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Digital Payments And Customer Experience With Dave Lehman Of Birdeye

A positive customer experience is critical to any business… and payments often play a crucial role in that experience. In an increasingly digital world, seamless payments have become even more important. Dave Lehman, COO and President of Birdeye, joins the show to discuss keys to quality customer experiences, digital payments, and Birdeye Payments, a new pay-by-text solution.

Payments & Fintech Insights In This Episode

  • Why digital customer experiences are so crucial to businesses of all kinds today.
  • How digital payments play a critical role in a customers overall experience.
  • The story behind Birdeye, including their new pay-by-text solutions.
  • The keys to approaching partnerships successfully in the payments and fintech world.
  • Dave’s insights on the future of digital customer experiences, payments, fintech, and beyond.
  • With so much more!

Featured on the Show

Episode Transcript

Scott: Hey, PayPod listeners. Scott back with you yet again. And welcome to another fantastic episode. On this show, we’re gonna be turning our attention to digital payments, paying by text, and really customer experiences. Why are digital payments so important for businesses to pursue for better customer experiences and engagement? How do pay by text solutions offer exciting opportunities in this area?

Joining me to explore this and a lot more is Dave Lehman, who is the COO and president of BirdEye, the number one experience platform, which recently announced BirdEye payments, which is the fastest, safest, and easiest way for businesses to get paid via text messaging, a whole lot to cover. So, let’s just dive right in. Dave, welcome to the show.

Dave: Thanks for having me here, Scott. Really happy to be here.

Scott: On today’s show, we want to talk about customer experience and how digital payments can really play a role with it. To start us off, though, I always like to begin with, I guess a big question. Why are digital customer experiences so critical these days, in general?

Dave: Yeah. I mean, look, Scott, BirdEye works with over 70,000 businesses to help them be the hub for digital customer experiences. And really what it’s about for businesses is helping them attract new customers with things like their listings and reviews and referrals. But then how do you really engage them? How do you give them great tools like webchat and appointments and help convert them into new customers, and then really delight them through that entire lifecycle?

Because if you do it right, and you make your customers happy, A, they come back, B, they tell their friends about it, and C, they’ll go out and tell the world. There’s tools like Facebook and Google where they can go out and give you the best reviews. So, that experience, through the entire journey, is super critical for any business today.

Scott: Right. Experience is everything. And so many customer experiences now are digital, especially over the last few years here, we’ve seen how important that is. So, I think you’ve really hit the nail on the head. Yeah, quality digital customer experiences are crucial. How do payments experiences have a unique role to play in that larger experience? If I was putting it another way, why digital payments?

Dave: People expect convenience in everything they do. And I think all of that just got greatly accelerated through the pandemic, right? I mean, like, I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t like texting with a restaurant before the pandemic. And now it’s like, “Okay, you know, do I have to still wear a mask? Can my kids use the bathroom?” Like, all of that has gone digital.

So, there’s been this huge forcing function for not just the big guys who’ve known that digital is important for a long time but really for every business, from the local mom-and-pop pizza shop up to the large hospitals who are really great on technology when it comes to saving your life but have been terrible on technology when it comes to connecting with you as a patient. So, just everybody has gone digital. And to me, honestly, payments is just another part of that, right? That’s just the expectation that every one of us as consumers and every one of us as business people have to live with.

Scott: Right. I mean, I think that’s been one of the things with all of this has been how now people are used to these kinds of experiences. And, “Hey, I can do this just on my phone, and I don’t have to reach into my wallet,” or whatever it might be. And those are just now expectations that customers are starting to have. And so if you don’t have that, if you do have maybe an older, clunky type payments experience, that could take away from the whole experience, right?

Dave: Absolutely.

Scott: So, okay, we’ve established that digital payment solutions are critical. They’re going to remain critical. The cat’s out of the bag, as the saying goes, right? And your company, BirdEye, has recently announced pay by text solutions. What’s the story behind this and where do you fit into the larger payments ecosystem?

Dave: Yeah. I mean, like I said, we’ve been working for almost 10 years now on providing great customer experience and helping businesses control every moment of that journey with customers. And really it just became evident that, like you said, why would you break that process, right? Somebody’s gone online and they found you digitally, right, they’ve done a Google search and you show it up and your SEO works, right? And then they end up on your website, and they see a chat, right? And I can ask chatbot questions, or I can engage with somebody, or even send an appointment through chat, right? Like, I’m doing all this stuff digitally.

And then when I walk in the door, or they come to my door, right, home services, and maybe they show up at my house to fix my roof or whatever, why would I all of a sudden say, “Okay. Now get out your old credit card or get out cash, and make that part of the process?” It just makes sense, right? We want to make these convenient experiences for our customers. And honestly, as a business, have more options, more alternatives on how I can make sure I can get paid, right? Like, the last thing you want to do is provide a great service, provide a great product to somebody, and then have friction in the buying process.

Scott: Exactly. Exactly. And I love that you use that word friction. It’s something that’s kind of one of our themes on this show. And these frictionless experiences that are just so superior and really kind of a baseline now, for so many things. Why do you think pay by text specifically is an ideal digital payment solution?

Dave: Just to be clear, we don’t think anybody’s gonna be just text to pay, right?

Scott: Sure.

Dave: You got to have a complete solution. In fact, we’re even we’re rolling out card readers as well to make that piece convenient and connected as well. But it’s really a win-win for businesses if you can be on text, right? First of all, like, 95% of texts are open within 3 minutes. Think about that. We all think about, okay, I went in, and I tap my credit card, and that’s easy. Yes, that is. But if you’re a different kind of business where you’re sending how paper invoices, you’re sending out even emails to try and get paid, to have that ability to send a quick text and know that it’s getting opened, know that it’s easy for the person who, by the way, probably already has three credit cards loaded onto their phone through Apple Pay or Google Pay, right, like, all of that is so easy, right? And so, again, I walk up to a cash register, still usually easier for me to insert my card, tap my card to do that. But every other interaction, much better to have that, “Hey, I’ve got follow-ups.”

One of the great things we’ve seen with our customers already leveraging the platform are things like collections. When somebody hasn’t paid in a long time, and all of a sudden you text them with it, again, it just makes it easy for the person like, “Oh, yeah, I meant to do that. It was in my email, it was somewhere else. I’ve opened it, and I can quickly transact on that.” It’s a perfect additional way to get paid. We’ve even though seen it in-store, right? Like, we work with a lot of dentists or pediatric dentists is one of the situations. We were setting up the card reader there, and it was like, okay, the woman is literally holding her kid in her arm, trying to pay the front desk. And they’re like, “Can we just text you?” And, you know, with the one hand, she’s easily, you know, taking that text, two clicks later, she’s paid them and out the door.

Scott: Right. And that all feeds back into, wow, what kind of experience was that for her? And how is that going to extend to whatever if she writes a review, or when she’s going to…again, she needs to go, like, these things all tie into each other?

Dave: That’s why we did this, right? Because, again, the payment is one piece along the journey. And yet, some of these other providers, these FinTech providers that say, “Hey, we are at the cash register, we’re the transaction,” yeah, maybe you can get an email afterwards. But when this is part of an overall platform, and I can say, “Okay. I’ve sent you, you’ve paid. Now I can, again, send you a reminder for your return appointment, send you a request to promote me on Google, send you a request to get a referral,” that’s the real business benefit where I’ve now, not just a moment-in-time transaction but an actual part of the overall experience.

Scott: Exactly. Kind of shifting gears a little bit, can you walk us through how the pay by text setup through you guys might work for a merchant? What does that experience look like?

Dave: Yes, super straightforward, super easy. When somebody is already an existing BirdEye customer and we’ve already got most of their contacts and their customers in our system, it’s really just a matter of going to a new tab and it’s connected in, putting your bank information, a couple quick questions., and it’s done, right? Because, again, that’s the nice thing about not having this be-a-separate product. This is just, “Hey, I’ve got my connection to my customers. This is how I usually talk to them. Now I’ve just got the bank piece connected in.”

Scott: Right. So, again, and that kind of ties back into that theme of that frictionless experience, not only for customers, for consumers, but also for merchants themselves who, if you’re running a business and you’re trying to deliver great value to your customers, you don’t have a lot of time to focus on everything. So, if it’s an easy kind of experience like you were just describing there, Dave, that’s a good one.

Dave: Yes. Again, especially, not playing this, like, big guy versus the small guy, but giving everybody the tools to make this easier, right? Like, they don’t want to have to go to five different systems and try and bolt them altogether if it could be on one platform. That’s super exciting for us.

Scott: Right. Actually, I think this is a good segue because there are so many people out there and, certainly, a good chunk of our listeners who may have started or are working on various mobile apps and digital solutions, and particularly around payments and other financial experiences. What, in your view, are some of the keys to really getting digital experiences right, from that development standpoint, whether it’s finance, or payments related, or something else entirely?

Dave: Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of people moving into this space, and a lot of people are excited about payments and being part of that transaction. But, again, the way we look at it is you’ve got to be tied in tight to everything else you’re doing. If you’re texting with the customer already, that is such a powerful thing. One of the things that we do, for example, is we’ll take every interaction that a customer has and essentially score it. When they leave you a five-star review on Google, that’s really easy to give them, hey, 5 stars, equivalent to a 10, right? Or somebody leaves you…people want to do NPS, right, they want to send out surveys to see how they’re doing, right, and they get a 1 through 10 on that., and that gets normalized.

But when you take that to the next level around things like, “Hey, they left me an angry voicemail.” Okay. Well, that puts them down to a two or three, right? And they were texting and asking questions about billing problems that they were having, like that, you know, changes their score. The payment becomes just another one of those signals as well, right? Did they pay? Do they pay on time? Are they a big tipper? Right? Things like that are signals that, as you think about how do I, again, collect all of my technology and data in one place can become really powerful.

Scott: A hundred percent. I think kind of connected to this, here’s how you can get it right when you’re developing it. But then there’s this piece that is adoption. With so many Fintechs maybe seeking, they have a lot of focus on motivating consumers, to maybe even change their behavior to adopt a new tool, a new way of doing things, just like with something like pay by text, getting them to, “Okay, I’m not gonna reach for my wallet, I’m just gonna grab my phone,” there’s a lot of moving parts. What do you think some of the keys are to really inspiring continued digitized changes in consumer behavior around contactless payment solutions like pay by text or really anything else?

Dave: Yeah. Part of it as well comes down to like, the comfort level and the security of it all, right? Does somebody feel like…it’s their money, it’s personal to them. They hear about scams and people stealing credit card numbers and all the rest of it. Like, how do we make sure that everybody feels, you know, it’s frictionless, but also safe and secure to do something? And that’s really what this has become, right?, where you’re not giving a credit card over the phone, right? Like, talk about an insecure, or something that doesn’t make the end-consumer feel good, right? “Oh, I’m just reading off this number, what’s stopping that person from writing down that number and using it,” right? Versus, again, with text, boom, it’s in my phone, that person has never seen my number, those transactions are happening behind the scenes. So, I think there’s just a lot that we need to do as an industry just get everybody to combine the convenience, and the security, and the speed of it all to just drive home these points.

Scott: You saying that just brought something to mind for me. This recently happened a few days ago. My wife was paying a dentist’s bill and she called, and she called off-hours and left a message and she just was…I heard her reading out her credit card number. And I was like, “Did you just do that? That’s not secure.” So, that makes me think, “Hey, that dentist’s office, what if they had a pay by text solution? I would feel much better about that.”

Dave: A hundred percent, right? Like, it’s like, oh, that’s just on my iPhone, it’s staying secure. It’s already got the security built-in. Yeah, absolutely.

Scott: There’s this other piece, whether it’s FinTech or payments, its partnerships, and they are so crucial. I’m curious about BirdEye’s approach to both finding and establishing successful partnerships in the world of payments. Any advice for those that are out there looking to do things the right way and grow along with others in the space? Maybe what are some of the keys there?

Dave: Yeah. I mean, look, there’s a lot on the technology side where the plumbing needs to be there and people smarter than me, you know, can talk to you about all those pieces to it. But I think, again, it comes back to how do we make it as convenient and seamless for the business and the end-user? And a lot of is technology businesses, like, it’s our responsibility to do and make it so that everybody has this capability, right? It’s, again, a bit of that democratization that it shouldn’t just be these big American Airlines who can spend billions of dollars on trying to get systems like this setup and going, though they still don’t seem to get it right. But, like, you know, everybody should have this, right, you know, whether they’ve got sort of this aging hardware and aging software that they’ve just had forever. How do we as the technology industry come in and make it so that they don’t even have to know how many partners, or how many different types of cards you can take, how many different processing, you know, systems that have to go through?

Scott: Right. You used another great word that we’ve talked about on this show, you said democratization. I think that ties in together so much of what these kinds of tools and new ways of doing things can really bring to the table. So, we’ve talked a lot about the now and what’s happening, though, there’s always this question of what’s going on in the future. So, if we turn our attention to the future, Dave, what do you see potentially happening in the world of digital experiences, including payments and pay by text in the next 5 to 10 years?

Dave: I think things like snooping on your customers are going away, right? Like, all the digital privacies, the cookies, that side of it is going away as a business, right? So, what you really need to be thinking about is, how do you listen and engage in the right ways? What are the places where people are raising their hands expecting a good experience, again, whether that’s because they left you a review on Yelp, or they left you a survey, or when talking to one of your agents they said something, right? Like, all of that needs to come together. And again, payments, appointments, all of this become one system. And that’s really where businesses, again, of all sizes, need to be able to handle that.

Scott: It’s such a good point. And really what you’re getting out is this idea of things are shifting, and what’s gonna happen is we’re gonna see more and more successful organizations are the ones that can get customers to, like you said, raise your hand, offer up some information. “Yeah, I had a great experience. Here’s some information about me. I’ll fill out the survey.” Then what they can build on top of that, as opposed to, like you said, also the snooping. So, it’s really a bit of a paradigm shift. And I think that you’re right in that quality experiences are going to be key to that because if someone was super happy with their whole experience, they’re gonna be way more likely to give you some information that can help your business, right?

Dave: I was talking to one of our customers the other day, and they talk about living in the ones. Living in the ones, like, doesn’t everybody want like a five-star review or whatever? And they’re like, “No, like, we want the five-star reviews, they’re great, they help us attract more customers and get out there. But what we really want is to be able to talk to and address those one stars, and to do it quickly and seamlessly, and then turn them around into happy customers. Because those people that you flip are the ones who are going to come back, are the ones who are going to tell more people. You’d be surprised how many people will change their review or change their sentiment quickly if you listen to them, right.” That’s all they’re looking for, for the most part. Most people aren’t just angry, they want their stuff fixed, and they want great convenient experiences like payments.

Scott: Some of my favorite conversations that I have with merchants or customers are the ones where they started off, we let them down, or they were frustrated with something, or whatever it might have been. And then by the end of that conversation, we sort it out and they’re feeling great, and they’re happy, then they turn into some of the best customers for us, which it’s interesting how that can happen, right?

Dave: And the trick becomes, as a business, how does that scale? Because you can’t just sort of have, “Hey, I’m gonna go listen everywhere or hire people to go to all this stuff.” Right? Like, you’ve got to have the technical…like, it’s also, like, I can’t have everybody write a thank you note. Like, a handwritten thank you note after somebody paid me, would be phenomenal, right? Like, everybody would feel great about that. But you’ve got to find the right way to scale that, to automate that, to use technology to make that simple for you as well.

Scott: A hundred percent. Keeping that future focus, if you peer into the crystal ball, what’s in the future for BirdEye? Any specific technologies, products, offerings on the horizon, of course, that you can share that our listeners might find to be interesting?

Dave: Payments is relatively new for us, so there’s still a lot for us to do there, right? Like I said, we did text to pay, that’s had great feedback so far. We’re doing card readers next to give people that piece of it. You know, how do we work and integrate within their existing billing systems? Again, that’s on us to make that more convenient and great. The other big one we’re working on right now is appointments, and how do you, even without a human maybe, allow people to sign up for appointments and get reminders on their appointments? And that side of it.

Things like campaigns and workflows, and how do you tie all this stuff together? Right? Like, when do you send somebody a review? When do you send somebody a referral? When do you ask them for a survey? How long until you send them that second note after the first bill goes out? Like, all of that, there’s a lot of AI that goes into that. And we’re working on a lot of that stuff. But again, overall, we just want to help businesses connect more with their consumers, and give them those great frictionless experiences. And if we keep adding to that, and again, make it so they don’t have to go out and find three more vendors to do all the things they need to do with a customer, that’s what we’re focused on.

Scott: Excited to see where you guys take it all. We have a segment that we like to end with on each and every show. It’s five questions, rapid-fire. Are you ready?

Dave: Let’s do it.

Scott: Make a prediction about the future of digital experiences, including payments and pay by text that you expect will happen in the next 12 to 24 months, so more short-term?

Dave: I think the idea of cash is just dead, right? Like, that’s going away. I don’t think we’re gonna be carrying cash anymore. We may not even be carrying wallets anymore, everything will just be on your phone.

Scott: I’m pretty sure I’ve got like a $20 that’s been kicking around in my wallet for about two years now. So, I agree 100%? What’s one cool piece of payment or finance-related technology you’ve come across recently that’s unrelated directly to your company that impressed you?

Dave: Cryptocurrencies are just obviously on a lot of people’s mind, you know, and just starting to see who is and when people are taking Bitcoin or Aetherium, or the rest of it. That’s always fascinating to me.

Scott: In the next five years…maybe this connects to your previous answer. In the next five years, most people in the U.S. will make a purchase with either Bitcoin, Apple Pay, some other thing. Which one do you think and why?

Dave: Isn’t like Facebook or Meta going to leverage their trust that they’ve built up with their customers to have their own digital currency?

Scott: Yeah, they’ve been working on all that. Yeah.

Dave: I know. I think, again, like Apple Pay, the tap to pay, like all that stuff, I use it every day. Like, I just don’t even bother reaching for my phone anymore, it’s on my watch, right? And that’s gonna win out, like, it’s just too easy.

Scott: A hundred percent. I also…now I’ve started using Apple Pay at the pump. And so when I go to a gas station and they don’t have that, I’m like, “Ugh.” So there you go. What’s one piece of advice you would have for someone who’s considering the payments or financial technology industry as a career?

Dave: It feels like the ’90s were web, you know, the 2000s were mobile, 2010s were sort of the social. It really feels like payments, it’s gonna really kind of fund, I think, a lot of technology and a lot of AI and a lot of advancements in software. You know, I could see a world where people and businesses, again, are just tapping into the payment and being a small piece of that and being a small fraction to support everything else they do. So, I think it’s a great time to be focused and thinking about that side of it.

Scott: Last question here. What’s the best business advice you’ve ever received and from whom?

Dave: I’m gonna leave him anonymous. But the analogy of don’t squeeze the ball was, like, when you’re in something new, when you’re moving fast, and everything’s high pressure…like, it’s a basketball analogy, but when you’re shooting a free throw, the worst thing you can do is squeeze super tight and hope that it goes in because you’re squeezing so tight, you’ve got to be loose with all of it. So, I think as we’re all adapting and learning new things around consumer behavior, around technology, that idea of like, “Hey, you gotta keep going with the flow, stay calm with it, and you can take on a lot more.”

Scott: Man, that is good advice. I’m gonna have to play this back and think about that some more. I think that’s a really, really great piece of advice there. Dave, thank you so much for joining me on the show today, sharing a bit about BirdEye’s story and the exciting things you guys are doing with pay by text and otherwise. And if folks want to find out more, where can they do that? Where should they go?

Dave: Yeah. Just birdeye.com, birdeye.com. And yeah, we’ve got all the information on payments and their whole platform.

Scott: Fantastic. Thanks, again.

Dave: Absolutely. Thank you.

Industry Spotlight

Birdeye

Birdeye helps businesses grow through happy customers. Over 60,000 businesses use Birdeye everyday to attract new leads with Listings, Reviews and Referrals, convert them into customers with Webchat and Appointments, and delight those customers with Surveys, Ticketing, and Insights – all in one place. Founded in 2012, Birdeye is headquartered in Palo Alto, and led by alumni from Google, Amazon, Salesforce and Yahoo. Birdeye is backed by Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, Trinity Ventures and World Innovation Lab. The company has been the highest-rated Experience Marketing platform over the last 5 years on G2.