that are put out there on, on social media and they can, you know, through, you know, our AI and machine learning will help them sort of identify the trends and the concepts.
And it's like, oh, burnt pizza well, like we actually have a pizza oven that's too hot or something like that. Right. Like they can actually go in and take that, turn that into a ticket, manage that all through BirdEye and go back in and fix that at the individual store or like, you know, dirty bathrooms or like, like things like that where people can actually take that feedback.
Narrator: In order to learn from your challenges, you not only have to listen to your customers. You also need to make sure they truly feel heard.
David: Cause I mean, look, I think that's been, the big problem with CX is, is people keep asking the same questions and people are coming. Not expecting to get an answer very much. Right? Like it's like, okay. I answered that survey. It's someone really going to come back and answer this. And what we've seen is businesses like blaze who goes out there, listens everywhere.
A they respond as well. We make it really easy for them to respond to those external reviews, but also then get to a point where they can, they can go in and fix that and communicate back that they fix that. Like, it's pretty powerful, right? Like it's, it's like, it's, it's what customers actually expect.
Narrator: David provides us with an example of how focusing on your weaknesses can lead to the most effective form of marketing: referrals.
David: One of our customers, uh, David's bridal, you know, all about, you know, getting the dressed and having an amazing experience through, through that bride journey, all the rest of it. They, they talk about living in the ones and I'm like living in the ones what's that.
You know, yes, we want all these five stars. Yes. We want to be, have this great brand and we want people to have a break, but our big thing is we need to see those ones so that we can jump in and fix those things. We've got to go get every single one of those coming in real time to somebody who can do something about it.
And it's gotta be able to go down to very granular level so that, like I said, they can take actual action and fix. And then what's also great in is, is when you fix somebody's problem, how likely they are to quickly turn from a detractor and a promoter, right? Either a taking down a bad review, uh, or any external comments they made, or honestly telling people about a problem.
We actually found that the best time to send somebody a referral request, like asking them to go put it on their network and refer individual friends is right after you fixed a problem.
Narrator: I love the idea of “living in the ones”. David encourages us to respond to the 1s, take the conversation offline and fix the problem. And if you fix a problem, you can see how quickly they’re willing to become an advocate.
David: The other thing we've seen by the way is obviously you don't want to have that conversation in public. So one of the things we actually do is when you have it a review online, we have a matching technology that if you have that person in your database, how do you. Message them directly, right? Like much cleaner, better way to say, Hey, I saw you left us something out there.
I still maybe going to respond online. Cause that helps you in Google, likes it when you respond and all the rest of it. But you know, you want to take that conversation private and that's, that's really where you're going to get something done and have a valuable company.
Narrator: We have to respond. And we shouldn’t take it personal. Every negative review is an opportunity to improve. Turning doubters into believers is good business. It becomes great business when they tell a friend, which is what David believes is the most important CX lesson of all.
David: If I have happy customers, There's so much better are promoting my brand than anybody else can be. No matter what I say, no matter what ad I put out there, super Superbowl commercial that I have, like you see that versus you hear from your friend that this was an awesome restaurant, an awesome experience. It's just so much more impactful.
Narrator: It’s OK to make mistakes. It’s how you react to those mistakes that differentiates average companies from excellent ones. By responding to complaints with care, you improve your customer experience. And with great customer experience often comes the greatest marketing tool of all: referrals.
As CX leaders, there is no doubt that we will face bumps in the road. What really matters is how we react to those bumps. Do we let them defeat us, or do we use them to make our companies, or even the world, better? How can we emulate Peter Mark Roget and use our adversity to motivate us to do more good? And if you don’t know where to start, try writing a list…or index, docket, record, inventory, catalog... you get the jist.
This podcast is brought to you by the generous support of our friends at Oracle. Make every interaction matter with Oracle Advertising and CX. Connect all your data and empower your entire business to deliver exceptional customer experiences from acquisition…to retention…and everything in between. Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at oracle.com/cx.
This is your host, Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios. Thank you for listening to another episode of Often Imitated. If you like what you’re hearing, tell one friend. Peter Mark Roget would maybe add that you could subscribe, follow, join, download. The list goes on. This podcast was narrated by me, Ian Faison, written by Emma DeMuth, and produced and edited by Mackey Wilson, Callen Turnbull, and Jon Libbey. You can learn more about our team at CaspianStudios.com.