CX platform provider Birdeye announced its acquisition of Australia-based Cube Online, expanding its technology offerings in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Dash Research spoke with Dave Lehman, COO and President of Go-To-Market, to learn more about Birdeye’s place in the CX ecosystem and get more detail on the company’s latest growth initiatives.

Birdeye’s platform allows companies to manage all their customer interactions digitally (including review management), leveraging AI and automation. Companies can collect reviews, generate referrals, measure sentiment, and communicate with customers all from one platform.

“Birdeye really helps to bring the two worlds of reputation and CX together,” says Lehman. “We have a platform that spans the entire customer journey and allows our customers to holistically view all customer touchpoints in one place.”

He adds, “The fast and ongoing digital transformation spurred by the pandemic had an enormous effect on our target markets, which are local business and brands. The majority of customer interactions are now digital, and this new reality has been felt deeply by our customer base.”

We spoke a bit about the CX needs of these local businesses, and Lehman commented that expectations for a great and seamless customer experience are high with consumers getting used to the digital technologies and support that larger corporations have. Many brick-and-mortar businesses simply have not invested in technologies such as review and feedback management or have the analytics to make sense of the data.

“Very few local brands have had the bandwidth to figure out the entire customer lifecycle,” says Lehman. “Our customers ran the gamut from small pizza places to larger local hospital systems. They struggle with having the time to launch listening programs, but that feedback can really be such as asset to them. We really help to pull in all the touchpoints, apply artificial intelligence and machine learning, and have the data accessible in one place. And importantly, we help with automation through the process, easing some of the burden for these smaller businesses. We have integrations with 3,000 CRMs and back-office systems, helping action to be taken quickly.”

Regarding Cube Online’s expansion into the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, Lehman says, “Cube Online has been selling successfully in these geographies for years and has over 3,000 customers in APAC and Europe. Their customer base is very similar to ours and we really look forward to being able to deliver our entire product set to the local businesses in their areas.” Combined, the company will have more than 100,000 businesses as customers and almost 1,000 employees.

Aside from this acquisition, Birdeye has recently announced new products, such as its social media software, which makes social publishing and reputation monitoring easier for businesses with multiple locations, as well as an appointment product. The company has also made some key hires. When asked about this forward momentum during a time that has been challenging for many businesses, Lehman shares, “We have always taken a very thoughtful approach to growth. Our business was built from the ground up to be value based and ROI driven. These are really uncertain times for our clients, and we strive to offer a solution that really delivers both value and more customers to them.”