Eli Portnoy, CEO and co-founder of BackEngine, joins Craig Andrews to expose the flaws in traditional customer feedback systems—and why leadership demands better data. A seasoned entrepreneur and Harvard Business School Executive Fellow, Eli dives into how B2B companies often make strategic decisions using flawed insights from biased surveys.

Eli unpacks how leadership in the AI era means throwing out broken instruments like opinion surveys and adopting tools that capture real, unfiltered customer conversations. He explains how BackEngine uses large language models to surface actionable feedback from client interactions—email threads, Zoom calls, and more—giving leaders a fuller, more accurate picture.

His leadership philosophy? You can’t solve the right problems if you’re asking the wrong questions. Eli makes a compelling case for empowering decision-makers with authentic customer sentiment—without the distortion of surveys or false memories.

Want to learn more about Eli Portnoy's work? Check out their website at https://backengine.ai.

Connect with Eli Portnoy on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliportnoy/.

Key Points with Timestamps

• 00:00 – Craig’s coma story and the power of resilient teams

• 00:51 – Introduction of Eli Portnoy and his leadership background

• 01:57 – Eli’s upbringing in Mexico and influence of bilingualism

• 05:29 – Studying political science and its unexpected relevance to tech leadership

• 07:09 – Why Eli left consulting to pursue entrepreneurship

• 09:02 – First startup leap and learning to build products

• 10:07 – Voice of the Customer: What it is and why it matters

• 12:04 – Major flaws in opinion surveys and political polling parallels

• 13:55 – False memories, bias, and how it sabotages business decisions

• 15:18 – The limits of Net Promoter Score and why it still has value

• 17:07 – Using decoy questions to find real answers in customer research

• 18:19 – The "broken speedometer" analogy for bad data

• 19:17 – Lessons from Ford and Jobs: customers reveal problems, not solutions

• 21:23 – What BackEngine AI actually does and how it works

• 23:04 – Mining customer conversations using LLMs instead of surveys

• 24:46 – Pulling copy-worthy insights directly from customer voices

• 26:03 – Why marketers and product leaders benefit from real-time customer data

• 27:17 – How to connect with Eli and learn more about BackEngine

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment in my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;10
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on this show.

00;00;51;10 - 00;01;16;26
Craig Andrews
Today I want to welcome Eli Portnoy. He is a serial entrepreneur and the co-founder and CEO of BackEngine, a AI. It is a platform that helps B2B companies harness the voice of the customer with the power of AI. And we're going to talk about that. What that means voice of the customer and why it's important. Eli previously built and sold.

00;01;16;29 - 00;01;19;18
Craig Andrews
Think nir and since 360.

00;01;19;18 - 00;01;40;23
Craig Andrews
He's a serial entrepreneur, just builds business after business. And he's also an executive fellow at the Harvard Business School. So if you think voice of the customer is important, be one. Tune in. If you don't think it's important, you should listen because it is. And we're going to get into that. Eli, welcome.

00;01;40;25 - 00;01;43;21
Eli Portnoy
Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.

00;01;43;23 - 00;01;57;06
Craig Andrews
So first off let's tackle the name. So I looked at it look like Eli because when folks are searching for you, they're going to be like how you spell Eli and it's Eli. So what's what's the, what's the backstory on that?

00;01;57;08 - 00;02;14;08
Eli Portnoy
Yeah, I grew up in Mexico, and the spelling for Eli was Eli. And then I moved out here and I never changed it. And so about 95% of people call me Eli. And I take no offense to it, but you asked for the correct bringing me down. And so Sally.

00;02;14;11 - 00;02;17;01
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Now we're. Where did you grow up? In Mexico.

00;02;17;03 - 00;02;19;18
Eli Portnoy
Mexico City?

00;02;19;21 - 00;02;20;28
Craig Andrews
Never been.

00;02;20;28 - 00;02;21;12
Craig Andrews
But,

00;02;21;14 - 00;02;22;22
Eli Portnoy
Is it.

00;02;22;24 - 00;02;31;28
Craig Andrews
I've heard, you know, some of the things that that kind of challenge. My thinking is I think of Mexico as being, like, hot. You know, I live in Texas,

00;02;31;28 - 00;02;38;01
Craig Andrews
and I think in Mexico, being kind of hot, maybe hot, hotter than Texas.

00;02;38;03 - 00;02;42;22
Eli Portnoy
It's it depends where in Mexico. But Mexico City's actually very, very high.

00;02;42;22 - 00;02;55;20
Eli Portnoy
I'm on the mountains, so it's the the elevation basically keeps it almost Mediterranean weather like, so it never gets too hot and it never gets too cold. It's actually quite wonderful.

00;02;55;23 - 00;03;07;12
Craig Andrews
Wow. When I saw something once that, you know, apparently a lot of a lot of folks in Mexico live up at altitude.

00;03;07;14 - 00;03;27;24
Eli Portnoy
Yeah. Because, like, if you think about the Rocky Mountains, like those stretched out all the way through Mexico. And so the majority of Mexico is on the mountains, it's, there's a lot of mountainous terrain there. Mexico City literally had a very high elevation, and that's 20 something million people.

00;03;27;27 - 00;03;30;04
Craig Andrews
Wow. What is the elevation?

00;03;30;07 - 00;03;31;27
Eli Portnoy
I remember off the top of my head,

00;03;31;27 - 00;03;33;20
Eli Portnoy
but it's it's high.

00;03;33;22 - 00;03;44;29
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, one of the things I saw was kind of a limitation in Mexico is a lot of these major areas are in the mountains, and so it's hard to set up.

00;03;44;29 - 00;03;51;05
Craig Andrews
You know, it's hard to get trains in and, you know, it's hard to transport goods in Mexico.

00;03;51;07 - 00;04;11;04
Eli Portnoy
The the issue that I remember very vividly growing up there is the pollution, because it's effectively in the mountains and it's like almost like a valley inside of the mountain. And so all the pollution from the city of 20 something million people would just get stuck in that in that area, and it wouldn't have ways to get past it.

00;04;11;04 - 00;04;15;21
Eli Portnoy
So yeah, the mountains definitely created a whole, a whole bunch of issues.

00;04;15;23 - 00;04;20;13
Craig Andrews
Now, obviously speak with a very clean, natural American accent.

00;04;20;19 - 00;04;24;24
Craig Andrews
What ages were you living in Mexico? How did you how did you end up with nice American accent?

00;04;24;26 - 00;04;36;01
Eli Portnoy
I shouldn't. It's. My dad is American, and so, from an early age, I started talking to him in English. And that I think that that really numbed my accent.

00;04;36;01 - 00;04;44;18
Eli Portnoy
But it's a good question. I, I didn't start speaking English until I was five, and I lived most of my childhood in Mexico, so I really should have an accent.

00;04;44;20 - 00;04;56;15
Craig Andrews
Wow. Wow. Or where? Valuable skill to be able to speak. Presumably fluent Spanish and English at the same time.

00;04;56;17 - 00;04;58;09
Eli Portnoy
It's been helpful, for sure.

00;04;58;11 - 00;05;01;26
Craig Andrews
Now you have an employee. You were telling me earlier you have an employee in Brazil.

00;05;01;26 - 00;05;04;02
Craig Andrews
How's your Portuguese?

00;05;04;04 - 00;05;07;21
Eli Portnoy
Non-existent. I can maybe make out if it's in.

00;05;07;21 - 00;05;15;07
Eli Portnoy
If it's in, like, written out, I can maybe make out what it what it's saying, but the spoken language, I can't at all.

00;05;15;09 - 00;05;23;08
Craig Andrews
Well, interesting. So when did you move to America?

00;05;23;10 - 00;05;26;17
Eli Portnoy
For college. So I was probably, like, 18.

00;05;26;19 - 00;05;29;01
Craig Andrews
Wow. And where'd you go?

00;05;29;04 - 00;05;34;27
Eli Portnoy
I went to University of Pennsylvania, Wharton school. Not Warren. I went to that.

00;05;34;27 - 00;05;35;12
Eli Portnoy
The,

00;05;35;12 - 00;05;37;29
Eli Portnoy
you know, what was it called? The College of,

00;05;37;29 - 00;05;45;29
Eli Portnoy
the I forget what they called. It was like SARS or something, but it was the college. Not the not Wharton, not the business school.

00;05;46;02 - 00;05;47;11
Craig Andrews
Ni and,

00;05;47;11 - 00;05;51;16
Craig Andrews
And what did you study there?

00;05;51;18 - 00;05;54;24
Eli Portnoy
I studied political science.

00;05;54;26 - 00;05;55;15
Craig Andrews
Nice.

00;05;55;15 - 00;05;56;25
Craig Andrews
Nice line up for a,

00;05;56;25 - 00;06;03;08
Craig Andrews
I based venture. All right. Connect. Connect the dots for me. How did you go from poly side,

00;06;03;08 - 00;06;06;20
Craig Andrews
heading up some AI tech company.

00;06;06;23 - 00;06;14;08
Eli Portnoy
I had no idea what I wanted to do when I was, like, thinking about majors. I just know it was fascinating. It was this, like,

00;06;14;08 - 00;06;28;04
Eli Portnoy
First of all, I found, like, geopolitical stuff really interesting. And the the work in college was all about analog, like, reading these long books and analyzing and thinking through my, my thesis,

00;06;28;04 - 00;06;38;10
Eli Portnoy
I did on terrorism and just like, exploring, like, what are the different types of terrorist terrorism that happen based on the types of government systems that are in place?

00;06;38;10 - 00;06;41;23
Eli Portnoy
And I just found all of it just incredibly interesting.

00;06;41;23 - 00;06;55;23
Eli Portnoy
Now, if I had known that my career would lead me down to I, I probably wouldn't have had to go to school because I would have been able to make some very smart investment decisions if I could have seen that 20 something years ago. But it was just,

00;06;55;23 - 00;06;57;27
Eli Portnoy
just something that was fascinating for me.

00;06;58;00 - 00;07;09;21
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So, okay, again, connect me through. How did you end up on the tech where, you know, how did you end up in the tech world?

00;07;09;23 - 00;07;34;16
Eli Portnoy
Yeah. So right after school, I got a job as a management consultant, and the. It sounded so incredibly glamorous. The way the way was framed and position and the way we all thought it, like we thought it meant basically traveling around the world as these 22 year olds and advising these massive corporations on their strategy. And we all thought we knew what their strategy should be.

00;07;34;17 - 00;07;46;06
Eli Portnoy
We all thought we were smart enough to do that. And it turns out what it really was was traveling all over the country, basically being away five days a week and, staying up till like ten, 1030 at night,

00;07;46;06 - 00;07;51;02
Eli Portnoy
at the client's office, working on PowerPoint slides and moving little boxes around,

00;07;51;02 - 00;07;52;27
Eli Portnoy
and just trying to make things, like, really pretty.

00;07;53;03 - 00;08;05;22
Eli Portnoy
And then go back to the hotel and spending 2 or 3 more hours moving boxes around on a PowerPoint. And so it was neither glamorous nor interesting, nor were we really doing anything strategic because we were 22 year olds and do nothing.

00;08;05;22 - 00;08;12;29
Eli Portnoy
But I found it very found it. I found it much harder than I, I realized, just like it was,

00;08;12;29 - 00;08;17;10
Eli Portnoy
it was hard to be away in random cities every week.

00;08;17;10 - 00;08;52;11
Eli Portnoy
And it was also just really not a not a, like, not a great match with my skills. Like, I'm not the most detailed person in the world and what this job required was like pixel level detail awareness, because really my job was to move boxes on a PowerPoint. I don't mean that in a joking way. Like the partners and the senior managers, and like the people on the consulting team would engage in, like these incredibly interesting strategic initiatives, and then they would come up with the material and exactly what we wanted to say in the story.

00;08;52;14 - 00;09;02;04
Eli Portnoy
And then they would like, ask me to put that together in a slide and it just it was hard for me. It was not what I, what I was great at. So,

00;09;02;04 - 00;09;13;21
Eli Portnoy
I started to think really hard about what else I could do. And I started to develop this idea for business and one day I just decided to go for it.

00;09;13;21 - 00;09;32;25
Eli Portnoy
And so I left to start a tech company. I'd never built a tech company. I knew nothing about building a tech company, but it just felt like there was an opportunity. And it sounded like such a better, more interesting path than what I was doing. And so I just I took a leap. And that was the beginning of it, because I learned how to build products.

00;09;32;25 - 00;09;40;13
Eli Portnoy
And ultimately that experience got me into business school, which got me a job at Amazon, where I learned, like actually, how to build,

00;09;40;13 - 00;09;46;24
Eli Portnoy
in the technology space. And then from there I started another venture, and that's what I've been doing since.

00;09;46;26 - 00;09;49;12
Craig Andrews
Very cool. So let's,

00;09;49;12 - 00;09;54;01
Craig Andrews
Let's start talking about the,

00;09;54;01 - 00;10;07;00
Craig Andrews
BackEngine AI first on voice of the customer. What does that mean? I mean, it sounds cool. Sounds like something that you would put in one of those PowerPoints back in your consulting days.

00;10;07;03 - 00;10;08;05
Eli Portnoy
Oh, for sure.

00;10;08;05 - 00;10;17;20
Eli Portnoy
And voice of the customer, it really means that, you know, the, you know, the idea of going out and collecting the,

00;10;17;20 - 00;10;23;03
Eli Portnoy
the feedback that your customers have, collecting what it is that they're saying, it's like,

00;10;23;03 - 00;10;29;15
Eli Portnoy
sending out surveys after hotel stay and asking, like, did you enjoy your experience or Net Promoter Score?

00;10;29;16 - 00;10;33;22
Eli Portnoy
Like, how likely are you to recommend this to a friend or family? Or,

00;10;33;22 - 00;10;56;09
Eli Portnoy
specific questions about like, how was your room? So those are all parts of voice of the customer where you're trying to gather what the customer is saying and what they think and what they feel about your product and your experience. And companies do that because they want to use that information to figure out where they're strong, where they're weak, where they have opportunities, where they need to really focus and make things better.

00;10;56;12 - 00;11;01;20
Eli Portnoy
And so it's become a big industry with some very large companies that do it. And,

00;11;01;20 - 00;11;15;02
Eli Portnoy
I was very lucky to spend a couple of years at Medallia, which is one of the big companies in the space, and get a chance to learn about what voice of the customer is. And I think it's it's fascinating and really powerful.

00;11;15;04 - 00;11;24;08
Craig Andrews
So one of the things that I, I run into and, you know, and I'll be honest, I'm, I'm a little bit dubious of,

00;11;24;08 - 00;11;27;11
Craig Andrews
opinion surveys.

00;11;27;11 - 00;11;36;20
Craig Andrews
I get real nervous around those. And one of the things that makes me nervous is I'm like, who's taking the time to fill these out?

00;11;36;23 - 00;12;04;18
Eli Portnoy
You know, I don't think you're wrong. I actually think there are several problems with surveys. I think the one you mentioned, like who's who's taking them out is absolutely true. There is a bias. You see it in political polling right now where the the skews are so big in terms of like, who's actually willing to take these polls versus who is and that they have to do all this, like magic wizardry in the background to try and like, make it representative.

00;12;04;18 - 00;12;40;14
Eli Portnoy
And that that creates a lot of skew. So 1,000% like I personally don't take that many surveys. I don't and like there is, there is, but there's others. Even if I could get every person to answer a survey, there is there is a couple of other issues. The first is we are all biased. We were talking about this a little bit earlier, but the I can guarantee you with almost 100% confidence that if I ask you how many times in the past year you have been to the gym, you will inflate the number because it's a natural bias that we all have.

00;12;40;14 - 00;12;58;22
Eli Portnoy
We all wish we were working out more, and we all remember those times that we did much more vividly than the days that we didn't. And then if I ask you, how many times have you been to McDonald's in the past year, you will almost certainly give me a lower number. The exact opposite effect of going to the gym.

00;12;58;25 - 00;13;24;25
Eli Portnoy
And that's true for almost everything we do. If we associate it positively, we're going to inflate it negatively. We're going to deflate it. And so that's a big issue when you're asking someone about their about anything, there's going to be bias built in. The even bigger issue is recall. It's very very hard for us to remember like very important details in our lives, let alone like things that don't really matter that much to us.

00;13;24;25 - 00;13;55;27
Eli Portnoy
So like asking someone after they visited a service or they bought something where they heard it from and maybe they heard about it six weeks ago, like that might be very important to us because we really care how they heard about us. The user doesn't care. The user almost certainly doesn't have an accurate recollection of it. And so to basically ask them, you have the bias of who's actually answering versus who's not, whether they like positively or inflating it or deflating it, and whether they even remember it.

00;13;55;29 - 00;14;01;09
Eli Portnoy
And you end up with, you know, not the most accurate data.

00;14;01;11 - 00;14;06;21
Craig Andrews
Yeah. You know, it's funny, I was talking to somebody earlier today. I,

00;14;06;21 - 00;14;08;23
Craig Andrews
and just this afternoon and,

00;14;08;23 - 00;14;21;06
Craig Andrews
I was talking about podcasts like yesterday, and I was like, oh, yeah, I posted earlier this week. And then it hit me. I was like, oh no, it posted yesterday. Okay. But but it's been it's example. It's been a couple of days.

00;14;21;06 - 00;14;26;25
Craig Andrews
It's been a busy week. So, you know, 24 hours ago feels like days ago.

00;14;26;27 - 00;14;39;05
Eli Portnoy
Yeah. Oh I know that feeling. That's exactly right. It's it's hard. It's it's hard to get that kind of data from someone and get it nice and accurate.

00;14;39;08 - 00;14;41;17
Craig Andrews
Now the the net promoter score

00;14;41;17 - 00;14;54;15
Craig Andrews
I, I don't know a lot about the science behind that, but I know it. It's it's fairly it's a rigorous test. There's apparently some good science behind it. Are you familiar with it.

00;14;54;18 - 00;15;18;26
Eli Portnoy
Yeah for sure. And listen I think, you know, it's easy to poke at these methodologies and no methodology is perfect. At the same time, I in a lot of cases something is better than nothing. And so I say all that because I actually respect NPS a lot. And I think it is very valuable. But to say that it's not that it's flawless is just not true.

00;15;18;28 - 00;15;41;06
Eli Portnoy
Like one of the famous examples is that if you ask people for to basically do net promoter for McDonald's and McDonald's always scores really, really low. And it's not because McDonald's is not. Well, like it's just because think about the question you're asking, how likely are you to recommend this to a friend? Why in the world would you recommend McDonald's to a friend?

00;15;41;12 - 00;16;00;25
Eli Portnoy
Your friend already knows about McDonald's? Like in what scenario? So yes, the NPS scores are going to be low, but it's not reflective of whether people like McDonald's or not. So again, that's not to say it's not good in most contexts. I actually think it is. It's just it's important to be aware of the limitations.

00;16;00;28 - 00;16;04;12
Craig Andrews
You know, it's interesting, I, I was working with some my,

00;16;04;12 - 00;16;11;10
Craig Andrews
year and a half ago or something like that, and they were talking about doing a survey, and I actually have a blog out

00;16;11;10 - 00;16;19;18
Craig Andrews
out there saying how opinion surveys and focus groups are ruining your business. And at one point I recommended,

00;16;19;18 - 00;16;25;10
Craig Andrews
a Net Promoter score. To me, it's like, well, Craig, that seems contrary to what you told me earlier.

00;16;25;13 - 00;16;31;15
Craig Andrews
I was like, well, no, I if you read the article that I posted, what you heard me talk about was,

00;16;31;15 - 00;16;44;26
Craig Andrews
sometimes you can get use decoys to find the answer you're looking for. And I think the Net Promoter score is actually a decoy. It's not asking how your experience was. It's. Would you recommend it to a friend?

00;16;44;28 - 00;16;48;14
Eli Portnoy
Yeah, which I think is part of why it's so powerful.

00;16;48;16 - 00;16;56;25
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, it it's somewhat like, you know, you were talking about the political polling. I know there was a poll that they ran and,

00;16;56;25 - 00;17;07;15
Craig Andrews
I first heard about it in 2016, which was, of course, was an election that surprised a lot of people. And the most accurate polls, I believe, didn't ask, how are you going to vote?

00;17;07;18 - 00;17;10;21
Craig Andrews
They asked, how do you believe your neighbor will vote?

00;17;10;23 - 00;17;17;28
Eli Portnoy
Right? Because that like fully took out the bias, which is like the the thing we talked about before about working out or,

00;17;17;28 - 00;17;23;00
Eli Portnoy
going to the gym for like there was a negative association with,

00;17;23;00 - 00;17;34;05
Eli Portnoy
with how people perceived they would be perceived based on who they voted for. And so they were less reluctant to be honest, or they just had a bias, unconscious bias.

00;17;34;07 - 00;17;38;24
Eli Portnoy
But with someone else like that goes away, who cares? So yeah, it makes.

00;17;38;27 - 00;17;51;10
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So what's the impact? What happens to businesses when they do these opinion surveys? Because I mean, I admire them for taking the time, investing the money to try to get feedback from customers.

00;17;51;10 - 00;17;58;29
Craig Andrews
But what are the what are the risks and how could that impact businesses? Well, it's like,

00;17;59;01 - 00;18;19;28
Eli Portnoy
I have two answers to that, and I'm going to share a car story for each of them. So the risk is you drive off the lot with a car that has a broken speedometer, and you think you're driving at 30 miles an hour, but you're actually driving at 78. What's the risk? The risk is you're going to make bad decisions.

00;18;20;05 - 00;18;38;27
Eli Portnoy
If you think you're driving at 30 and you're in a school zone, you're going to get a ticket. If you're like, if you make a turn in the rain, you're going to go out of control. Like there's a lot of risks to making strategic decisions off of bad data. And so I think that's the the real problem and the concern.

00;18;39;00 - 00;18;42;12
Eli Portnoy
The flip side of it is, you know, the story about,

00;18;42;12 - 00;18;58;23
Eli Portnoy
Ford, when I think at some point he said if I asked consumers what they wanted, they would have told me they wanted a faster horse. And and a lot of people talk about that. And, and the lesson they learn is consumers don't know what they want.

00;18;58;23 - 00;19;17;06
Eli Portnoy
We shouldn't even ask them for it because they don't even know what they want. And I actually I read it differently. I think they didn't know what their problem was. Their problem was they they wanted something faster. They wanted to get to where they were going faster. What they weren't very good at was devising the solution. The solution they proposed was a faster horse.

00;19;17;08 - 00;19;23;19
Eli Portnoy
I what I take away from this example is you should ask consumers and you should,

00;19;23;19 - 00;19;39;02
Eli Portnoy
solicit the information because it is important. But you have to be very, very thoughtful about what you take out of it. You have to make sure that you're understanding, like what consumers are good at, where the issues are and how they respond to these things, and treat it with appropriate enough,

00;19;39;02 - 00;19;44;01
Eli Portnoy
sort of like understanding of its blind spots.

00;19;44;01 - 00;20;04;05
Eli Portnoy
Because if I go back to that first story, I've got a car with a broken speedometer. If I'm positive it's seven, it's 30 miles an hour and it's 70, that's a real problem. But if I know that the speedometer is broken, then I'm going to rely on it as a gauge. But then I'm also going to look to see how fast it feels like I'm going, and I'll be able to get to a better outcome.

00;20;04;13 - 00;20;13;02
Eli Portnoy
And so I think don't rely on it as like the only instrument, but it is an important instrument to have in your collection, at least in my opinion.

00;20;13;04 - 00;20;39;21
Craig Andrews
Well, and when you were talking about the Henry Ford quote, it also made me think of Steve Jobs who said people don't know what they want until we show it to them. And I think people misunderstood what he was saying there and said, well, we're not going to do research. Well, it came out in a, in discovery in the lawsuit between Samsung and Apple, Steve Jobs consumed amazing volumes of research.

00;20;39;24 - 00;21;03;09
Craig Andrews
Yeah, he had pulled the customers, but I think it's what you were talking about. He was looking for their pains. He was trying to understand the pains. He knew the customers weren't good. The customers would never come up with the iPad. They would never come up with the iPhone. But he was able to figure out the pains and then say, okay, how do we address these pains and come out with amazing products?

00;21;03;11 - 00;21;11;28
Eli Portnoy
Yeah, exactly that. To me, it's it's all about understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the tools that we use. If we do, I think they're they're helpful.

00;21;11;28 - 00;21;18;08
Eli Portnoy
If we just go in thinking that they're, they're everything, and then we're going to get ourselves into trouble.

00;21;18;11 - 00;21;23;20
Craig Andrews
So what what does back Engine I do? How does what does it do and how does it work.

00;21;23;23 - 00;21;39;04
Eli Portnoy
Yeah. So the basic idea run back engine is to do voice of the customer. It for businesses that sell to other businesses in a way that doesn't rely on surveys. And and the reason is we talked about some of the issues with surveys.

00;21;39;04 - 00;21;43;15
Eli Portnoy
In a, in the B2B business to business setting. It's actually,

00;21;43;15 - 00;21;45;05
Eli Portnoy
not those aren't the biggest issues.

00;21;45;05 - 00;22;18;09
Eli Portnoy
The biggest issue is that most businesses that serve other businesses don't have that many customers because these are very, very large contracts. And, you know, you could be a massive business with a 100 business customers like you don't need the thousands, you don't need tens of thousands or millions. So unlike a hotel chain that's servicing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of consumers and can send out a survey and be okay if only 3% of people respond and still have enough responses that they can draw meaningful insights, a B2B business just doesn't have that big base of employees, of,

00;22;18;09 - 00;22;22;17
Eli Portnoy
customers where they can do that if they send if they have a thousand customers,

00;22;22;17 - 00;22;40;28
Eli Portnoy
that's a big business. And they send out a survey and they get 30 responses back, I don't know what they're supposed to do with that. And so our approach was to say, okay, just because we can't get enough surveys doesn't mean we shouldn't be collecting customer feedback and and voice of the customer. We should. We just have to do it in another way.

00;22;41;00 - 00;22;57;13
Eli Portnoy
And when we looked at how B2B businesses operate, they they because these contracts are so big and these customers are so important, they actually spend a huge amount of money servicing them. They build out customer success teams and account management teams and sales teams and,

00;22;57;13 - 00;23;03;28
Eli Portnoy
implementation teams and all those teams are constantly talking to customers. So there's a lot of engagement, a lot of conversation.

00;23;04;00 - 00;23;25;27
Eli Portnoy
And so what we do is we use large language models to mine all of that information and bring it back to the company and bring it back to the rest of the organization so that they they get that voice of the customer without the limitation of having just a small percentage of their customers actually responding and instead being able to see it across the entire customer base.

00;23;25;29 - 00;23;38;04
Craig Andrews
So it's, you know, signers, when we logged in to zoom, both of our our note takers showed up. We didn't come in the room.

00;23;38;04 - 00;23;43;14
Craig Andrews
But is it like listening to those, you know, listening to those things?

00;23;43;17 - 00;23;57;13
Eli Portnoy
Yeah. As long as they're between the company and a customer and we have the right consents, then yeah, we'll we'll pull that in. So let's say I was your customer and we were having a conversation about how things were going. We would pull that in and we would look to understand,

00;23;57;13 - 00;24;00;17
Eli Portnoy
did the customer say anything positive, anything negative?

00;24;00;17 - 00;24;19;27
Eli Portnoy
Were there any reactions to the service, to the support to the product, any feedback and all of that would get categorized and, and stored and then move. This would happen across all the different conversations and all the different emails and all the different interactions. And it all gets basically, consolidated into a single place.

00;24;19;27 - 00;24;29;00
Eli Portnoy
And then back engine ends up being a suite of dashboards and tools and analysis and reports that the company can run on top of it to understand how are things changing?

00;24;29;00 - 00;24;35;05
Eli Portnoy
What are our customers saying? Where are we good, where we bad, what's not working, and so on and so forth.

00;24;35;08 - 00;24;48;04
Craig Andrews
You know, as a marketer, I would love that. I mean, the. So, there was a advertiser, famous, very, very famous advertiser,

00;24;48;04 - 00;25;05;25
Craig Andrews
named David Ogilvy and his one of his most famous ads was for Rolls Royce. And the ad read, you know, at 50mph, the loudest thing you'll hear is the electric clock on the dashboard. And it was wonderful.

00;25;05;25 - 00;25;22;04
Craig Andrews
Sold tons of Rolls-Royces. He didn't write that. He went off and spent three weeks interviewing owners of Rolls-Royces. And one of the owners just said that he's like, I think we'll use that. A let's put right in the customer's language.

00;25;22;06 - 00;25;26;18
Eli Portnoy
That's an amazing story. It's also a really good ad.

00;25;26;21 - 00;25;42;20
Craig Andrews
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, I mean, think about that. That was years ago. I mean, cars have gotten a lot quieter in more recent years. This is back when those were noisy, when the air slipping through the vents and through the windows.

00;25;42;20 - 00;25;46;07
Craig Andrews
So could I get that sort of data out of back engine.

00;25;46;10 - 00;25;57;04
Eli Portnoy
Yeah, absolutely. That's that's exactly it. We we collect testimonials. We collect the way people are talking about the product and service in their own voice. We,

00;25;57;04 - 00;26;02;29
Eli Portnoy
but also find the negative stuff, the stuff that you need to know about the facts. So, yeah, all of that's fair game.

00;26;03;02 - 00;26;10;20
Craig Andrews
I love that. I love that because the other thing is when when. You know, I think there was a lesson from the,

00;26;10;20 - 00;26;23;17
Craig Andrews
industrial revolution. They were, you know, they spent a lot of money trying to figure out how to make employees more productive. And they they took one factory and they increased the lighting. The hypothesis was, you know, more lighting will increase productivity.

00;26;23;19 - 00;26;30;11
Craig Andrews
And so they were smart enough to have their control group and their their variation group. And sure enough, the,

00;26;30;11 - 00;26;41;06
Craig Andrews
production of the well lit factory went up, but so did their control group. And what they really learned from that was that when people know they're being measured, they perform differently.

00;26;41;08 - 00;26;45;05
Eli Portnoy
That's an amazing story. That's incredible.

00;26;45;08 - 00;26;54;00
Craig Andrews
And so when people are doing surveys and what have you kind of like what you were saying earlier, if you ask them how often they go to the gym. Oh, I go, yeah, I go three times a week. Yeah. Well,

00;26;54;00 - 00;26;58;00
Craig Andrews
how how many times you go to McDonald's? Oh, only on rare occasions.

00;26;58;00 - 00;27;03;09
Craig Andrews
Yeah. It, it they know they're being measured, so their behavior changes.

00;27;03;12 - 00;27;04;22
Eli Portnoy
That makes sense. That's awesome

00;27;04;22 - 00;27;08;05
Eli Portnoy
I love that. Sorry. I'm gonna borrow that one.

00;27;08;08 - 00;27;14;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah, I love this. I mean, I'm I'm fascinated by this tool. How can,

00;27;14;19 - 00;27;17;22
Craig Andrews
Ali, how can people reach you and how can they find this tool?

00;27;17;25 - 00;27;23;21
Eli Portnoy
Yeah, absolutely. The website is probably the easiest place. It's back engine that I and,

00;27;23;21 - 00;27;25;03
Eli Portnoy
you know, so email us their,

00;27;25;03 - 00;27;34;24
Eli Portnoy
info for back engine that I and I'm also on LinkedIn. People should reach out to me there and connect there and yeah, would love to hear from folks.

00;27;34;26 - 00;27;59;04
Craig Andrews
Well excellent. Well thanks for sharing that and layers and legacies. And I think, you know, as I wrap up, the one thing I would say is you gotta find some way to tap in and find the voice of the customer, find out what they're saying. Because if you're not, I mean, I it's if you're not hearing it, it's it will it will have a cost.

00;27;59;06 - 00;28;00;09
Eli Portnoy
They want.

00;28;00;11 - 00;28;02;25
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well thanks again.

00;28;02;27 - 00;28;05;12
Eli Portnoy
Thank you. It was so nice connecting with you. And,

00;28;05;12 - 00;28;09;04
Eli Portnoy
this was really fun. Thanks for having me.

00;28;09;04 - 00;28;35;28
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Ally's for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this

00;28;35;28 - 00;28;37;23
Craig Andrews
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00;28;37;25 - 00;29;01;07
Craig Andrews
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00;29;01;09 - 00;29;09;14
Craig Andrews
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00;29;09;14 - 00;31;11;17
Craig Andrews
It means a lot to my team. If you want to know more, please go to Ally's for me.com. Or follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.