Thryv Australia and New Zealand bought the Yellow Pages business back in 2021, and completely revolutionised the offering, dramatically upgrading from a printed directory to an advanced yet simple to use business platform with all the modern capabilities large businesses take for granted. So, how has Thryv evolved since, and what impacts is Gen AI revolution having on the way businesses can thrive to even greater degrees? Please watch the video interview below and read on!
Thryv acquired Sensis, the publisher of the Yellow Pages, back in 2021, and reinvigorated business with a do-it-all platform for owners to dramatically modernise day-to-day operations, customer communications, promotions and growth, giving back the precious commodity of time.
The company has been busy continuously improving its platform across 300,000 customers globally, and back in September 2024, won three awards at The Australian Business Awards 2024: Software Innovation, SaaS Innovation and Employer of Choice, which were a great vindication of its mission to provide small business owners with robust marketing and business operations tools that deliver the level of results typically experienced only by larger businesses.
No longer the printed business directory of decades past, the Thryv platform has three components:
- The first is the Thryv Command Center, a freemium central communications hub, provides a combined inbox for customer communications tracking messages from a multitude of platforms including social media (Facebook, Instagram), and email.
- To this, you can add the second component, the Thryv Business Center, which has all of the customer relationship management (CRM) features required to run a business more easily, from keeping track of clients to scheduling, digital payments, AI-enhanced social media management and more.
- A third component is the Thryv Marketing Center, which offers tools designed to help businesses market themselves, including search and social media advertising, online listings, customisable websites and AI insights.
Naturally, Thryv’s customers aren’t just thrown into the deep end once the contract has been signed. The company expl AI ns it has a “distinct understanding of how busy small business owners are” and supports its customers by providing comprehensive training and 24/7 customer support.
So, how has Thryv evolved since it acquired Sensis in 2021, and how does the all-in-one platform work?
What input do Thryv’s customers have into the process of adding new features and benefits into the cloud-based platform, and how often are new features released?
How are the reviews of multiple social platforms handled?
And how does AI fit into Thryv’s offerings?
For answers to all of this and more, we spoke with Elise Balsillie, Head of Thryv Australia and New Zealand, with that video interview embedded immediately below, after which is an AI generated transcript of our conversation, so please watch, and read on!
Here is an AI generated transcript of the video interview above:
Alex Zaharov-Reutt:
Well, hello and thank you for joining me for the TechAdvice.Life and Alex on Tech video interview. I’m joined today by Elise Balsillie. She’s the head of Thryv Australia. Welcome to the show.
Elise Balsillie:
Thank you so much for having me, Alex. Great to be here.
Alex:
Thanks for taking the time. Now, back in 2021, I spoke with Thryv, which at the time had just acquired Sensis, the publisher of the famed Yellow Pages. So now that we’re nearly in 2025, what’s a brief recap of the Thryv story and how the company has grown locally and globally since that acquisition?
Elise:
Well, a lot has been happening since that point. So in 2021, we were just acquired by Thryv. And for years, we’ve been supporting small businesses here in Australia. But small businesses were getting incredibly overwhelmed. The world had changed and all of a sudden their customers were contacting them on Messenger and WhatsApp. And people wanted to… talked to them on web chat in the middle of the night and their lives had gotten really complicated and I think for us locally here in Australia we finally had an opportunity to be able to partner with them and give them some tools to be able to support them getting some time back in their day.
Last year we also had the exciting opportunity to acquire the Yellow Pages over in New Zealand so the team has grown and I’m now heading up the team locally here in both Australia and New Zealand.
Alex:
Now just to expand on Thryv in more det AI l, there’s actually a platform that is underpinning the whole system and that was just something that was a fantasy in the heyday of the Yellow Pages printed directory so tell us a bit more about the platform itself and how it joins all that together and gives business owners sort of freedom and control.
Elise:
Absolutely I think for a lot of small business owners they’ve got a passion they open a gym because they love health and fitness or they enjoy being outside and so they became a landowner and so they became a landowner and so they became a landowner and so they became a, landscape architect and they’re working in the gardens they didn’t start up a small business, to be bogged down with appointments and invoicing, setting up a CRM, figuring out how they were going to drive repeat business or even manage their reputation online.
And I think the lives of small business owners get more and more complicated as kind of years go by. And for us as an organisation, it’s really given us a platform to be able to empower those small businesses to have access to some of the tools that large corporate organisations had so that they can drive some efficiency and automation into their business and they can spend more time making money and doing what they love, being out there in the garden or working with a client in the gym and less time worrying about admin and paperwork and all of the back-of-house things.
Alex:
Yeah, I mean, the modern era has given us the ability to have these platforms which help you to run your business and that’s what the Thryv platform is. I mean, people really need to see it to understand it, but then they see that this is what the big companies are using. Every time you talk to a call centre and they’re looking up your det AI ls, they have a platform there with a… CRM and all sorts of things that is now in the hands of small business people.
Elise:
Absolutely. And I think for a lot of small business owners, it can be really overwhelming. And I think we’ve got tens of thousands of clients across both Australia and New Zealand. And really the piece that we try and solve is what is that small business being woken up for at three o’clock in the morning?
What’s that burning platform or burning issue that they have in their head? And if that burning issue is cash flow, find a partner or a supplier to be able to work with that can help you manage that problem. If it’s that you’re spending too much money on marketing and advertising, let us partner with you and find an opportunity to be able to solve that. And I think for us, it really is one problem at a time, helping those small businesses solve those burning platforms in their business.
Let us use AI and automation and drive a process that automatically sends out the invoices, that automatically sends out the reminders if somebody doesn’t pay. Don’t rely on the carbonated paper that you’re currently working off. And… Take some of those sort of bold choices.
So I think for those customers that find it really overwhelming, it is just tackling one problem at a time. And I think when you sit back, it can be like having a whole other employee working for your business because they’re following up on your reviews online, responding to your reviews. They’re contacting your old customers to try and drive some repeat business in so that you’re not needing to spend as much money on advertising.
But I think it is – take it at your pace. Take it kind of one problem at a time. And I think for a lot of small business customers, they do get overwhelmed with the choices and options av AI lable, but can also end up in a scenario where they’ve got so many random tools that don’t talk to each other that they’re actually making their business more complicated, not less complicated.
Alex:
Now, I do want to ask you about AI . You did mention it there. But seeing as we’re sort of talking about the platform and how this is a key difference from the old way that Yellow Pages did things to the new way that Thryv does things, for a business approaching, you need today. What is a typical customer onboarding journey? And as part of that, what sort of help do you give to small businesses to really not just know your platform, but to understand it and use all those features that they probably don’t even know exist yet to massively transform how they operate online and offline?
Elise:
Yeah, really great question. So I think for a lot of small business owners, it is an overwhelming process. So when they’ve made the decision that they kind of come on board as a Thryv customer, for us at that point, we’ve got an onboarding team.
So we will schedule an onboarding call and absolutely support them. Now, Alex, for a customer like you, we’re probably going to get to that first onboarding call and you’ve connected in your accounting software. You’ve uploaded a CSV file that had all your previous client det AI ls in it and you’re going to navigate all of those things probably f AI rly seamlessly because you’ve got an understanding and a tech background. But for some customers, it can be overwhelming and daunting.
And so really, our model is to take it at their pace to be able to partner and work with those clients. And for a customer like you, Alex, you can potentially onboard yourself the whole way. And maybe you might jump on the live chat and just ping a question across just because you’re wanting to validate something or check something, but you’re that customer that can fly solo.
But for the small business owner that really needs some help and support, we’re going to help them every step of the way in getting that software set up for them. So I think it may require a few calls upfront to get it set up, but once it’s there and operating, it’s absolutely operating seamlessly.
So I think that is really the exciting part of the software is it may take you a little minute upfront to upload your customer files and do some of those activities. But moving forward, it is going to be so easy.
We’re going to let you know, Alex, when someone leaves your review online so that you can go and respond to that review. We’re going to give you some suggestions to say, hey, it’s been six months since they had their heating appliance checked. Why don’t you send them out an email and let them know that they’re due for a checkup to have their heat checked and so. Building in some of those prompts and reminders and I think giving a customer the confidence.
I think a lot of the time what I see is it’s just being there to be able to support them and whether that’s being there physically on a Zoom call or being there on a live chat session, but when a customer sends out their first email marketing campaign saying, hey, I’ve got these really great Christmas specials I want you to know about, they’ve probably never emailed their entire database previously.
Now, that can be a little nerve-wracking for some customers. So I think the really lovely thing about Thryv is that we can take it at your pace. You can run solo, you can communicate with us on chat, or if you need to, we’ve got 24-7 support available to be able to sit there and say, you know what, Alex, you’ve got this.
You’ve built out the camp AI gn, the em AI ls are amazing, everything’s set up perfectly, press the send button, let’s do it. And so I think as customers go along and after they have that kind of first experience, it gives them the confidence to keep going. And for a lot of clients. They don’t know what. they don’t know. They don’t know that they’ve got a bunch of reviews sitting on these platforms that they’ve not responded to for a really long time.
So part of it is also the education piece to bring them up to speed on how people are looking for them on the web, because not everyone searches the way that I do and not everyone sort of searches the way that you do. So making sure that they understand that there are so many different channels by which people can communicate with them and streamlining that down into something that’s really simple, easy and elegant.
Alex:
Now, when I first spoke with Thryv, we were still more than 18 months away from ChatGPT bringing forth the generative AI revolution. And it certainly wasn’t something that consumers were using like they do now. I mean, machine learning was in your iPhone to sort your photos, but you couldn’t ask it questions.
So, how has AI changed and improved Thryv’s offerings over the last couple of years since Gen AI has become an everyday thing?
Elise:
I think it has changed it in so many ways, Alex. I think it has for so many businesses. So, So first of all, if I look at it from a customer perspective, there are so many things now that we can use AI to help customers with. And I know we were just talking about reviews online, but when that customer leaves you that review, for the landscape architect, maybe they’re not sure how to respond.
What do I say? Am I defensive? Am I acknowledging that I’ve done something wrong?
And so by being able to give them some options and prompts and say, hey, here’s a couple of templated responses that we think would be fabulous in your tone of voice that would work really well. Or do you want to go in there and make some modifications to it?
I think using it to be able to sort of support customers in some of those areas, especially small businesses in Australia that don’t necessarily, they’re not copywriters, they’re not experts, they don’t work in marketing.
And so giving them those tools and that confidence to be able to do some things themselves. As an organisation, it’s also helped us in so many ways. It’s helped us be able to serve customers with the right information. If you call in today with a really complex question.
We can in seconds find out that answer for you because we’re going out there searching everything that we have and serving that service agent up with the exact right answer to be able to give you we’re able to use it internally for ourselves to help with copy and content so there are so many opportunities as an organization to be able to use AI to enhance you and I.
I was recently at a conference um over in Bangkok and i’ve recently got back and one of the things and kind of themes of that conference was in the short term AI is not taking any of these small business customers jobs people still need somewhere to go and get their coffee and need somewhere to go and do their pilates classes but what AI is going to do is the businesses that are using AI in their business are absolutely going to thrive compared to those that are not.
People want things and they’ve got certain expectations and I think the pace of change is so fast at the moment, and whether it’s voice AI or, all of the different capabilities that exist there are so many sort of tech, solutions moving in such a fast, rapid rate. And I think for a lot of small business owners, it is overwhelming.
And so they really do rely on us to make sure that we’re staying up with the sort of latest tools and tech to be able to support them. And the good thing about a platform is that you can easily add new features once you’ve polished them and made sure that they’re ready for customers.
You can just, you know, make it available to people and they don’t have to upgrade or buy new versions. It’s just there.
Alex:
And presumably you’ve got some sort of a learning portal that people can dip into and get a mini tutorial on that. And if they need further help, they can then call up or go on a live chat?
Elise:
Absolutely. And I think to that exact point, Alex, I think historically we used to use all of our customer data and research to determine what is that next exciting feature to be able to build. The customers are probably coming to you now. The customers saying, hey, I can see ChatFPT does this.
When are you going to introduce it? And so we allow our customers to vote on our roadmap. So those features are sitting there and you can vote in and say, hey, I really want this feature. You guys need to look at this. So not only do we have kind of a really easy and intuitive sort of learning platform for them to be able to use, we also allow them to kind of determine the roadmap because what we think may be the most exciting thing for those clients may not actually be solving real problems for them.
So I think having that really great dialogue between you and your customers and even a digital dialogue is incredibly important because they’re using the software every day and they should be part of that roadmap.
Alex:
Yeah, well, many of the people I speak to, the different executives, often remark that your customers can be your best R&D division because they’re the ones who are coming across the various pain points that you might not have thought of. So just, I guess, a question without notice, is there a feature or two from the last, I don’t know, six months that has been… either suggested by a customer or that has simply been introduced by Thryv’s computer people who come up with the new features that has really resonated with your customer base in Australia, New Zealand, and worldwide?
Elise:
So I think one of the features about our platform that we built in the first place was really to be that back office arm to help you drive efficiency into the business, to support with invoicing and quoting and driving repeat business in.
One of the big call-outs we got from our clients was they needed an opportunity to be able to drive leads into their business. They needed an opportunity to be able to have support managing their social channels.
Now, that’s more of a marketing capability, not sort of a back-of-office capability. So we’ve got a product called Marketing Centre, which is a graceful bolt-on to that Thryv offering to be able to give them those marketing capabilities. And a lot of the things that roll out in that space have absolutely been voted on by our customers. And one of the more recent inclusions was the inclusion of social, which was absolutely a big call-out for lots of clients. I’ve got a 20-year-old son, and if I look at my son, the reality is… is he’s on his phone all day, every day.
He is not picking up the phone to do business with you. If he can’t navigate through your social channels and communicate with you online, you’re not getting his business. And granted, he may not be everyone’s customer today, but he will be tomorrow. And so I think making sure that our clients understand the importance of being found in so many different channels is hugely beneficial.
Alex:
Yeah, I’m just thinking of the old Yellow Pages tagline, let your fingers do the walking. They’re still walking. They’re just walking all over the screen of your phone, swiping up and down.
Elise:
They are, Alex. And the interesting thing is, there are so many of our clients that we had that were missing out on vital moments in their life. They had children and they weren’t able to turn up to their kids’ soccer matches, because they were sitting in the office doing invoicing, following up on quotes, following up on appointments and bookings for tomorrow and rearranging their schedules.
There were clients who hadn’t eaten a dinner with their partner in months because they were always getting home late. And I think, being able to solve those little moments, on the surface, may think, I’ve implemented some software to help me with invoicing and quoting and running a CRM camp AI gn, but that’s actually not what we’re doing.
We’re giving them time back in the day for the thing that is most important to them. So I think it is really lovely when you get to see those nice stories on the other side, that it’s more than just the leads that you’ve driven into the business, and it’s more than just kind of the streamlining of processes.
We’re giving them kind of real and meaningful impact. So I think that, for me, is an amazing why that we all have here at Thryv.
Alex:
And no doubt, you can operate your entire business from your smartphone.
Elise:
You absolutely can. And I think there’s so many clients who historically would be out on the road and have to go back to their office because something had gone wrong and something had happened and the job sheet was on the whiteboard and they needed to go back into the filing cabinet.
And being able to give them an ability to be able to manage those moments is so vitally important. Yeah. I think a lot of… Businesses, a lot of business… People don’t really realise that they need this kind of back-end system to help organise everything about their business life.
Alex:
And once they get it, I mean, you must have some really great customer testimonials from people who just can’t believe how things have changed for the better.
Elise:
Alex, from all over Australia, and I think that is the really incredible thing, from dentists that are all of a sudden able to see far more clients and are making far more money than they were previously, because these processes are running seamlessly in the background, to a seamstress in WA that runs an alterations business who’s been able to double her revenue and hire new staff.
I think being able to see those meaningful impacts and being able to… I think there’s something special about small businesses where you go out there and you’ve got a husband and wife on a dining room table and they’ve got a dream and a business and they’re burdened down by all of these things and you get to see those moments happen where maybe there’s some branding on their clothes or they’ve got some branding on their trucks.
They’ve moved in. into a factory. They hire their first apprentice, I think, as an organisation. We play a small part in the success of so many small business stories across Australia, New Zealand, America, and Canada that it makes it such an exciting place to be because I think as a person, I feel like I’ve played a small part in the success of those small businesses, and it definitely puts kind of a spring in your step, and it’s more than the technology, and it’s more than the tools that we help them with.
We’re giving them kind of real-life moments, and I think that’s really special. Yeah. Whoever came up with the business name Thryv knew what they were doing because they knew they were going to help people to Thryv, right? Absolutely, and I think I say it all the time.
I’m out there talking to clients and talking to them about helping their businesses Thryv, and I almost feel like it’s that tongue-in-cheek moment, but it is what we’re doing, and I think it is really special, and I think I love talking to all of those clients and hearing the really great success stories from the partnerships we’ve had with them.
Alex:
Now, Elise, I do want to ask you some closing questions. I do want to ask you what your final thoughts are. But before we go into any of that, what else do we need to know about Thryv in a nutshell?
Elise:
For any small business out there who’s wanting some time back in their day, they’re unsure about technology. You don’t even necessarily need to have a burning desire to be able to do something today. We would love the opportunity to help and educate you on the art of possibility.
And I think feel free to jump on to Thryv.com.au. We’ve got a live chat functionality on the site. You can jump on, have a conversation with us. You can send through an appointment. We can set up a demo for you. Or you can just go through the information at your own pace.
But I think we’re absolutely there to be able to support you. So we’d love to help anyone who’s got any questions.
Alex:
Now, I always like to ask the people I’m interviewing if they could. And so I’m asking you, can you please share a memory of your first personal computer?
Elise:
I absolutely can. And I don’t know that it’s the first computer. So you may discount it. But my father was a member of the Victorian police. He was in the police force for about 50 years. And in the 80s, he would type up his drafts on what was an electronic typewriter. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I could do my homework on it. I could type out an entire line of text. I could go backwards. I could fix my spelling mistakes. When I was done, it would type it out. So I think for me, that was my first kind of exciting moment of tech that I thought the electric typewriter was the coolest thing in the world.
Alex:
Yeah, but then when you actually got a computer itself, that must have been even more amazing because then you had a screen. It wasn’t just paper. I mean, it wasn’t just an electric typewriter.
Elise:
Absolutely agree. And I think even thinking back to like the first mobile phone, I remember sort of in the 90s having a mobile phone that required an entire backpack to walk around with that phone. I don’t know how mobile it was. It was kind of dragging me down and weighing me down. And to think of the pace of change.
And I think when you look at technology as a company, I mean, We’ve been around for more than 100 years, and I think for 80 of those years, we were a telephone directory, and that was the sole purpose of our organization, was to connect buyers and sellers through the Yellow Pages.
Now, we still do that today, but if you think of the pace of change over the last few years, there’s SEM and SEO and social display, websites, online directories, review platforms. There are so many things, and the pace that that is evolving at is such an incredibly rapid rate, and part of me thinks that the time was a little easier when it was the electric typewriter, and it was the only option that you had in front of you.
I don’t know about the heavy mobile phone, but technology has definitely evolved, and I think our mission is to be able to support small businesses in making it simpler, in making it easier, and hopefully taking away a bit of the burden and stress of that sort of the pace that things run at. Yeah.
Alex:
Well, I mean, the old flip phone certainly has … I mean, this is one of the modern flip phones. But the old-fashioned flip phone with the buttons … Well, that’s come back in style for some people.
They want a simpler, easier phone experience, not to be hassled by notifications. I mean, they even brought it back with HMD, the company that brought Nokia phones back to life. They brought it back with the Barbie phone. Yes. A pink phone. So, I mean, there’s technology for any age group, any… There definitely is. Now, my second last question is, or my third last question, actually, is to ask if you could please share some of the best advice that you’ve received in life to help you get where you are today.
Elise:
I think, if anything, just being curious and being bold and courageous and saying yes. I think, for me as a person, I’ve always had a curiosity in relation to things within our business, within society, and a curiosity that’s kind of helped me grow and pave my pathway.
And I think sometimes we can sit and w AI t for opportunities or w AI t for things to happen. Or as a small business owner, you can be so overwhelmed that you don’t know where to start. You can just wait.
And so I think, in life, swing the bat, have a crack because I think there are so many exciting possibilities out there and you know what sometimes everything isn’t going to go according to plan but I think if you just stay there and just sit there and keep waiting for things to change nothing will change, so I think create your own destiny and your own pathway and and be curious always learning always kind of talking to people and even having conversations with yourself today Alex I was like share learnings and insights and um you absolutely will grow as an individual.
Alex:
Yeah well there’s a there’s another famous saying that says if it’s to be it’s up to me.
Elise:
Correct I couldn’t agree with you more.
Alex:
So actually that was my second last question but I have thought of one before I ask you the the final question. I mean you’re still printing the Yellow Pages right? {eople people still get it every year?
Elise:
Absolutely and I think we probably use a whole heap of sophistication behind that that people don’t actually understand and we use ,so every house in Australia and New Zealand doesn’t get a copy of the Yellow Pages.
We use ABS data, we use different data to be able to determine who are the right people. A bunch of student accommodation, we know they’ve got the fancy Barbie flip phone.
We’re not going to be delivering a paper copy of the Yellow Pages to that address. So we very much do our demographic information to understand the area, but we also use things like call tracking to monitor the calls coming through so that if you’re a customer advertising in the print book, that we can tell you specifically how many calls you got each month for that advertising, what the call duration was, so that we can help you make an ROI assessment.
But the reality is a customer who spent $3,000 or $4,000 10 years ago on a print ad may spend a couple of hundred dollars on a print ad today, but also spend an investment in lots of other places. So I think there is still a place, and I always find it interesting, I’ve done quite a number of radio segments, and you always end up with a huge influx of callers that still find the print book incredibly valuable. So I think whilst we… still have a demographic of client that’s using the book. And so, for example, my parents and my husband’s parents are book users. We want to continue to be able to deliver the books to those people that are using them.
And so for us, it is making sure we do it in an ethical way and a responsible way and making sure that we do the best possible to deliver it to those that are going to use them.
Alex:
So, Elise, what is your final message to the viewers and the readers?
Elise:
I think for any small business owners out there, absolutely, if you are not looking at digital tools to be able to help you run your business, if you’re sitting there and thinking to yourself, I’m spending so many nights and weekends working on my business, or I’m spending 30% of my time doing revenue generating activities in my business, and I’d love to be making more money, definitely look for a partner and reach out to us at Thryv or do your research online, because there are lots of people that can help you drive automation, and efficiency into your business to ensure that you are doing more that you want to do, whether that’s having dinner with your wife, whether that’s turning up to your kids’ soccer games.
But we want to empower you to be able to be doing those things, not necessarily being burdened down by paperwork and admin in your business.
Alex:
Well, Elise Balsillie, the head of Thryv Australia, thank you so much for joining me today. I wish you the best of success and I do hope we can speak again in the future!
Elise:
Absolutely. Alex, thank you so much for having me on the program. Really excited to have a chat with you today.
Alex:
Likewise. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
Elise:
Thanks.
You’ll find Thryv’s YouTube channel here.
Here’s a couple of interesting videos from the channel:
