Learning Objectives
- Use cases of Chatbots and Conversational AI in Financial Services and Banking
- automate customer onboarding processes
- How large language models could work in banking
Miriam Cross (00:04):
Welcome to Digital Banking 2023. My name is Miriam Cross and I'm a Technology Reporter at American Banker. This is the leadership track, and today we're talking about how to successfully implement a culture remotely. Something I'm sure all of most, if not all of us are familiar with by now. Today I'm going to be speaking with Jess Ealer, the head of Marketing and Culture at Provide, and Steve Hamrick, the VP of Product Management at Slack. Jess and Steve, thank you so much for being here.
Steve Hamrick (00:32):
It's fun to be here. I'm glad to do in-person events again.
Miriam Cross (00:34):
I know. All right, Jess, so you are head of Marketing and Culture at Provide. Can you tell us what provide is?
Jess Ealer (00:42):
Yeah, so we are a national leading healthcare lender with a sharp focus on dentists and veterinarians.
Miriam Cross (00:49):
What's your position within Fifth Third?
Jess Ealer (00:54):
So we are an independent business unit. We were acquired by Fifth Third in August of 2021. They had started growing their healthcare banking sector and they had been a really strong partner of ours from 2018. And we were trying to figure out as a business, what's the next step for us? Do we raise another round of funding? And they were like, Hey, actually, why don't you come join us? And so we were like, we love you. The operational and culture side was a really strong fit and so we decided, this makes sense. And we completed the acquisition. So we're about two years in, still operating independently, but definitely starting to really join forces on the banking side to create kind of a holistic experience for dentists and veterinarians.
Miriam Cross (01:42):
And in our prep call, you said that you were doing remote work before it was cool. So what's been your history with remote work?
Jess Ealer (01:49):
Yeah, so actually my very first job back in 2010, well I guess my role like grownup job back in 2010 was in Denver and I was based in Columbus, Ohio. And so that was remote work and it was for a great company and a great team, but it was not very fulfilling. I realized pretty quickly that without being around people in person, I was missing something. And so I decided to leave and I went to a more traditional job, but then a few years later I joined my first startup. And that when remote work is done correctly or hybrid work is done correctly, it can be really rewarding and you just kind of have to know how to create engagement with your team without being right here in person. And I think we all learned a little bit of that during COVID, but it's been a journey for sure.
Miriam Cross (02:49):
And what's the remote work policy at provide?
Jess Ealer (02:52):
So we allow our employees to work wherever they work best. We really focus on attracting and retaining top talent. And I think at this point you have to have flexibility and if you don't offer that, you're not going to be able to keep people happy at your company.
Miriam Cross (03:12):
And does the provide policy align with fifth thirds?
Jess Ealer (03:16):
For the most part, Yes. So we actually we're lucky to have provide, have a really great office in downtown Columbus, which is where the majority of our team works or is residing. And we don't make people come in, we don't have a policy around two or three days in at home, but we do offer the option. Fifth Third is similar. They have a great office downtown Columbus, then also Cincinnati, and people are allowed to come in when it makes sense for them. But for the most part, people can build their own schedules and decide where they're going to work from.
Miriam Cross (03:53):
And Steve, to what degree does Slack work with financial services companies?
Steve Hamrick (03:58):
Oh, a significant amount. Actually. Part of the reason I was purpose hired to join Slack back in 2019 was to help Slack expand its footprint within financial services organizations. I have a long history in enterprise collaboration and one of the very first things we did back in 2019 was look at what are the things we need to do with Slack to make sure that it meets all of the expected regulations and requirements in the financial services in industry.
Miriam Cross (04:20):
What are some examples?
Steve Hamrick (04:21):
So examples would be e-discovery, data loss prevention. In some organizations you might have information barriers. If you have an investment bank here with a commercial bank, you might have to have a barrier between those. There's a number of things like that we've developed over the last few years that make Slack totally usable within financial services.
Miriam Cross (04:41):
Okay. And are these changes that apply to Slack as a whole?
Steve Hamrick (04:45):
Absolutely. Okay. So all of our customers benefit obviously from everything that we've implemented, tremendous number of innovations over the last three years.
Miriam Cross (04:52):
So you got to thank banks for that?
Steve Hamrick (04:54):
Yes, I absolutely do. And actually that's what's been great. Working with financial services customers has been amazing because I didn't personally realize it until I started working with them. How much knowledge is critical within financial services and banking and when it comes to providing the best customer experiences, having the full strength of your organization no matter where they're located and where they're working, being able to support you through every step of the customer journey is critical.
Miriam Cross (05:17):
Okay. And have you noticed any patterns or trends among banks that you work with in terms of what they're doing in terms of remote work? Are they still largely remote? Are they pushing people to go back to the office? Are they mostly doing hybrid?
Steve Hamrick (05:30):
So what I found really interesting is that right now we're still in a state where people say remote work and they automatically jump to the conclusion that means a hundred percent remote. And for even organizations that are actually supporting remote work today, there really is no such thing as a hundred percent remote. Even during the pandemic, I talk to organizations that would occasionally still have get togethers. There's times in the company where you need to have people coming together in the pandemic. Obviously they were doing that safely with things like testing and making sure that folks are vaccinated. Now that that's been lifted, there's still cases where you might need, whether it could be a company offsite, it could be project planning meeting. There's a whole list of reasons. And in fact, what I've seen is most organizations have slowly shifted their office spaces to reflect that. So whereas before we used to prioritize having people have their own little spaces and then getting together and then not talking to each other, not working together. Now organizations have been telling me, well, we've actually shifted that. So now we've actually prioritized our investment in co-working spaces for folks. So if they're going to come into the office, there's going to be spaces for them to get together and to actually work together. It's going to be for a purpose. And from a hybrid perspective, what that really means is it's not hybrid just strictly to a number of days out of the week. It could be hours of the day. So there could be times in the morning or times in the evening, for example, where parents, for example, the course of the pandemic got really used to being able to drop off kids or pick up. And in some cases they shaped their lives around the fact that they could do that. So a lot of organizations in order to retain the folks that they value the most have been looking at ways to make sure that those folks can be supported. If they only work, say mornings, for example, from remote, and then in the afternoons or evenings they're actually in the office.
Miriam Cross (07:14):
Okay. And Jess, you said a bit earlier, I think it was that you didn't remote work at first, but you learned once you do it properly, you really enjoyed it. So what does it mean to do remote work properly?
Jess Ealer (07:27):
Oh, That's a good question. So in my experience at this point, I think it really comes down to communication and visibility. And that's a huge part of that, and I'll bring that up in a little bit, I'm sure. But it's also paired with access to leadership. I think that's really big. And so if you want to do remote work properly, you have to make sure that your communication channels are clear, everyone has access to them and visibility. They all get to be a part of the conversation and that they do still have access to their teammates and their leaders specifically. I think it's really easy to sit in your office at home and feel so alone. And I don't have any friends and no one I can talk to about the challenges or wins at work, but if you have a platform and a culture that promotes open conversation, you overcome that. And I know you talked a little bit about in-person activities and get togethers, I think that's important too, but I know in some cases it's not possible. But I think that's another layer that's always helpful.
Steve Hamrick (08:37):
And an interesting addendum to Jess shared there in March of 2020 was the first time that Slack went full remote. And it might surprise a lot of people, but actually before the pandemic, the culture of Slack really wasn't supportive of remote work. The culture of Slack was everyone's in the office, four slack five days a week, still slacking each other. And so culturally, we didn't really have the culture for it, but we had the technology platform for it. With Slack itself, obviously Slack's a huge user of Slack. I was just telling Sarah, our marketing person, that I don't actually look at my email anymore, so don't email me Slack me. It's true. But the, I think what most often overlooked is, and I think it needs to be reinforced, just fixate on one side or the other culture or the technology, look at how both of them support each other. So decide on how you want to build that culture and look for a technology platform that's best supports it.
Miriam Cross (09:29):
And Jess, so how have you built a culture at provide where people feel valued and they're getting equal face time?
Jess Ealer (09:36):
Absolutely. We're incredibly intentional about that. Again, it goes back to retaining the talent that we've worked so hard to attract. And so making sure that people feel seen and heard and valued really starts at the beginning. So all of our new employees go through an onboarding experience, which I think most of us would be like onboarding, how boring and long and overwhelming. But we try to make it entertaining and fun. And so for the first two to three weeks, each new employee meets with every functional area, and it's meant to be a very casual meeting and it's more so to get to know each other as people and give our new employees a person or point of contact to reach out to so they already feel like safe having those conversations. I've hosted a ton of these at this point, and we've always shared stories and had laughs, and the feedback from those has been really great. Even sometimes expressing that the employee already feels like they're part of the group because of this, but then in the day-to-day we've built procedures and standards around how our management layer acts with their team. And so there are standard touch bases, skip levels, we have open office hours and then we have monthly all hands. And so that's the meeting portion. And all of this is on Zoom. I'm partial to Zoom. I don't know if we have Google Hangouts, people in here we don't like, or Google meet, Google meets. Google meets not my thing. But all of that's on there. And we do encourage the use of video, which I think makes a huge difference. And I know a lot of places don't really like that, but I do think it matters even if your hair's a mess and you're wearing a hoodie or something. And then beyond that, we have all of our tools that you were touching on earlier. And so Slack for all of our communication, we leave most of our channels public, meaning anyone across the business can see what's going on within those channels. And that's really important because we don't want people to feel like big changes are happening without them being involved or without them really understanding why and what's driving it. And so by leaving these channels public, people can pop in and learn what's happening with our teams, our products, our general business strategy and be a part of the conversation. And then beyond Slack, we use Jira for project management and we use Confluence for our internal wiki. And both of those tools allow people to add comments and threads which are visible to the rest of the group. And I think all of that, the technology is great, but that has to be paired with leading with your culture and your values and leading by example. And so even if we offer all these platforms where people can express their opinions and have those conversations, if we're not leading with respect and compassion for each other, that doesn't matter. And so we really hold our entire team to really high standards when it comes to that. Everyone is able to have those conversations and really move on what they want to without people standing in their way or it being like a big thing, which is pretty cool.
Steve Hamrick (13:01):
To expand a little bit on what Jess said too, I've definitely seen situations in Slack was also we realized this as we were shifting to remote work. Some of the leaders in the organization were just so accustomed to leading in person that they sort of needed some reminders or help guides. So definitely creating some kind of best practices and principles and lessons learned, what you want leaders to do and how you expect them to engage is critical because having them still have a presence to feel that sense of engagement goes back to making sure that people still stay engaged with the company. They feel like, like you said earlier, they're a part of the process. And that engagement leads to retention, which is exactly what we saw too when we actually surveyed our customers who had successfully implemented remote work policies amongst the numerous benefits. One of them was much higher retentions. Companies that had done it really well found that people were more engaged actually than less and that they were more likely to stay at the company because they felt that connection.
Miriam Cross (13:55):
And another thing I've really wondered about is how do you ensure there are equal opportunities for advancement among employees, especially when some are remote and some are in the office? Because I feel like FaceTime really does make a difference in terms of forging personal connections.
Jess Ealer (14:12):
So I completely agree with you. I think FaceTime is very important, but I think we have to remember that some people might, even if they were in the office, that might not be the way they work. And so if we're trying to create an inclusive culture and one where everyone feels valued and seen and heard, we have to remember that and provide, we really task our leaders with the responsibility and accountability of understanding what their team's career goals are and helping them get there. So finding opportunities for them along the way. And so that's why we have these touch bases in place, and we do expect our managers to have this with their team. And they're proactively asking the question, what do you want next? What do you really enjoy? If you've never had to do something again, what would that be? And then seeking out those opportunities, and in some cases, even helping the employees build that career path they might not even know. And so I think that it really starts at a leadership level because you can't expect the employees to drive that. They don't have a seat at that table yet. And so we should help them get there.
Steve Hamrick (15:31):
And definitely to just plus what Jess was saying, that was something that we included in the leadership handbooks that we were providing for our folks. So as our HR team was sort of uncovering what are the things that our leaders need to know about operating this new remote world? One of them was also finding ways to shift their mindset to more of a performance culture and to think about what are the metrics by which success looks like for that person, that role. And that actually again leads to better outcomes from an employee morale and satisfaction perspective because the employees feel like they're actually getting fair and equitable treatment, and it's based on their performance. It's not based on whether or not they showed up and they were visible and they were doing busy work.
Jess Ealer (16:09):
Absolutely.
Miriam Cross (16:10):
And Steve, you brought up at the beginning the point about how you actually had to make changes to Slack to make it it viable for financial institutions, which I thought was super interesting. So what are the concerns that banks and credit unions have had with I guess using Slack but also remote work more broadly?
Steve Hamrick (16:30):
So the typical concerns that we see raised from customers are usually down to the, I call them the three P's. So it's personal identifiable information, personal healthcare information or payment card information. Those are the top three things that our customers are worried about, whether or not their employees are sharing it in the wrong context with inside of Slack, if they accidentally make a mistake and paste something into a channel they're not supposed to. And that's why we've added a ton of capabilities, including integration to things like a data loss prevention solution that are directly aimed at making sure that those things don't happen. And when they do, an administrator's immediately alerted and they can react proactively to it. A lot of questions also arise around things. Can I trust that this employee is using a device that's actually owned and managed by my organization, which are again capabilities that we've baked into the product to make sure that yes, we can confirm that the machines that they're using are ones that you approve and allow, and they're coming in from the machine, the systems or VPNs, whatever it might be that is identifying your machines. Those are all, again, critical sort of where's the data coming in from? And then is it only being accessed from machines that actually are approved by our organization?
Miriam Cross (17:36):
And before you started implementing these capabilities, were banks using Slack?
Steve Hamrick (17:40):
Yes, actually they were. Okay. And I think the biggest reason was that most of it goes back to what I said earlier. I think the most interesting discovery I made as I've gone on this journey working with banking and financial services institutions is how critical knowledge is and how critical breaking down silos is. If you want to get something done, whether it's loan approvals or it could be any number of things, new accounts, new investments or whatever it might be, those all require a lot of cross coordination between many different teams and departments. And anything that starts to put up barriers or silos makes that process slower instead of faster. And anything that as can be automated, for example, a lot of times there's many different systems involved in a chain of a process. So from a loan approval for example, there might be five or six different systems that underwriters are using in order to do that review process. All of that can be easily integrated into Slack, and that makes it really viable for those kinds of use cases.
Miriam Cross (18:36):
Okay. And you mentioned the three P's, you said personally identifiable information, personal healthcare information. What was the third?
Steve Hamrick (18:42):
Payment card information.
Miriam Cross (18:43):
Payment card information.
Steve Hamrick (18:44):
PCI.
Miriam Cross (18:44):
Okay. And Jess, how did those concerns play out at? Do those concerns play out at provide when people are working remotely?
Jess Ealer (18:53):
Yeah, absolutely. So we haven't necessarily had to go through the full review because we're still an independent business line, but obviously we're a business who's doing the right thing. So we want to protect our customer's information, but we use Slack in every way we can up until the point the information needs to be put into our main system. And so we use Workflow Builder, which I'm sure you're familiar with. So we have a lot of intake forms that we have in Slack. Again, the communication channels, and then also we are able to tag the next step in a process. So from an operational standpoint. So it's like, okay, this team's done with this part of the process and then we can pinging the next team and say, now it's your turn. And so that really keeps us quick with our work and responses and able to move through a lot more business than we would without being able to use that. And I think Fifth Third has really recognized the value that that's offered us, and so they're like you'd keep doing that.
Miriam Cross (19:58):
Do you have a sense of how remote work policies might have to change in terms of security and compliance when you integrate further with Fifth Third?
Jess Ealer (20:07):
I think at this point we've been through so much review and we've really got everything so buttoned up that I think that we'll continue business as usual. Again, their policies are pretty similar, so it's not going to feel like a big shift.
Miriam Cross (20:27):
And Steve, we revisit, we talked about this a bit at the beginning, but you told me in the prep call that you, like you said, remote work these days. Yeah, really remote work, it's hybrid. And so how have you seen financial services companies smooth over the hiccups that come when some people are in the office and some people are remote?
Steve Hamrick (20:43):
So this is where we've seen a lot of the usage of, we call them team agreements, and the teams sort of have their own say on roughly when they're going to be in the office or when they're not. And a lot of them actually end up using Slack to sort of coordinate that. So they'll say, Hey, I'm going to be in on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I'm not going to be in the rest of the week as an example. And that's really critical because the last thing you want is in this hybrid world for people to make the effort to show up to an office and then have nobody there. So that whole idea really, if you are going to show up and you do expect and want to socialize, which a lot of people do, it's not just about perks free coffee.
Jess Ealer (21:17):
It really is about the socializing.
Steve Hamrick (21:19):
It really is about the socializing at some point, but also the hallway conversations can sometimes be elucidating for folks that are going through onboarding, for example, sometimes being in person even for the first few weeks just to have an onboarding buddy that is right there with you that you can ask immediate questions of can be really helpful. And so there's those kinds of needs where the team level agreements come in really handy where the team may agree, here's our operating hours. In fact, the other thing we found is that even if you're in the same building, the odds are you might not actually be working on the same floor even. So just having those team level agreements makes it a lot easier. And then agreements on what systems and tools you're going to use for collaborating across what different kinds of processes.
Jess Ealer (22:00):
I'd also add to that, like you said, you don't want to show up to an office and it'd be empty. That's not the point when you're working remotely. You also, if you're going to have a, let's say a optional meeting or an activity or an event, even if it's fully virtual, I think you need to make sure that you have a group of people including leadership that are going to be there and you can let people know. Because I think when we're thinking about, okay, how do we best use our time? Let's say, and I'll use this as an example, we did this recently, we did a virtual trivia competition. And so that's an hour and a half of people's time. No one wants to block that off on their calendar if they're like, oh, no one's going to show up to this. I'd rather just get work done. And so I think it's really important to make sure that you message your teams and you show excitement as a employee, as a leader, as a manager, and say, I'm so pumped for you to have this time to be there. We're going to win, or whatever it is. And then you follow those activities up with recaps that get people excited for the next one. And I think that's a big part of culture, especially when you can't see each other in person, is having these moments of fun that you can always point back to and look back to and be like, wow, remember when that thing happened? And we all just laugh so hard or whatever the case may be. But again, I think you need to make sure that you know, have a group of people who are promoting that event so people know that when they show up, it's not just going to be them staring at themselves.
Miriam Cross (23:37):
Has that happened?
Steve Hamrick (23:38):
I mean, so in the earlier days, not at provide, but I've definitely worked for other companies where a few of us have gotten really excited, especially on the marketing team. I don't know who all in here is a marketer, but we get really excited about things sometimes and we'd be pumped about this activity or this presentation that we're going to put on that was more fun than it was work. And then people would just not show up because they had more important things to do or because there hadn't been enough time. So now I guess I'm just getting on my soapbox about how to plan these activities, but if you don't give people enough time to plan for the activity, then they don't have enough time to shift their workload so they can't come and they can't fully enjoy it. If you don't get leadership and you don't have your leaders saying, Hey, I support you taking the time to go do this, then you're not going to have people show up. And my very last point, and I think this is my most important point, and this goes for either virtual or in-person activities, I strongly believe it needs to be during work hours, asking people to take time out of their personal time, work all day, and then stay away from their families or their dog, or honestly just stay away from being on the couch by themselves for another hour or two to engage with their teammates is just not the right move. It's not inclusive. It takes the fun out of it. And so I would say those are some things to really think about as you try and plan some of these things for your team.
Miriam Cross (25:14):
Yeah. Let's see. We have three more minutes. Does anybody have any questions? Just feel free to stand up. Okay. Then I have one more question for you guys. There's been a lot of chatter lately about banks encouraging employees to go back to the office. So what do each of you see as the future for remote work and banking?
Steve Hamrick (25:38):
I said at the top, I think that every organization is going to deal with hybrid at some level. The hybrid could come from the fact that different working hours, the hybrid could come from the fact that different working locations within a company might have multiple buildings, might have multiple floors. And so we see such a net benefit from having to shift to this mindset because it was, as I mentioned at the top right, it was a training moment for a lot of the leaders in the organization. It's a training moment to get them to fixate more on performance rather than I'm seeing somebody at the office. It's a training moment to get them to think about what things do I need to do as a leader to make myself accessible and make the company's direction and mission really clear to my employees so that they stay more engaged. And especially now more than ever, I know a lot of folks in the financial services industry are competing with tech more and more, right? Tech is disrupting financial services more broadly than pretty much any other industry at the moment. And so the more that they can do to make those employees feel empowered, to make them feel engaged, to make them feel like they're being measured on performance is really critical and definitely starts at the top. So getting those leaders engaged and having them be ready and willing to support hybrid, recognizing that it doesn't mean never in the office, it just means that the office has changed.
Miriam Cross (26:55):
And Jess, what do you see as the future for remote work and banking?
Jess Ealer (26:58):
No, very similar thoughts. I think that that's true probably across the board, honestly. And banks, I think specifically might want to shift to more hybrid than remote in general. But I think people might also want that kind of back to the beginning. We crave that, or most of us that crave that to an extent. But ultimately, there still has to remain flexibility and people still will have to have autonomy to an extent because we've been doing this for years now, and I just don't think we're going to go back. And if you expect your teams to go back, then you're going to lose some really great people because to your point, there are a million other companies looking for people and they're going to take them.
Miriam Cross (27:46):
Alright, Well thank you both very much for being on this panel.
Steve Hamrick (27:49):
Thank You.