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AI Powered Customer Journey Optimization – a conversation with Segwik founder Pete Romano.
20 Plays10 days ago
Pete Romano is the founder of Segwik.com, an AI powered customer journey optimization platform that helps businesses turn every customer interaction into a meaningful, memorable relationship.
Before becoming a tech, entrepreneur Pete was a composer of advertising jingles like the Budweiser frogs.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds, Pete explains to host Michael Millward how his musical education and experience contributed to his entrepreneurial success.
Michael and Pete discuss how many entrepreneurs are experts in their field, but set-up businesses without knowing everything they need to run that business.
Pete explains how his thinking outside the box about what happens in the box of a business led to the creation of Segwik, which enables business owners to effectively manage every aspect of their customer relationships, and create meaningful repeatable experiences.
They also discuss how the business owner must act like the conductor of an orchestra, bringing experts together to create high performing teams.
This episode will enthuse you to rethink how you interact with your customers.
More information about Rebecca Olson and Michael Millward is available at Abeceder.
The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr, because as the all-in-one podcasting platform, Zencastr really does make creating content so easy.
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr visit zencastr.com/pricing and use our offer code ABECEDER.
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Transcript
Introduction to The Independent Minds Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
on zencastr Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysida and people who think outside the box about how work works with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:22
Speaker
I am your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysida.
Guest Introduction: Pete Romano from Segwik
00:00:26
Speaker
Today, my guest independent mind is Pete Romano from Segwik.
Segwik's Automation Solutions
00:00:32
Speaker
Segwik provides businesses of all sizes with the ability to automate their customer management.
Zencastr: Podcasting Made Easy
00:00:38
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, the Independent Minds is made on Zencastr. Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then share it on all the major platforms like Spotify, Apple, and Google.
00:00:56
Speaker
It really does make making content so easy.
Special Offer for Zencastr
00:01:00
Speaker
If you would like to try podcasting using zencaster visit Zencastr, visit zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abbasida.
00:01:09
Speaker
All the details are in the description. Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencast is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:24
Speaker
As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Exploring Jersey City and its Surprises
00:01:32
Speaker
Today, my guest independent mind is Pete Romano from Segwik, a company based in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA.
00:01:41
Speaker
Segwik provides businesses of all sizes with the ability to automate their customer management from the very beginning of their customer journey.
The Ultimate Travel Club Benefits
00:01:50
Speaker
Much to my embarrassment, I didn't realize that there was a Jersey City in New Jersey.
00:01:54
Speaker
But now that I do, if I ever get to visit, I will be sure to make all of my travel arrangements with the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where I can access trade prices on flights and hotels.
00:02:06
Speaker
There is a link and membership discount code in the description. Now, enough about me and my lack of joke geographic knowledge. Hello, Pete. Hey, Mike. i I thoroughly enjoy just doing geographical comparisons to ah yeah folks here on this side of the pond and folks on your side of the pond, particularly.
00:02:26
Speaker
But yeah, Jersey City, ah New Jersey is a fantastic ah place to be just outside of New York City. You could see Jersey City from the New York water line and you could also see New York from Jersey City.
00:02:41
Speaker
And so there's a lot of ah synergies between ah the the two places. It sounds like there probably is a lot of people living in new in Jersey City commuting into New York.
00:02:53
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's interesting you ask that is that ah New York is a very big place. There's 10 million people or more. Jersey City is a large city, which some may consider just being a suburb of New York City.
00:03:08
Speaker
Given its proximity, it's directly next to it with just a river ah in between the Hudson River. ah But it's part of a different state. Jersey City is in New Jersey. But yes, ah many, many people commute into New York.
00:03:21
Speaker
And Jersey City is so close that sometimes people all the way up in northern Manhattan would take longer to get downtown in New York than people who are in Jersey City commuting into New York. It's it's that close.
00:03:36
Speaker
Wow. yeah It's all part of the ah the great tapestry of of the ways, different ways in which people choose to live and work, which is also, ah suppose, linked in with the way in which they interact with the different organizations that they will buy from as well.
Pete's Musical Beginnings and Creativity
00:03:52
Speaker
But before we get into the work of Segwik, could you just tell us a little bit more about about you Sure. Yeah. i um i like I like to think of myself as ah as a creative thinker.
00:04:06
Speaker
I've had a very creative streak going all the way back to the to the you know even the third grade when I started to play drums. And I started composing actually for ah orchestra even by the sixth grade. I was very very very much musically inclined. For international audience like me, sixth grade is about age 9, 10.
00:04:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And um so so I had a fantastic ah teacher in the public school system who really saw the value.
00:04:44
Speaker
ah Some might even call her an old school hippie at the time. This was 1992, 1991.
00:04:52
Speaker
And ah yeah she she really saw the value of arts education and she would go out of her way for her students, including myself, to ah make sure that they were getting extra special training above and beyond ah what the public school system was giving at that time. She would arrange weekend ah lessons at the various colleges.
00:05:14
Speaker
She helped to put even yeah summer camps, music summer camps together.
Transition from Music to Advertising
00:05:21
Speaker
and you And looking back on that ah that training now as a business owner, looking back all the way to sixth grade, ninth grade, high school, I believe that the the music and the arts training even more now than I ever did is part of the so some of the best kind of education that you can be bestowed with to be a decision maker.
00:05:47
Speaker
Because thinking outside the box and thinking about, well, what else can this be? going having like you you would You might get an assignment in school saying, compose 50 melodies and don't think about it too much.
00:06:04
Speaker
And what that forces you to do is just think, well, something can be this or it can be that or it can be that. and you don't fall in love with all of your distinct ideas.
00:06:17
Speaker
and and it And it opens your mind and it broadens your horizon. And so the CEOs now that are very stoic and maybe less trained in the creative arts, I think are operating at a distinct disadvantage to those that have been blessed with the kind of background that I had. And so I played in music. i learned guitar. I learned drums. I learned to orchestrate.
00:06:41
Speaker
ah Early on, I went to college for music. When I graduated, I got out. I went into ah advertising in New York City, but specifically on the music composition side. i yeah some Some in the audience may remember my hit jingle from Sudafed commercials or
Founding Segwik: Solving Small Business Challenges
00:07:01
Speaker
a hit jingle from ah ah Budweiser with these Budweiser frogs that were just chirping in the swamp.
00:07:11
Speaker
and And so i'm mean I'm saying that in jest because yeah as a jingle composer, you're very much invisible to the process sometimes. ah But there were other hits that maybe people know in the States, like ah there was a big Viagra campaign based off of Elvis Presley's Viva Las Vegas theme.
00:07:31
Speaker
We were involved in that. We will find links to them on somewhere and and share them in the description. It sounds like a very interesting career. I'll have to think those up.
00:07:41
Speaker
Yeah, i'll have to dig those up. But yeah, so advertising led into my entrepreneurial journey. And ah ah eventually I founded a software company ah to really focus on the operations of the small business owner. As I went through the trials and tribulations of being a small business owner, I said, geez, this is so hard.
00:08:02
Speaker
This is so hard. And I would network with other business owners and and they wouldn't necessarily openly cry about it, but I would see that everybody's struggling. You know, and you think that the guy on the corner store who has a little deli, you think that the guy with the little pizzeria or the hardware store, oh, that guy must be making some money. He's a business owner.
00:08:20
Speaker
But they're not. They're they're you living a very middle class you know lifestyle oftentimes. And so ah that was very revealing to me. ah So that's where the genesis of my yeah latest entrepreneurial vision SegWik has come from.
00:08:35
Speaker
Tell me a bit more about SegWik and what it does. Well, so SegWik was my answer to the challenges that face small business owners. Small business owners don't know what they don't know. They they don't they they have gaps.
00:08:50
Speaker
They have gaps in technology understanding. They have gaps in operations training. They have gaps in knowledge about marketing.
00:09:01
Speaker
They have gaps in knowledge about automation. And if you're a fan, if any of your listeners have read Michael Gerber's E-Myth series, you recognize that most small business owners are tradespeople who went into the business delivering that trade.
00:09:24
Speaker
So an electrician gets annoyed at his boss, quits and opens up an electrician company, a plumber, quits and creates a plumbing company or a chef opens up a restaurant and you think to yourself, well, obviously that that's logical.
00:09:39
Speaker
But when you start to think about all of the other things that a restaurant needs, besides just cooking in the kitchen, you start to recognize that the chef turned ah restaurant owner is ill-equipped to run a restaurant. The plumber turned plumbing company ah person is ill-equipped to run a plumbing company because They haven't been trained to do it, have they? They've been trained to to be a great plumber. That gives them the confidence to be able to go off and do it themselves. A chef, great chef, people come in, eat their food.
00:10:11
Speaker
But I suppose when it comes down to the hiring of the staff, the paying of the bills, the rates, the rent, all those sorts of things, it's then, ah you I've experienced it myself. you You're great at what you do.
00:10:23
Speaker
You then decide to run a business doing it.
Automating Customer Journeys with Segwik
00:10:25
Speaker
And before you know where you are, you have a multitude of trades that you have to add on to your skill set in order to be able to deliver the actual business and what you're saying segwick you've created ah solution to that marketing type problem so that small business owners can learn more about the marketing and the processes of marketing more Yeah, and more than that too, is that every business ah experiences or when you create a business and you enter the marketplace as a business in the market, ah there's this ah almost this ghost-like or this theoretical customer journey that your future customers will experience.
00:11:15
Speaker
And your business puts out, it emanates a customer journey, whether you have consciously thought about that journey or not. it' It just exists. And what I mean by that is, for example, if you're a car company, you're a car dealer, there's 10 year olds that are in your customer journey right now. They just don't realize it yet. They're even pre-need.
00:11:40
Speaker
They don't even need your product yet. But as they turn 16 or 17 years old here in the States, then they start to maybe explore on a website. yeah they They want to get a car.
00:11:52
Speaker
ah So they become, come on your business's radar, so to speak. They start to explore your website. They start to read reviews. Well, maybe they fill out a contact form or they dial your telephone number. Now they're deeper into your customer journey.
00:12:07
Speaker
And then you answer the phone and you set an appointment for somebody to come in and visit your shop. And now they're even deeper into your customer journey. And now they're meeting with a salesperson, et cetera, et cetera, all the way through the full buying process.
00:12:22
Speaker
And so what I've found is that most business owners don't really tend to think about that process very much. Through years of consulting the small business community, my one primary takeaway is that If you lack a framework to operate your business and you're wondering, well, why am i still the same size company as I was five years ago?
00:12:47
Speaker
My solution that I have developed in the Segwit company is that if you consciously develop your customer journeys and you map your everything that has to happen from the beginning of their customer life cycle all the way through onboarding, through the sales process, and through customer loyalty. If you could break down those steps one at a time ah from landing on your website to placing a telephone call and and how you want to run those steps as a business, well, you've basically just figured out 90% of the complexities of your business.
Business Process Orchestration and Music: A Comparison
00:13:24
Speaker
So mapping that for one customer means now, you have a scalable company that you can repeat over and over again. And so you could train your staff on this is how customers need to be interacted with. This is how you answer the phone when they hang hang up. This is the button you press to send an email.
00:13:44
Speaker
The email should have this kind of content in it. And so that's what SegWik does is it gives businesses is a framework for them to lay all of their customer processes into and have it automate itself as much as possible and be as frictionless to run your business as possible.
00:14:05
Speaker
Yes, the car buying analogy is an interesting one, because there's an emotional aspect to buying a car, especially when you're getting your first car. It's the car that you've dreamed about. You've had a picture of it on your bedroom wall.
00:14:21
Speaker
Alongside the The supercars, they'll be the car that you know that you're likely to get to be able to afford. It's an emotional decision because you're building, you're saving for it for the first part.
00:14:32
Speaker
You have to pass your test, you have to get your license, you have to get the insurance organized. But the the process of managing that customer relationship has to also recognize that emotional aspect of of the purchasing process as well.
00:14:47
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And and that's where the the art meets the science. And I often use this this analogy that, well, first of all, i people like to throw around this word entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur. I ah yes i guess it's a French word.
00:15:04
Speaker
And as opposed to being a business owner. And then even the business owner is also sometimes just used wrongly. And this is being a little bit cynical, but...
00:15:16
Speaker
Most people who own a business, really what they own is a job because the business wouldn't operate if they didn't show up. And then if they just go on vacation, the business ceases operating.
00:15:29
Speaker
they They don't make money during that period of time. yeah It's my theory that an entrepreneur and a business owner is a person who consciously creates the business step by step. It's a person who invents the business, not like not just that they're inventing the the widget,
00:15:52
Speaker
that the business sells, not that they're just inventing the recipes that the restaurant sells, but they're inventing all of the processes of the business. And so if you think about your business like a like a magic box,
00:16:07
Speaker
and that magic box is perfect on all sides and you're holding it in your hand, all of the business processes that exist within your business are operating inside of that business inside of that box and you're on the outside of the box and you're able to construct and move around and invent the processes that happen inside of the box, but you're the owner outside of the box.
00:16:33
Speaker
And when you start to think about your business that way, You're in the best position to then have something to sell or what the venture capitalists call exit. yes We all want, we were all building ah business to have hopefully some sort of, uh, uh, equity or, or some sort of, um, just a payoff at the end.
00:16:56
Speaker
And so the better that you build that box, the more equity that you're going to be able to sell it for. when you're ready to sell that business. And so to your point, the entrepreneur is a person who wants to build all of those processes.
00:17:12
Speaker
And then of course, you want to make sure that those processes feel human and they feel automated at and they don't feel rigid.
The Entrepreneur as a Conductor
00:17:21
Speaker
and And that's where the art meets the science. And and ah I love this analogy that you and I were talking about this orchestration that you're the conductor.
00:17:30
Speaker
ah Do you want to get into that a little bit? Yeah. I mean, when we first spoke about this and looked at what Segwik does and that you told me about your career as a composer first, i was thinking like this so sort of fits together. You've not stopped being a composer.
00:17:47
Speaker
You can have an organization which has lots of different pieces of software, lots of people doing different things. But as an HR professional, I'm very often asked by organizations to help them sort out why one part of the organization isn't working well with another part of the organization is because they operate independently.
00:18:08
Speaker
This orchestration part is that, yeah, you can get together the biggest symphony orchestra you want in the world, but, you know, they will not be able to play the symphony unless somebody is there to provide the coordination, to tap the rostrum and like lift the baton. And everybody knows now is the time that we start to play.
00:18:30
Speaker
That's the role of the entrepreneur, to be it the the person, the business owner, the entrepreneur, to be the person who select taps the rostrum and says, now we're going to play. You do the rehearsals, you practice it, you bring it all together.
00:18:43
Speaker
And that, from when I was looking at the Segwik website and the conversation that we had with you prior to this, that's what you do. You are enabling people to be more of a conductor than a manager and to bring...
00:18:58
Speaker
the whole of the organization together as one to be able to perform the symphony rather than, you know, bringing together ah classical violinist together with a um jazz trumpeter, with a hip hop artist, with a country guitar player.
00:19:16
Speaker
You're not going to get the same symphony, the same synergies, there's connections between those words that you would get if you bring together people for the common purpose with tools that enable them to work together.
00:19:31
Speaker
And then you can have your symphony. I love that analogy. And and I'll just... I'll just add to it and and maybe clarify some thinking on that. The, the analogy of a symphony orchestra is that people are playing, ah predetermined notes and that they're being guided through something that's really written on the page. And I, I was fortunate enough to have, uh, some classical music training, but I all, I was also, uh, fortunate to have jazz and rock training and, uh,
00:20:06
Speaker
they they both have their merits, of course, but the the jazz and the rock tend to have this layer of improvisation that I think that you're referring to. And so i would use the analogy that most businesses are running more like an improvised garage band. don't know if you have that expression. Yes.
00:20:28
Speaker
Right. so So most businesses are performing at let's just say it ah at like a middle school basketball team level, ah in terms of their coordination between their staff members, and and in terms of the idea that, well, we're sciencing every, that's right, I used sciencing as a verb, yeah where, you know, where we've scienced every step of the business. And again, I get back to this idea of Framing out the customer journey, that's your opportunity to really science every step.
00:21:05
Speaker
And so I love the analogy of the classical symphony orchestra, but but that's not to take away from our our jazz colleagues who can similarly commit to a score.
Comprehensive Customer Interaction Management with Segwik
00:21:15
Speaker
and uh you know play play what's on the note and play something that's rehearsed and then improvise and i think that i totally agree with you but i'm going to add to it again little bit because the person who improvises who has the ability to improvise in a piece of music has invariably previously
00:21:36
Speaker
had the training which enables them to understand their instrument, to know how it will blend with other instruments in and its capabilities. You are always so much better off when you understand your role within an organization properly.
00:21:53
Speaker
you've got some understanding of other people's roles and you can so then start to see what needs to be improvised when the circumstances change. There is a a show here in the UK which I saw years ago now but it was called One and it was a group of musicians who who were going to play their music in this in this small theater.
00:22:17
Speaker
It was actually a bar. But they didn't know what they were going to play. They were going to play music which would be an interpretation of the mood in the room. But in order to be able to do that,
00:22:28
Speaker
They needed to have a lot of training and in understanding their instruments, understanding the way to create the emotion in the music that would relate to the emotions that the people in the room were exhibiting. So for people coming in and looking for a party, the music would be party. If people coming in and be sitting down and being quiet,
00:22:49
Speaker
the music would reflect the way in which people were behaving and how they were feeling. That, I think, when the the way in which you've described to me how Segwik works is that you have all of these systems in place to help the business owner operate their business effectively.
00:23:07
Speaker
but you also still have the opportunity within those to implement the human interaction or the way in which a specific customer needs to be communicated with.
00:23:19
Speaker
So nobody is being put through the ah process like it you know it starts here, it finishes there, you are going to do it because that's how we do it as the supplier.
00:23:30
Speaker
The suppliers who are most successful are those that can adapt to their customers. And what you've done with SegWik is incorporate that personalization into the system. exactly. Thank you for for sharing that and and and boiling down and saying it even better than than maybe I can.
00:23:48
Speaker
i just I just want to go back to to reiterate ah one more time on this analogy, that because I think it's really important that the the listeners who are entrepreneurial out there, who are trying to grow their business, I really think it's important that they really take stock of where they're ah where their minds are at and and where they are in the the maturity and the development of their business. and And so getting back to this idea of improvising your way through the the whole business process,
00:24:22
Speaker
Sure, you can you can have an improvisational type of band. You can have the ah a great band that is improvisational day to day.
00:24:35
Speaker
But you you really need to like you think think of the Miles Davis Quartet or think of any bebop quartet. You have four or five people who are at the top of each one of their individual games and they know how to play off of each other.
00:24:53
Speaker
At any point, ah they could set up their instruments at any point of the day on any place in the world, and they would be able to vibe off of each other and have a ah great sounding tune. But not every one of us are playing at the top of their game. Like getting back to that analogy of the chef becomes the restaurant owner.
00:25:12
Speaker
That chef becoming a restaurant owner it might be a great chef at the top of his game, but he is not a great accountant. He is not playing at the top of his game in terms of his marketing.
00:25:23
Speaker
He's and and so you have these blends of maybe you're you have this one rock star in your band, but everybody else is a novice. And so because of all of these reasons, because that because we can't escape that.
00:25:36
Speaker
And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm not saying that we should feel ashamed ah at any point because that's just what entrepreneur and small business is. So if we have to accept that reality, then let's try to have a framework that can help to fix that. And the framework that we came up with was the SegWik system, which as you were pointing out is a framework by which you can easily think about each step that goes into running your business from the moment a customer understands that they need your product all the way through servicing them and ah trying to gain loyalty after you're you're done servicing their account
00:26:21
Speaker
And if you could break down all of those steps into easily digestible pieces and and recognize that you're going to learn and maybe some things might be uncomfortable, but you're going to be relieved that you have a tool in front of you that has nearly every digital tool that you might need to operate your business without having to refer or go outside of the tool to find very much to close the gaps.
00:26:50
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, it's great talking to you. Thank you very much, Pete, for sharing your take on on all of this. And it's quite inspirational. Thank you very much. Really appreciate your
Closing Remarks and Further Information
00:27:02
Speaker
time.
00:27:02
Speaker
It's been a very interesting episode of The Independent Minds. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abusida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Pete Romano from Segwick, a company based in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA, which provides businesses of all sizes the with the ability to automate their customer management from the very beginning of their customer journey.
00:27:30
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us at abusida.co.uk. There is a link in the description. I must remember to thank the team at matchmaker.fm for introducing me to Pete.
00:27:42
Speaker
If you are a podcaster looking for interesting guests, or if like Pete, you have something very interesting to say, matchmaker is where matches of great hosts and great guests are made.
00:27:53
Speaker
There is a link to matchmaker.fm and an offer code in the description. If you are listening to the independent minds on your smartphone, you may like to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data.
00:28:07
Speaker
So listening on 3.0 means you can wave goodbye to buffering. There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about the business and personal telecom solutions from 3 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code.
00:28:22
Speaker
The description also includes links to all the websites that have been mentioned in this episode of The Independent Minds. It's description that is well worth reading. If you've liked this episode of The Independent Minds, please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:28:38
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future interesting episodes, please subscribe. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abusida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think.
00:28:51
Speaker
Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.