SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome! You are listening to the CRM Success Show, where you will hear from CRM executives who have overseen some of the most interesting and complex CRM implementations. Your hosts, David Mossri and Kiro Whitey, will be bringing you real stories, real insight. Follow along on social media for updates on new episode releases, exclusive content, and much more. Enjoy the show and thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Welcome to the CRM Success Show, where we deep dive into CRM success and failure, delivering real stories with real impact. I'm Dave Masri.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

And I'm Kirawitzi.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

And today we're talking with Andy Wirtner, the senior VP slash director of banking solutions at Plains Capital Bank. So welcome, Andy.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

So Andy, we're going to start you off real simple. Please give our listeners today an overview of your background and what you do for Plains Capital Bank, please.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Sure, thanks. Primarily focused in the Salesforce space here for the last uh seven plus years. Um previously I was working on the credit side of the house, doing credit underwriting, credit approval, and that part, but then transitioned um into the CRM space with Salesforce. Um about, like I said, about seven, seven years ago. So my job here at the bank is to manage our Salesforce team and then any other solutions that they decide to put under my purview. We've got a small business lending platform that I oversee as well. But really it's uh using tech and tech space, uh any solutions in the tech space to help our bankers and our and our customers uh do their job and and have great customer experiences.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Love it. And a real unique background, I would say, because you started out, you've been with the bank for almost 14 years, uh, like you said, but you started out, I want to say frontline in a way, credit analyst and worked your way into tech. Do you want to share a little bit about that journey?

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Uh sure. You know, it's it's a pretty typical start if you're going to be in lending to start off as a credit analyst. Like you said, it is kind of a frontline um position. You learn about credit policy, kind of the inner workings of the bank, what the do's and don'ts. You start getting exposure to different kinds of products and and the offerings of the bank, you know, whether it be commercial real estate or CI lending. So it's a great way to get a lot of exposure um to the bank as a whole and work with seasoned lenders and and other individuals to kind of teach you about banking and and how it works. Um, you know, and really that that foundation is what naturally led me into the Salesforce space to begin with.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

Amazing. And you you started um Salesforce, you mentioned 2017, right? So you did about six years with with the bank working your way up from credit to portfolio, and then you got your foray into Salesforce. So how did that come about? Was it because someone left and you kind of filled that space? Tell us a bit more about that.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Yeah, so obviously there's there's some natural like overlap. Um, we were already using Salesforce at the bank um primarily as a as a pipeline tool. Um, but uh it integrated with uh our credit decisioning platform. So I was already familiar with Salesforce. And by the time that I moved into that portfolio management role, I had a lot of interaction with the individual that led our Salesforce team and our Salesforce uh group before that. So we naturally had like a lot of collaborations on on where's on places where we could see where from the credit side, Salesforce could help out. So we started collaborating on projects over time. And that's was my first introduction really into Salesforce. So I started learning the platform on the side, doing trailheads, and then working with that team kind of um on the side on different projects. And eventually um, over time, that led me to get certified as an admin because I saw the the possibilities of the platform. And then the individual that was running the group um left to pursue other opportunities. So that that was a gap. And that position was offered to me at that time, and and it was a great uh it was a great career career move for me, I feel.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

Not look back. Um, I think so I take away two aspects there. I I take away a natural curiosity to learn, upskill, improve, and be the best you can be by by going out there at the time, getting getting certified. Maybe it wasn't a requirement, right, but you did it anyway, and then seizing your opportunity when when the door opened. Would would you say that's fair?

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Um, uh I've always been like a curious person, likes to learn, likes to find new things, learn new things. So that's Salesforce is a natural fit for that with all the all the possibilities and all the new um tools that they they implement all the time. So um I think a big thing for me too is I was able to leverage that background as a credit analyst and a credit underwriter and a and a credit manager to you know help guide some future direction for Salesforce once I took it out, just outside of the the more you know in the box uh pipeline tool, you know, kind of kind of take it in different directions from there.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

How important do you think that background served you, let's say on a scale of one to ten? How how successful, how important was it for the credit analyst background leading to your success in that role when you inherited the Salesforce org and and you know you knew the users and how they used it, but like on a scale of one to ten, how important was that for you? And the reason I asked that is because you know, sometimes people they want to work with a bank, but they don't have the banking industry experience and they get overlooked for a role. I'm curious what your thoughts are.

SPEAKER_03 6:09

Yeah, just to tack onto that question, how strong was your technical background before switching? And do you think um, I guess if you had a stronger or more technical coming from technical role, you might have been in a better or maybe a worse place?

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Right. No, those are those are great questions. I think for me and personally, it it was a huge, so I one on a one to ten scale, I'd probably say that it was a seven or an eight um was really critical um at the time because, like you mentioned, I already knew the major players, I knew the processes they were um they were using in their day to day, and that helped me kind of outline an initial roadmap. Um, that being said, you know, banking is one of those industries where it's highly regulated, a lot of rules. So that means there's a lot of processes and procedures. So that can be overwhelming to somebody that's that's maybe coming into the space. But the advantage is that the business already has these processes and procedures figured out. So it's good from a technical um perspective because you can take those processes and procedures and you can put them into the platform and have the platform, you know, do a lot of that work or or put more controls or automate things because you've already had these highly defined processes. So I would I wouldn't say that you you need to have it. Um I just think it it definitely helped me in the beginning. Um, and then to answer the the the tacked on question there, um I went to Purdue and my degree is called industrial management. And essentially that's uh that's a finance degree with a blend of an engineering degree on it. So uh in my course studies, I I was introduced to things like C programming, MATLAB, Python, some of those other programming type languages. So I was familiar with with those at least. So I would say my tech skills were they maybe weren't uh the super strongest, but I definitely had exposure to them and at least the concepts of software development and those kind of things going into it. Good, good.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

And then so the banks on Salesforce since 2013, you picked up the business from a lead perspective in 2017. What did you inherit in terms of size at that time in 2017, in terms of like licenses and what were you using? It sounds like primarily sales cloud at the time. Yeah, could you could you share a bit more about that?

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Yeah, sure. So we had we had around 200, I think it was a little less than 200 users at the time. I think maybe we're close to maybe 170 or somewhere around there. And yeah, the primary use case was uh was sales cloud. We're using it for a pipeline, use it for a pipeline tool. Uh and we did have a small service cloud implementation at the at um at that point too, but there was maybe only 10 10 users using that at the time. Um, so yeah, base basically a sales, sales cloud shop in the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

Okay. And where is it today in terms of um without going into all the detail because I know we're gonna cover that in a second, but where is it today in terms of users, products, and size?

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Sure. Uh so we're closer to 800 users, or maybe a little bit over now. I didn't, I should have checked this morning because we're always seems like we're grabbing uh new teams into the into the platform. Um so 800 uh users. And now basically the question is not who's on Salesforce at the bank, it's who who isn't. We've definitely crossed that threshold where the majority of the people at the bank are are on Salesforce. So that includes lenders, lending assistants, um, treasury management, merchant, well, private banking, our wealth group, um, our branch managers, our CSRs on the retail side are all on Salesforce. And then a lot of those back office groups that also support those teams. So, like deposit operations, loan operations, um, are all in the platform as well. So uh definitely a much broader audience than we first started. But the um part of the fun part is is kind of putting the pieces together and bringing in new teams and realizing how you can leverage your existing implementation um with your new group and then uh you know help round out that customer 360 experience that Salesforce is always talking about, right? For your own internal users, just makes the platform better with every group you add on.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

I know Maz has a question as as well, um, and I'll hand it over to you in a sec. But a 4X growth, always curious, how big was your team when you started with 180 users and how big is it now? Like, did that also 4X grow or was it a case of doing more with less?

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Uh so for a long time it was it was two. Um, then when we started adding on groups, it became three. And now we're actually as of um September of last year, we are at four. So there's four, including including myself. Um, and they were all primarily admins, um, certified admins, um, is the the primary. We don't have any um devs on the team. That being said, our our parent company, Hilltop Holdings, does have some developers that are deployed there. So in the event that we actually need uh development work, we have some shared resources that we can that we can leverage. Good.

SPEAKER_03 11:36

Okay, awesome. So you have you have you said 800 users? And you're managing it with four people? Are you able to also roll out new features?

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Not just yeah, yeah, it's not just support. We're we're still running out um new functionality um as we as we can.

SPEAKER_03 11:56

Yeah, that seems quite impressive. I think the recommendation is like what one admin per 50, something like that?

SPEAKER_02 12:01

Um depends on customization, right? I think what one 100 to 150 per person is general, generally the the guideline, right? But um but but I guess did you use partners and leverage partners as well through throughout that or during that time?

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Yes. So um some of the work, you know, we do we have brought in third parties at at a time. One of our big implementations was uh for on the retail side, our deposit origination is all done through um a Salesforce UI. So if you if you go to our our Plains Capital site and you apply for you know a checking or savings, all that is um managed through Salesforce. And that actual product offering was through a through a third party. So um they they built that and that was a big, a big chunk of the bank to to bring on, maybe about 200 of those users was was due to that. But you know, we're we're still there helping support that implementation on a day-to-day. We don't contract them for for daily support or anything. It was basically the initial setup and then uh any other new development that would come along there. And I'd love to see that that the article that says where that recommendation is. So next time I have to do some hiring, I have a little bit more uh uh oomph when I when I say I need more, I need more help.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

Okay, I would see you.

SPEAKER_03 13:18

Yeah, awesome. So um I think you said you have currently your branch manager on there, your CSRs, customer service reps, right? CSR? Um deposit and loan operations. I'm not sure what deposit operations is. Loan operations, I assume that's um mortgages, business loans, typical banking stuff.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yeah, and and you know that's that's working from you know the the on the loan origination side to actually get our loans, you know, from just a deal to loan documentation to actually you know signing, closing the deal, and getting that booked into our you know, into our core banking system. And then they also handle a lot of things like uh our exception tracking, you know. Obviously, when you when you go into a relationship with the bank, you're gonna be required to provide, you know, regular financials, your tax returns, and all those things. So that that group helps, you know, handle the ongoing collection of you know those documents um, you know, over over time. So that's kind of what loan operations does and deposit operations does does similar work where there's you know, there's certain documentation that we have to keep um on the deposit side. Um, but they also help you know manage setting up products, making sure that our core banking system is configured correctly to to handle all those.

SPEAKER_03 14:38

There's more like account opening type stuff. Or is it all homegrown or using like Encino or some other banking package?

SPEAKER_01 14:47

So on a on the yeah, so on the loan side, we have we are integrated with a smaller company here out of Texas, it's called VSI, and they have a product um called Bank Point, and they have a load a loan origination system that they call Extend that actually uh handles the the the actual boarding of our our loan products into our our core banking system. Um and that's actually pretty new. That's actually within the last couple months that we we launched that um that that offering. So yeah, essentially our credit on writers go in along with our loan officers, and they actually you know input all the information, like the terms and the rate and all that, all that fun stuff before it actually gets boarded and booked into our our core banking system.

SPEAKER_03 15:35

Oh, real cool, real cool. So I it's actually not a product I've heard of, believe it or not. Um so sometimes we like to ask about product selection. Um, what there are product selection processed uh with this extend? How did you end up with that?

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Yeah, so that that team, so that that part of the bank that's held by the our credit department is the one that that actually owns that that piece. We do have an integration with Salesforce. We send pipeline information back and forth because that's but that essentially serves as our like a our approval process, right? Is is what the primary thing that that that bank point does. It does it does other things, but from from the Salesforce lens, that's the that's the primary thing that it does. Um so we already had an existing relationship with them. Um so I know we had looked at other tools, but since they were we already had the approval piece built in, it seemed just more like a natural fit for us to have that loan origination system built off of that that engine.

SPEAKER_03 16:33

Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um okay, and my understanding is that I know you talk, you said mentioned the CSRs. You recently you recently had a big service cloud project. Um was that the start of bringing your CSRs on? Tell us uh tell us about that project, what it looked like, what it looked like before.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Sure, yeah, absolutely. So before um our customer service group was kind of like an older tax stack, tech stack, sorry. Um basically just you know, calls coming into a queue, your traditional agents picking up the phone, helping up your helping your clients, you know, with your typical requests that you would get from someone calling up a bank, like, hey, I lost my debit card, or hey, what's my balance? Um, you know, really common um things that people would call into. So the first the first step was getting them into the Salesforce TechSac to begin with. So we had an initial project was just to get a service cloud implementation up for that particular team. I know I mentioned uh another service cloud implementation before, and that was with another call center. So we actually have two call centers at the bank. One's tailored towards treasury management because their products are their own unique set of um products and they they require specialized help. So we have a we have a call center for that. And then we also have our call center for those things that I just mentioned, you know, like your more traditional, like I lost my debit card type type request. So the first step was get them on to Salesforce in general. This so we did that a couple of years ago, set up case management. Um at the time we were using a third-party soft phone called Ingenious to do screen pops. Um, that was really the first introduction for the call, that call center into the kind of the art of the possible for what the technology could do to help them in their in their day-to-day. Because before essentially, our agents, you know, they would they'd they'd get a call and they'd just, you know, they'd see a number and maybe a caller ID name, but that was pretty much what they were presented with. They did, you know, they weren't presented with anything other than that. But so the first step was get them into Salesforce and start leveraging our customer data to our agents so that they have a little bit of an insight before that, before that call, that call comes up. So, you know, you do a screen pop with a customer record, you can see if that customer's called in, see what their case history was, you know, all the great things that you can do and a service cloud in implementation. So that was that was the first step was to get them on the platform. And then the second step was what you mentioned was was taking it to the next level with uh service cloud voice. Um and service cloud voice is a is a joint offering between Amazon and Salesforce. So essentially it's it's Salesforce's UI built on top of Amazon Connect, which is uh Amazon's uh call center, or they call it a contact center, contact center offering. So it brings the two together. Um and so what that did was that replaced um our uh our telephony soft phone on the Salesforce side, but then it introduced a whole suite of other features that um our users used to have to go to another system to get, and also introduce some just net new features for our call center.

SPEAKER_03 20:01

So take take it through what this looks like, right? So I assume somebody calls in that you have, I guess, like an IVR type thing, which is built into the AWS contact center that verifies who the customer is, or does it based on the phone number? Then what it navigates to that record for you. Does it try to route the case? Like, like how how much did you build this out?

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Yeah, so um we're not doing uh any kind of like KYC in the in the IVR that that's taking place with with the agent, but we are doing some routing ahead of time. Uh, I mean, the real basic example is obviously we have a lot of Spanish speakers here in Texas. So we have a queue that gets routed for Spanish or for English. Um, and that's that's essentially how we have our agents skilled at this point. Um, but there is an there is that that I that IDR that takes place ahead of time um that allows them to branch off. And if they want to, we do have offerings to our core banking system to to for people to do things like check their balances, you know, through the through the phone and not actually speak to an agent. So there is a there's a deflection that does happen before that. We just happen to see a lot of people just you know, they prefer to talk to a person. So um they they make their way through that phone tree and eventually to our to our agent.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

So you're not you're not grouping by like department or anything like that, loans or deposits. It's just based on language?

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Yeah, right now, because our you know, we don't typically we don't send a customer to you know a back office group. You know, our our our call center agents um are trained to help with most of our basic needs that our that our customers are calling with. Like I said, you know, account balances and and those kind of things. They're they're able to do um or our direct or create a ticket for the correct team to take care of. So they're the really triage group but they do from time to time they will you know they will uh transfer calls to to outside groups if if you know they need to speak to a a specific loan officer or that they they handle that as well okay awesome so um i'm not very familiar with uh with service cloud voice or or contact center um can you tell us like a bit about that like why is that better than like just doing you know open cti and and integrating it right what well like what's the real ad advantage there yeah so before we were using Cisco as our telephony system we're using Salesforce for case management and um when you're trying to do things like either QC calls or trying to do any any kind of um you know de-escalation um on the on the agent side it's really helpful to have all that information in in context so the big thing for us was how can we get um call data and call information into Salesforce so that's that's available um outside of um someone switching between to between systems. So I'll give you a couple examples. So Service Cloud Voice out of the box right uh offers call transcription so uh if you want to you can have a component on the screen that you know actually is you know typing out what is being said. So if an agent needs to go back in the conversation they can see like, oh had I mentioned this yet or what you know where did they say this or you know or if a uh supervisor needs to listen into a call they can you know they can drop into this voice call and they can see okay here's what's been discussed so far and they can kind of have an idea of what they're stepping into in case they need to they need to barge in. So that's that's a great example that's that's functionality that we didn't have before that this that this product offers. And um so that's that's great. And also now it also layers in the actual call recording itself. So if I go to a a voice call that's the name of the object in in Salesforce it's associated with the case. So if I pull up the case I can see the case details that the agent wrote and I can see the call that was associated with it. So everything's in context because before you might you'd have to go okay I've got a case I opened it up at this time now I need to go into Cisco and I need to go find the call that was associated with this case this takes all that out of it. So it's all together in context and obviously you can see the advantages of that because you can you pull up the case you can hear the conversation you can see the transcript everything's right there. Just makes it a lot easier from an agent and a supervisor standpoint. And so now we've taken that to you know we're layering things like uh they previously were doing uh they were scoring their agents you know for um uh you know monthly reviews and all and all that and now that process instead of going from like an Excel-based process you know we have that built in Salesforce as a as just as a custom object that we've layered on top of Service Cloud voice because they're there on the call they can see the case they can hear the recording they can just go through their their grading process and boom that grade is now associated with that voice call in that case you're able to link everything together it's just it's just taking your your data and just enriching it right that's that's that obviously you can tell that's what gets me excited about Salesforce is you can you can just you just build on what you've already built and it just the power grows exponentially as you continue to to build it out. So yeah I mean that's it's real it's real awesome um particularly having the transcript there like it's much easier to search are are you planning on doing like any ai on top of this to get like sentiment analysis flagging right because that's an obvious next step I think yeah no you're absolutely correct and that is that is something that's offered through that platform as well we haven't we haven't deployed that at this but sentiment analysis is is something that Amazon connect offers and it and you can surface um you know in Salesforce right and um but we have it we it that's on our on our roadmap to look at um at this point. So but yeah you're you're absolutely right that's that's an another another great way to to layer it in because if if I recall correctly it would show you actually in the omnichannel supervisor like a supervisor view where you can see all your agents talking it would actually you know flag certain conversations as maybe not going like you would want them to be going um using that sentiment analysis. So that's that's that's on the that's on the roadmap.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

It's a good good option for escalation and things like that, right? But also knowledge gaps as well for reps if there's a if there's a common objection that's coming up or a query it might be a quick way to add some collateral about it you know on a marketing campaign or put it on the website or whatever right to try and limit that volume. So um all exciting stuff around the whole agent force piece right it's all relevant uh AI agent force to these kind of uh environments but um I guess so so my understanding with with with Service Cloud Voice it came out 2019 2020ish and really kind of took on about 18 months two years after that and the customers that we've supported um who are using it often they talk about the performance management aspect that comes along with that as part of the functionality capability and you touched on it about you know the one-to-ones with with with agents and the reviews um but I think that's a piece of the product that maybe doesn't get as much attention in terms of like the time save that it allows from that whole performance monitoring piece um you know things like disconnected calls if calls were missed by agents um so I'm I'm curious were there any kind of examples or metrics that you were tracking prior to using Service Cloud Voice or were you just not able to do it? And then the second part is what notably improved um as a result of having that data and information through Service Cloud Voice?

SPEAKER_01 28:05

Yeah no that's a good that's a great question because like like you mentioned um some of those things were weren't possible now some of those things are possible um we used to have to go to out of Cisco basically and we were at the mercy of Cisco to give us those kind of those kind of KPI type metrics that we were looking at and and um based off of reports from our users those weren't always as accurate as we would have hoped there was some manual manipulation and of course as soon as you introduce any kind of manual manipulation you're opening yourself up to human error and all that on all that so um what we've done now is is that we've actually um we're using um service cloud analytics um hooking it up to Amazon's data lake that brings in all the call information so now we actually have a dashboard that's built inside of Salesforce on on the agents and supervisors homepage where they can see all their KPI metrics when they log in. So again it's the again it goes back to that we're bringing all in one one place. They're not having to go to somewhere else to get their metrics and somewhere else to get their their evaluation somewhere else to get calls and somewhere else to get cases. It's all in the same place.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

Mm-hmm and I think as well you can um differentiate between what's external what's internal a lot more easier as well because I remember one customer um in particular that they actually found once they went live with Service Cloud Voice they were they knew they were spending a lot of time on internal meetings but when they got the data they were like 40% of their time that their agents' time is is internal um which is just crazy right um yeah they could they could eliminate one third of their workforce if they just reduced meetings internally right so that was a game changer and they had the suspicion it was bad but until they implemented service cloud voice and had the actual data and numbers they had no idea so um so so good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

So in in terms of the so the project itself so we talked about kind of a bit about service cloud why service cloud voice uh what it does the capabilities functionalities benefits let's talk a bit about the actual project itself so I guess real quick question this is now a complete project for you right it's live we're just talking about like enhancements now today in present time correct right right we actually launched the the service cloud voice piece in I believe October of last year so it's been up and running for about uh three four months now and now we're in that post-production launch where we're we're fixing you know those first high priority those fast follower items that are that uh that now that it's in the hands of everybody that they've have been requested. So there's no excuse um adoption was that fairly straightforward with this or were were the team problems there any more than you were maybe anticipated any less that type of stuff we didn't have a lot of reports from it since you know essentially all we were doing was switching out the soft phone um there wasn't too much um obviously there's extra things that are that are layered layered in there so um but they were already used to case management because we had had them on the platform for well over a year by the time they did that. So they were already kind of used to the idea of a case pop and all their actual um procedures in terms of um the steps they take to open and close a case those really were left unchanged so we didn't really have at least I was at least it wasn't reported to me um a lot of issues with with adoption or or this change management piece that is often one of the biggest headaches I will say change management adoption that a lot of people we have on the show tell us about right um and I'm sure for other parts of projects you've done in the past maybe it was more so uh there but with the service cloud voice in mind so so it wasn't as painful as maybe it could have been uh let's say how long did it actually take to like implement like how how long from start to finish was it before you actually were you were live that's a good that's a good question. I wish I had my my Azure board up so I could tell you the exact the exact dates but it was um it wasn't like a multi-year uh project it I think it was spanned over three four months so not not very long I could get you the exact date if you if you want me to to look it up but uh it it wasn't a uh a huge timeline.

SPEAKER_02 32:45

And you'd say it was a fairly quick win would it be fair to say it was a quick win for the business to spend a quarter on it roughly and get it live and the benefits kind of paid off already?

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Yeah yes I mean not yeah so as a part of this too besides the the advantages we talked about about bringing all that information together and starting to leverage it outward you know there was also um we are going to have some cost savings eventually because we were able to the the between the licenses that we were getting rid of compared to the licenses that we were adding um on Salesforce it it eventually um ended up to a little bit of cost savings too so that always helps if you can tell management that it's gonna cost less and it's gonna work better. Mm-hmm do you uh feel comfortable sharing a rough percentage or estimate for now oh cost savings would be it it wasn't it it wasn't a huge cost savings um it wasn't huge um I I don't remember what the dollar amount was but it wasn't it it was it was less than I want to say it's less than like fifty thousand dollars a year um cost savings yeah I mean it it like I said it adds up especially when you're trying to to pitch someone on a new like oh hey we got to buy this new product if you can actually show that it it becomes cheaper then that's always a that's always an easier win than than hey I need to add this uh Salesforce module and it costs a million dollars uh sorry but we have to have it that's that's a much harder conversation to have I think I think uh I'd agree and and again not only um from a cost perspective but you get a ton of additional benefits that you weren't getting previously right so that helps to make the business case but I know sometimes decisions are made by the dollar amount so um I I understand uh the the the predicament there um Maz I know I know you got a question around uh integration do you do you want to answer that one?

SPEAKER_03 34:40

Yeah so I haven't done a tremendous amount of of uh call centers the one big one that I that I was involved in was with Weight Watchers. Um I was actually working there full time for a while um and one of the things that they were doing was with with app integration so you don't have to necessarily pivot and to limit the time like launching a secondary app, doing a search and they had a dozen or so apps. I I'm sure the bank also right there I don't know how many apps your customer service reps have to log into you know maybe have a different um app for loans than for deposits or right all these various banking systems.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

Did you guys try to do anything to streamline all of that or integrate that somehow into to to kind of streamline and and make the the service reps more efficient so the all all our service reps they work out of one they work out of one Salesforce app so they're not having to do any kind of context switching. And really what we did is when we first did that that initial launch for them into uh Salesforce uh we started collecting that case data and we use that case data to figure out where those integration points needed to be to help keep our agents inside of Salesforce as much as possible so that way they're not having to go to different systems. And I'll give you an example because I've mentioned it a couple times now but the the one part is the is how often people call our bank to figure out their loan balance it happens quite a lot. It's actually probably our number one call and case type right you you would think even though people have access to online banking we have a mobile app all that there's a lot of people that still like to call up and and hear it from a person. So what we did was uh on our case on our case pages after they've the agent has gone through their verification process to you know our our know your customer procedures case gets created and since we've linked the customer we also have in Salesforce all their account data their loans their deposits so we built a uh lightning web component that sits on the case page that pulls in that individual's related accounts their loans and also the transactions and other information around those transactions into into the actual case itself so that way instead of having an agent go to our core banking system and try to find a deposit account look at all the transactions it just surfaces it right in the right in Salesforce.

SPEAKER_03 37:30

So so you're doing it basically by um bringing the data into Salesforce and exposing the data but if they would have to actually do something in an app they would have to log into the other app.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

Yeah right right now so primarily our any kind of uh integration that we have is typically just doing a get and it's pulling it back to display in Salesforce for for users. We haven't we haven't branched out into the into any puts or anything where we're we're putting data back in um and right now there hasn't been a huge um a need for it like I like I mentioned we are we already addressed the the biggest use case which was help me find my transactions and help me find my balances and that one's that was so that was a low-hanging fruit that was a big impact.

SPEAKER_03 38:12

Yeah it's it's always like that 8020 rule right here's just a massive um and just each one of the use cases that you tackle knocks off just another massive number of calls. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:24

Go ahead if you were to um give advice to someone in your shoes in a different org, different industry, I know there might be nuances on use cases and things like that, but just a general bit of advice prior to implementing Service Cloud Voice now that you've gone through it, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01 38:42

Uh definitely get familiar with the Amazon's data lake and their and their data structure. I think that was that that was probably like the biggest the biggest hurdle um Amazon's documentation is is pretty good. But whenever you know whenever you're involved in a joint venture between two companies sometimes there's some finger pointing like this is this document you need to go to this place or this place to find that documentation. So be be prepared for some some whiplash sometimes back and forth um as you start to navigate but I think understanding the call data was something that uh I don't want to say we struggled with is that we we knew the least about right whenever you go into a a system sometimes you don't know how their data is structured and and how they have tables. So just get real familiar with that if you're gonna do reporting on calls out of it just get real familiar with the tables and how they how they those are all set up. Because we it took us a while to to to figure out that uh internal and external calls were in completely different tables. So okay for a while for a while there we were like we're we're missing calls what's what we know these call numbers aren't right um so what's going on so yeah get familiar with that that data your reps are reassuring you hey we're on the phone so uh you know you want to you want to see that in the in the table but makes sense um I I like my scale of one to ten questions today so um I'm gonna ask you another one to ten uh scale question how happy were you with the implementation on a what scale of one to ten and then secondly how happy do you think your service reps using service cloud voice were on a on a scale of one to ten um I think for myself I've probably been about it probably about an eight I've been fairly happy with with it it's not it's not perfect um on the implementation side it was uh pretty well streamlined to be to be honest um since since we were using Amazon connect as the as the telephony provider they have options where you don't have you can bring your own telephony and I'm and that becomes very custom but since we were using more of their out of the box offering um really to stand up the call center and and hook it up to Salesforce it was uh actually just literally like a uh you know like a slider that you you turn on in Salesforce so implementation side on that point was was pretty easy I won't speak for the voice engineering people that had to really had to recreate all the the IVR stuff all to get into Salesforce but um they eventually they they figured that out but I feel like documentation was good and they were able to to jump on that pretty quickly as a as a new product offering. You know we're and on terms of our users uh you know obviously we got some initial feedback and that's why we're in this like post production launch um iteration now where we're trying to do some enhancements enhancements for them um I I think I already mentioned the like I said about the the some of those calls we're missing from reporting that was a that was a gripe um but that wasn't a hurdle that uh uh eventually we weren't able to figure out um but from like a ease easy usability and you know uh we haven't had any any any complaints on it um I know they like having all that information in in in one place that's that's for sure so they they've they've appreciated that good so we'll say they're probably eight eight to nine on the scale we'll say yeah sorry I forgot to give you I forgot to give you a number apologies what were they using before what were they what system were they using before yeah Cisco right I think yeah Cisco oh Cisco is what would you think for for a case management I mean uh there there wasn't case management oh manual is a manual so yeah basically we we knew that there were calls and how many were coming in but we didn't know who was calling um I I when I say we don't know who was calling we we we had no context going into the call um yeah that that must have been maddening for your your customers call back a third time and did no history yeah that's that's obviously like a place where you can where we had a lot of ground to cover so we need it we needed a solution in place and and like I said that once you started collecting that data it became very obvious all right here's where we need to focus to help our our agents out that's and that's why we built that lightning web component to uh to help surface that that account and transaction data because that was the that's the number one reason why people were calling us that's the easiest way we can help our agents and then as mentioned before you know and now we can actually see oh hey so and so is called in three times about this lost debit card right we need to make sure that uh we get this taken care of or um anything like that and you know we also haven't talked about you know just surfacing that data on the other side of the house too right not just from a customer service perspective but for our our lending assistants and our and our bankers um you know they have access to that that data too. So if if uh one of their customers happens to call into the call center now they now they know now they know that hey my my client called in about this and uh i can follow up and make sure that was taken care of and and it just it helps you know your it helps you know your customer right and it just creates a richer experience for for everybody and everyone's on the same page i might be asking a really stupid question um and i'll take the heat off it because it might be a stupid question but why not just use sales cloud and then just have a rep leave the note like hey spoke to customer andy workner doing a credit card check-in balance good call he's happy with the service leave note like well i'll i'll make it a little bit better instead of a note an activity at least a phone call activity uh right like surely you could just do that in standard sales cloud no like the like i'm talking like pre pre like service now voice like as from a case management perspective because you like am I being so naive maybe that it's just not that simple I don't know but so I think the big the reason so you could you could easily have people go in and and make an activity and say talk to so and so help them out with their their transaction the I think what service cloud does in general is helps you it opens up you to those different channels right it's that's the platform to get all those different those different channels in because if we didn't if we didn't use um service cloud you know we wouldn't we we'd be stuck basically with taking a phone call and then manually bringing it over into into sales cloud but with service cloud you know right now we're prime it's it's just on the you know our a voice channel but since we're building this now in service cloud you know that gives us the options to look at other service channels too right like email text though those kind of things it's just the scalability is is obviously much better in in in that architected solution for sure yeah I I was thinking more like um you know when you talk about kind of having no no history at all right you know that time because you were using Salesforce since 2013 right so I was thinking more like from that period 2013 2017 would that not just be the answer at that time but I don't know um well you see that that's also where you have to you have to talk about like the incentive for people to actually put things in the system too right you know it's but it's are you gonna use the carrot or the stick method um with getting data into your CRM and at least with service cloud right that's automated for them so they they get a case pop they go through their they complete their customer authentication boom case is made they're you know they're filling out a couple fields and and and you're done you have compliance all all the way down the line um it's a little bit harder to to tell people like hey remember to put in your activities just you know remember remember to do it because we need you to do it it's a lot easier if you build if you build the process so they have to do it in order to to to keep everyone on the same page.

SPEAKER_03 46:56

Yeah I mean it's what right now because now it pops opens a case I assume automatically or no we they have to click create case but does it automatically create a phone call at least and then associate it to a case if they create a case?

SPEAKER_01 47:09

Yeah so what happen so what happens is a call comes in and makes a voice call record. So that's that that record is is created automatically um essentially we we give them if there's a custom we'll just assume there's a customer match if there's a customer match that comes up um basically it walks them through a script of you know what they're gonna say that way everyone gets uh the wonderful planes capital experience when they when they come through our call center and they ask through some generic questions they ask you basically what their needs are and then it walks them through um our identification process you know like asking for things like debit card numbers security questions all all that stuff and then once they once they're completed through that they either they either indicate that the customer was authenticated through our process or not authenticated and at that point the case is created and we link that voice call to that case got it but it's always always ends up in two end states either an authenticated caller or an authenticated caller but both create a case so so we talked a little bit about the past and the present um we just want to spend the next five minutes or so talking about the future um and um you know the future Plains Capital Salesforce footprint and you know products what does that look like what are you guys working on that you can share you know for the future doesn't have to be service cloud but um across the board sure um great question so we've got two clouds that we're potentially looking at expanding into uh during the year uh the first one um which would make sense would be financial services cloud um obviously as a bank that would be that would be our industry vertical that we would that would we would take advantage of um but as mentioned we've been on Salesforce for so long that we created a custom implementation prior to financial services cloud even existing so we're gonna be going through a process where we uh migrate all that um into fsc over time so there's there's there's one thing that's on our future roadmap and then the second one would be into experience cloud um right now we don't have any kind of customer facing um experience cloud site from a from the bank's perspective so we're looking at leveraging that for a couple different uh projects that we have or or requirements that we've been given one one being more of a compliance driven project and then another one uh for for document uh retrieval what do you think about you touched on agent force in the rapid round um so so what are your thoughts on agent force and where that might potentially be an option for you as a bank or in in banking and the industry in general I would say um I I think the industry is a is a good candidate for AI um use there's so there's so much data that gets generated in a in a financial service industry company right there's just there's so many facets I mean our our that custom object that I mentioned you know has 600 700 custom fields on it right so I can only imagine the kind of things that AI could help us glean and leverage uh when we're interacting either from a sales perspective or a or you know a customer service experience expectative um perspective excuse me um you know one of the big hurdles though is that you know you obviously in order to use agents force you have to be on data cloud too if I if I understand that correctly right so Maz you under is that what you understand my understanding is you don't um if you have the data all in Salesforce and you are bringing it into Salesforce a lot of it so you probably can get away with it not using it. Well obviously I'm still kind of early in that in that journey so we'd have to we'd have to hash all that out but uh yeah I I I think there's definitely um definitely a lot of rich data data in there so I'm sure there's there's plenty of avenues we could take something like agent force to to use yeah I I just had a quick Google as well and um say same as what Maz said technically I don't think you do but it's advisable uh recommended that you know you use data cloud to truly get agent force's capabilities and so on but um maybe that's a question for your uh account exec uh a future date maybe but but um oh I know what there is I know what their SOB um so here's an here's an an off question somewhat tongue in cheek um you're having a having an issue let's say I don't know if the issue is the right word um where they want to hear their balance from a person right they won't check the portal they won't check the app any concerns they're not gonna want to hear it from from a robot either they're gonna want to hear from a person oh definitely I mean there's there's there's always going to be that segment of people that just they they want to hear they want to talk to a person um so that that's that's part of our feature roadmap whenever you're because we are looking at redoing our IVR you know is you have you have to make sure that you're not blocking your customers from ever reaching uh a real person because some some things people just aren't comfortable discussing with a with a bot I think it's pros and cons right it's generational as well um I I think um you know I had an experience recently with a CDE account which was um like maturing and it's this grace period you kind of you know re-re-go and you know they they could see it was like my third time you know I I was doing renewing it and you know so on do you want to they knew the amount that was the initial capital and it does make your life a lot easier as a customer not having to explain it every time you're on a call um so I can see that benefit um but again if I just want to quit I lost my card I I don't really need to speak to anyone about that I just want to click a button right so I think it depends on the query and it depends on the person as well but um slightly shifting off um off of that topic um meetups events whether they're banking or Salesforce have you got any kind of uh plans for I don't know Dreamforce or or other banking events this year uh as an individual or as a company um that's a good question you know I've it's been a while since I've been to Dreamforce um I think the last time I was was in 2019 so pre pre-COVID um would love to get back there um but then again now that they're you know they uh stream a lot of these events you know on on Salesforce Plus it's a lot it's a lot more accessible um so I don't have any any specific plans at this point but I'm sure some some will come up yeah we'll we'll uh we'll keep keep inviting you to our local North Dow Salesforce meetups as well so um hopefully we'll see you there this year but but um and and then if people didn't listen to the rapid round they're gonna think how the heck are we asking this question? Uh where is it coming from but um it's it's interesting about you so tell tell us about the martial arts stuff because that that's obviously something very different to your tech tech pattern um how did that start where where did that kind of go into sure yeah so essentially that's stuff that started um in middle school for me when I realized that I there was no way that I was going to be able to play sports at a high school level just wasn't in the just wasn't in the cards for for me um this the two sports that I that I played growing up I just I I I wasn't going to cut it at a high school sport so I was looking for an individual support um had some friends of mine at the time that started um in taekwondo so uh I I I joined like I said I think it would have been a the fall I guess it would have been the fall of 2001 and then I just never stopped um I always joke with my friends that uh that uh it it tricks me into working out I need I need something that like that keeps me active and it's always been good just from a social um perspective as well I've made I've made a lot of lifelong friends and and and wonderful relationships with people all across the the country doing doing that as as my sport so uh so you picked it because it was an individual sport and not a team sport that that's what you're saying well yeah yeah it's something that I could do you know for for for long long term right I mean of course like I could do rec league basketball and and and that kind of thing but at the at the time I was like well I I could do this and you know you you don't get cut from an individual sport right so it's not work well with it with people either I I put you down Maz as an individual individual if you had to pick a sport you'd pick an individual sport. Um I'm just not athletic I don't know I like team sports I like I like being with other people but like you said you meet people through it Andy so um you know it's it's best of both worlds right you compete as an individual your results are based on you as an individual but you meet other people as well and it's very exactly very similar to your answer about you know your your preference between um independent contributor and uh manager you kind of gave us the best of both worlds saving the score so yeah all right um any any any last thoughts on on your endy in general um that you'd you think would be useful for our listeners any advice any tips any you know I don't know we always get a lot of like uh hiring trends for the year inquiries you know any anything that comes to mind um I mean the marketplace is it's always hard to find find good talent um especially depending upon your your company's requirement um around uh status as a citizenship status in the country um so that could that can be a big a big hurdle a lot for a lot of a lot of hiring sometimes um but in terms of like a tip I think this kind of goes back to uh one of the one of the other rapid fire questions was um whether or not Salesforce should sit at I in IT or with the business and I'm a big proponent of that sitting with the business because it goes back to my own personal experience as a like as a potential end user right helped me leverage Salesforce going on and into into the future. And I think at the end of the day Salesforce is a tool for our end users and our my team being embedded with our end users and being not separated from this you know IT firewall just helps us be more responsive to the needs of our internal customers because we're we we see their day to day and we're we're aligned with them and we're aligned with whatever initiatives that the that the bank's working on do you uh this be the last question for for you um that you can breathe relax but um do you think that do you see that for because obviously you must talk to other banks and network and collaborate so do you see that as often with other banks as well um with with whereas Salesforce sits it's more with the business um versus technology is that a banking thing or I I think you'd probably find um a variety of answers on on that and I think it just really depends on how Salesforce was implemented and how how management views the the tool right so I I don't think it's specific to banking that one way or the other I think I think you'd see the approach pretty pretty across the spectrum there.

SPEAKER_02 58:46

Interesting um well well Andy thank you um you know thank you for your time we we really appreciate you sharing uh your experience with experiences with us today hopefully you found it uh enjoyable as well thanks for having me on yeah thank you um and uh you know for our listeners if you enjoyed what you heard today uh please do not forget to subscribe to the CRM Success Show uh for more episodes featuring leaders like Andy uh who are truly shaping the future of the CRM space uh you can also follow us on LinkedIn and YouTube uh for additional updates and exclusive content thank you