advocamp: james scott

Retail. Accelerated.

www.brightpearl.com

Turning the TidesWith Global Customer AdvocacyJames Scott

March 2016

Brightpearl is a software company.

Our customers are retailers.

Not big brands, but independent retailers.

The kind of retailers that make our high streets interesting.

Retail businesses founded by entrepreneurs ...

... and built around something they are passionate about.

Like fashion ...

... or bikes.

Like the community ...

... or mermaid tails.

But back in 2014, we had some issues.

Back in 2012, we had some issues.

Our customers wereunhappy.

We were letting them down.

We were failing them.

Not all of them.

Just some of them.

But some was too many.

Our customers relied on us.

They relied on our software.

They had put their faithin our solution.

For them, we weremission critical.

We helped them to operate their business.

We helped them toservice their own customers.

We helped them to grow.

But something had gone terribly wrong.

We had been building too many new features.

And we had lost control ofperformance and reliability.

We weren’t fulfilling our promises.

We weren’t meeting their expectations.

We were not there when our customers

needed us.

And our customers were feeling the pain.

They told us.

They told everyone.

Our online reputation was suffering.

To the outside worldwe looked a disaster.

We felt awful.

But it didn’t just impacthow we felt...

I heard same message from Phill yesterday that

reviews are hurting pipeline build and ability to

close. James, let's coordinate on how we can

help. Trustpilot seems to be the priority. Andy ---------- Forwarded message ----------From: Simon (Sales)Date: 22 August 2014 02:27To: Marketing <marketing@brightpearl.com>

Prospect churned in the 90 minutes between initial contact and a booked DC in part due to negative reviews.Also see this great opp https://eu1.salesforce.com/006D0000021 which died yesterday because of Trustpilot reviews POST DEMO.These reviews are killing our pipe and are particularly damaging to outbound leads and opps - is there anything you can do to sort this out?

Dear Simon,

Had a look at the reviews and I don't think this is suitable for us please cancel the meeting, I'm not interested.

Regards Alex

internal email

email from prospect

Hi James,

Had a rather bad review on trustpilot - just wanted to get this on your radar. We've had quite a few lately which is sure to impact conversion rates. Andy has asked me to reach out which I will but didn't know whether you'd be keen to respond to the ones that have been posted.

Nothing we haven't seen before, but we really have much more work to do to

address quality in the platform. This kind of feedback (and this particular

review) is going to put significant drag on our lead flow; it came up

relatively high when I searched on "experience with brightpearl".

We've had a couple of prospects reference the recent reviews on these sites

as reasons to not buy or stall their decision. 3 negative reviews left in the

last few weeks ....

“When I researched about Brightpearl, I did came across many unfavorable reviews but still gave confidence to your software (Perhaps I should have given some consideration to these reviews.... “

internal email

email from unhappy customer

internal email

It impacted our abilityto generate pipeline.

It impacted our abilityto move deals through the pipe.

It impacted our abilityto close new business.

So, we set about fixing things.

We increased our investment in the product.

And after some time,things started to improve.

Customers started to noticethe positive change.

They told us that they hadconfidence in us once more.

But despite this,our online reputation

was not improving.

The rate of new negative reviewshad reduced ...

... but there still were very fewpositive reviews.

To the outside worldit looked like little had changed.

And for our Sales & Marketing teamsnothing got better.

We desperately neededto do something about it.

So we started phoning clientswho we knew were happy ...

... and we asked them to leave us a review.

Unfortunately we didn’t have a big call list ...

... and those we did call were often too busy to help.

We invested a lot of time and effort

to generate only a handful of reviews.

We needed a different strategy.We needed help.

Enter Influitive.

We believed Influitive could help usengage with our known advocates.

We thought that points and prizeswould be a great incentive.

But what we learnedwas something very different.

Something completely unexpectedand very exciting.

We discovered the power of the silent majority.

We discoveredthat, actually, we had

hundreds of happy customers.

We discoveredwe had thousands of happy end users.

The problem all along had beenwe didn’t know they existed!

And we discovered something else.

Our happy customerswere already motivated to help us.

They didn’t need swag or gift cards.

They just wanted to see us be successful.

Because they knew thatif we were successful,

they would be too.

They wanted to help us gain more customers ...

... because they knew it wouldmake us a stronger partner.

And a stronger Brightpearl meant they would grow faster.

So Influitive helped us find

our silent majority.

So Influitive helped us engage

So Influitive helped us mobilize

And you should see what they did!

Over 12 months,with less than 8 hours work

we generated over 125 positive reviews!

And something amazing happened.

And with this, something amazing happened.

The tide turned.

We started generating new pipelinefrom review sites.

Our Sales team started proactively using reviews as part of our sales cycle.

We no longer lost deals

because of our reputation.

We started towin them

because of it.

Our reputation became a weaponinstead of a liability.

And there were some other benefits as well.

We discovered that our army of advocates ...

... could help usrefine our marketing messaging.

... could help usshare our story with the media.

... could help uscreate new marketing assets.

... could help usamplify our own marketing efforts.

... could help usprioritize our product roadmap.

Our advocates becamean extension of our team.

Our advocates helped usachieve our business goals.

Our advocates enabled usto turn the tide of global reputation.

1. Your happiest customers are often the quietest ones.

2. Identify, engage and mobilize your silent majority.

3. The tide can be turned!

Key Takeaways

Thank you.#RetailAccelerated

Retail. Accelerated.

www.brightpearl.com

advocamp: james scott

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