The Virtual CMO
The Virtual CMO podcast offers engaging discussions about marketing strategies and the impact of new technologies on marketing effectiveness. Hosted by Eric Dickmann, the founder of The Five Echelon Group and a fractional CMO, the podcast emphasizes the importance of developing strategic marketing plans and executing successful growth marketing initiatives. Each episode features interviews with industry thought leaders who share their insights and experiences. The show also explores new marketing automation platforms, AI-enabled tools, and other innovative technologies that can enhance marketing campaigns.
The Virtual CMO
Being a Customer Advocate Within Your Business with Brian Kale
In episode 92, host Eric Dickmann interviews Brian Kale. Brian is a customer service advocate, CX industry insider, and Head of Customer Success at Bank Novo. a small business banking platform connecting business owners to no-fee checking and debit accounts. He's been helping companies better understand their customers by building better products for their needs.
For show notes and a list of resources mentioned in this episode, please visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/being-customer-advocate-within-your-business-s6ep11/
A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.
The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at:
Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann. In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business. Hey, Brian, welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm very glad you could join us today.
Brian Kale:Hi, Eric. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be talking with you. And that was a great intro there, I loved the music, yeah.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah. I like to play a little upbeat music, you know? Get everybody in the mood, get the blood flowing. So yeah. Thanks for that.
Brian Kale:Oh, you know, hopefully the sounds of New York here hopefully filter too much in I'll mute myself when it gets real bad. Yeah.
Eric Dickmann:It just makes it more real. And you know we're recording this actually on the day that a hurricane is passing by Florida where I live. So you know, we may be interrupted by a big thunderstorm or something as well, but we just roll with the punches.
Brian Kale:Yeah, definitely God willing and the creeks on her eyes, as they say.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah, I like that. I like that. Hey, I'm excited to talk to you today because I've spent a large portion of my career in financial services. And so it's always interesting to talk to a fellow financial services guy, especially somebody who is responsible for the customer experience, customer success. So I'm really interested to get your thoughts but, you know, before we dive too deep into it, how did you end up in financial services?
Brian Kale:That's a very good question. I know if you asked my parents 15, 20 years ago, they would ask the same thing. So I moved to New York in 2012 and fell into the startup industry. I actually applied for a job. I thought it was fake and they called me back later, it was an artificial intelligence company, and I applied for the customer experience position. And I went on the interview and saw it was a real company and took the job, and you know, route 2014, 2015 was working in customer experience. And built up quite a bit of you know, experience and knowledge and you know, after being in a company for a couple of years, In this day and age, you move around. It's very advantageous for your professionals. So I was seeking a company that was very early on, had really started its customer experience program and is looking for somebody to come in and build it from the ground up. And I got connected with our CEO, Michael here. And I wasn't specifically looking for a FinTech or anything, but obviously you know, three years ago now I knew that FinTech was going to be a big deal, um, but I think I focused more on finding a company that would be a better fit for me and my skillset and it just so happens to be that it was FinTech. And that's what I love about the startup industry in general is it allows you to kind of experience different industries and verticals. And Novo was honestly also looking for non-industry veterans because we wanted to bring a different spin to banking that we felt a lot of traditional banks were not providing for their customers. You know I'm sure a lot of these traditional players get stuck in these bureaucratic policies and rhythms, which is good, and they've operated that way for a long time. But consumer demands of the last ten, five, and even now 12 months. That's so dramatically changed. And honestly, everyone's being compared to like Amazon and Apple.
Eric Dickmann:Oh I know, right.
Brian Kale:Yeah. So Nova wants to come in and provide them with a consumer great experience that they're honestly not getting at the traditional players. And so you know, we being a non-traditional, it was a good fit. And now that I'm in the industry, I feel that more financial institutions should be taking this approach. We need to match the expectations of consumers who don't care about these archaic financial policies. They don't care that checks don't work the way you think they do. They don't care that the Sage system. Is slow. And I think that that is what gives Novo such an advantageous play here, specifically in small business space which is our focus. And also, the consumer banking side has gone through traumatic changes even with the traditional players. So, yeah, so it's really exciting to be here. What I see is like an inflection point in our economy as the whole economy rapidly goes digital and there's massive innovation in personal, financial tools and services available to the consumer. Like this podcast wouldn't exist 10 years ago, you'd need like five, six people to run this thing. And I bet it's just you and your studio by yourself flipping buttons to make these nice camera moves, you might outsource editing. Go ahead.
Eric Dickmann:No. I was gonna say, I do have some Oompa Loompas that help, but other than that, no. Yeah, it's me, you're right, the technology has changed dramatically. But I still think it's a gutsy move for our company to sort of get into the banking space. Obviously we talked a little bit before the show FinTech is booming, there's a lot of innovation that's happening, especially in the payment space, but know to start a bank. You know, I think there are more banks in this country than there are McDonald's. You know there are a lot of banks that are out there. So you truly have to come up with something that's unique and innovative to be successful in a space like this.
Brian Kale:I agree. And I think that there are about 1200 banks in United States right now. But note that that is half the amount of banks we had eight years ago.
Eric Dickmann:Been a lot of consolidation.
Brian Kale:And a lost 50%. Yes. A lot of consolidation. There were like, I think 32, maybe 34 national banks in 08, now there's 4. And most of the loss in banks we've seen are regional small, local banks. So that's who Novo really is here for. We sit on top of small regional community banks and connect them with consumers that they'd never have an opportunity to connect you with because they can't innovate fast. They don't have the capital to build apps, they can't connect with anything. So that's what Novo is really also trying to innovate here is keeping these regional banks alive as they're so suffering defined. You know, consumers who as I mentioned, have consumer grade demands and they want fast apps. They want instant access, full acts or cats for that matter. And so Novo is trying to do like a couple of things at once here. And I agree it is scary jumping into FinTech in this day and age, especially when some of the largest banks in America right now are Starbucks, Amazon, Google. Like those are really the players that everyone kinda overlooks. And even the traditional players I think are at significant risk of disruption from these big tech companies who are becoming the largest marketplaces in the world and will be highly incentivized to provide banking products to their users and consumers. So it's really fascinating that I find myself here. It's like I'm looking out as the whole economy is rapidly changing to this new thing and the government, I think needs a lot of catching up to do as well, which is a whole other can of worms.
Eric Dickmann:Well, I think one of the advantages that smaller companies have, even in spaces that are dominated by a few big players is they also have the legacy of years worth of technology, of years worth of bureaucracy, and that doesn't always make them very nimble. Change is really difficult. And I think if you would ask people about their experience of calling into a bank call center, it's like calling your cable TV provider or your utility company, right? It's, it's painful. Nails on a chalkboard painful. And you wonder why in this day and age, they can't be better. They don't have more access to the kinds of tools that. It would help them be able to support their customers in a better way.
Brian Kale:And you actually kind of just hit the nail on the head. You know, phone services, old banking services for years, the only way to contact like At&T and Verizon was to either go in or call. And this is trained generations of consumers that that's the way you do it. But as you said, there's no reason you need to do that. There's no reason you have to talk to a middle person to have full control of your bank account. Nova was really trying to prioritize full customer empowerment of their account. Call us when you want to, not when you need to, right? Like you shouldn't need to call us for anything. Obviously people have emergencies, people have problems, those are the calls that we want to serve. And it's not like you as a consumer, like, oh God, I woke up today. I guess I got to call my bank to ask them this question. There's no reason to do that. So that's where we're at. And as you said, we see ourselves more as a tech company, not a bank. That really enables us to innovate
Eric Dickmann:Well, I like it. You know, I think empowering consumers is really an important thing because many times I think organizations give lip service to that. They give lip service to good customer experience, but you know, one of my favorite examples is when you call into a call center and they say, please listen carefully because our menu options have changed. No, they haven't. They haven't changed since you installed the damn thing. What they're saying is please, please, please don't put zero, don't talk to somebody, listen here and maybe one of the options will answer your questions, but please don't by default select zero to talk to an operator. And in fact, many of them have disabled zero, so you can't pick it. That's not about customer service, that's about them trying to gain some efficiencies in their call center. But what they're really doing is annoying customers in the process.
Brian Kale:Exactly. And there's a lot of market research that's come out lately in the last few years that consumers actually feel agitated and it is an inconvenience when they have to call a company. It doesn't matter if it's a bank or not. And at the same time, consumers are more open to texts, SMS live chats, and they're more open to finding an answer or a solution, any means possible as long as they can do it within five minutes. So it's like this coming together of consumer demands and expectations, and you know not calling them, but lazy companies. It's like all you need to do is provide consumers with quick little experiences that may or may not involve a human, that just guide people to answers or guide people to solutions. And that's all consumers want. Like for as much flack as Amazon gets, if you order an Amazon product, you can go right now, see your invoice, see where it is. Cancel, reschedule, reorder. You can do anything you want. And that's one of the innovative aspects of Amazon that is often overlooked. Like everyone likes to jump on them for all the bad things they do, but there's a lot of amazing, innovative things they've done. And Apple's the same way. If you have an Apple Cart, you could just text them. They'll just quickly give you what you need and it's five minute or less experience. And that is I think the future of everything, not just FinTech. It is every company is going to be looking to innovate this, and so that's what I think is the opportunity. There's so many listeners of this podcast and myself and so many companies as well.
Eric Dickmann:I love the way you framed that, because I think. And I believe this is true, really in the banking space is that so many organizations out there really believe that they have truly differentiated products. And you'd have a hard time convincing me that there was a huge difference between one checking account and another. They're minor differences right there, the rates that they pay or fees that they charge, or certain things, but what it really comes down to is service and access. Those are the attributes of the product. In an ideal world. It's almost invisible. Everything just works and you never have to inquire about anything. But I think oftentimes organizations get very hung up on what they believe are the features and benefits of their product, which turned out not to be all that much different than their competition. It's really that service level. Would you agree with that?
Brian Kale:I a hundred percent agree with you. I think that everyone wants banking to be invisible. said it before, no one wants to talk to their bank. And so if you really are customer innovative, you would do everything you can to build experiences and products that enable customers to just never need to talk to you because it just worked. Money just was moved when it needed to move. You connected your accounts to each other and it just works. So what that also does though is it creates a setting where consumers might only contact you once a year. So the only way they build brand equity with you now is that one interaction. So you need to get that one interaction to be perfect or else they could turn very quickly. And a lot of companies are afraid of that and they built these legacy call center systems with these IDRs. And they're hesitant to change. And for so long, it's been cheaper to put people on phones rather than build a tech solution, which would be a much better experience. But what's fascinating is the salaries, the cost of supporting that the phone center has Forex in like two years. I'm talking in the United States, the Philippines, India, like everywhere, no matter where you outsource it, the prices, the cost has gone up significantly. And so companies are going to do one of two things, they're either going to make terrible experiences. One of three things. They're either going to try to do the same thing with make it terrible. Like try calling FedEx right now, it's impossible. And they keep trying to direct you to their live chat, but their live chat. there is no one there and it doesn't work. Or they're going to create an amazing tech solution or they're going to charge you in some fashion to support those phone calls. You know, Amex has amazing phone support, but they also charge you$600 annually or whatever it is. And that's how they support it and the consumers, I think one of the things I always try to do when I talk on these shows is educate consumers about why support is the way it is and how much it is actually costing you. The reality is phone calls are costing you some way. You're getting charged by somehow you're getting charged for it. And so you as a consumer while it's great to get a call. You should in the longterm think of ways of. Wait, how is this actually, how much are they charging you for this? Even if they don't send me a bill, where is the hidden costs and what should I be looking for in a company that I want to commit to 5, 10 years down the road. And there's a lot of consumer education around brands that I think is a good opportunity for everyone as well involved, which, you know, I've said that twice now. But I really do feel that you know we as consumers can find tremendous value, identifying companies who do understand what you brought up, and then how to switch to them, then use them. So many companies claim they do that and they have no idea. And they have these made up metrics or these made up features, and they just go tout how great their customer service is or their customer experiences, but no one wants to call, no, one wants to talk to you.
Eric Dickmann:Nobody wants to call. Well I think one of the frustrations that I see and I've had guests on the show talk about before is that when you call in and you talk to somebody or even sometimes when you go into the store, people aren't empowered to make things right. And so they're given these scripts and they talk the talk, but they don't have the tools or the empowerment to actually solve your problem. So then that means that you're stuck on hold while they talk to a supervisor and it's one supervisor for 50 people. So they have to wait their turn to talk to the supervisor. And in the meantime, you're just getting more and more frustrated. And just like you said, what is the real cost of all of that? So now you're wasting my 30 minutes, you're wasting the call center agent's 30 minutes, you're getting two people involved to solve one problem. Can you not just waive the$25 fee? You begin to really wonder.
Brian Kale:And I bet you could calculate how much you make an hour. most of these call centers are open from 8:00 AM to like 7. You know you're probably calling during your working hours, so you could calculate how much it's costing you or the business you work for as well, which is a whole other can of worms. And you'll get a manager who's also not empowered. So it's like the cycle of frustration.
Eric Dickmann:We live in an era when tools like you're talking about where people can solve problems on their own. That's empowering to them because they don't necessarily want to talk to somebody, they just want that problem solved in the quickest way possible. And so if you can give them the tools to do that even better. You know, I remember working in financial services, this term entanglement that kept getting thrown around, right? When you sign up for services like Bill Pay and you've got your mortgage with a company and you've got your checking and your savings account, you are so entangles in that organization that no matter how bad the service is, it's going to be really hard for you to leave them because it's such a hassle disconnecting all of those relationships. You can't just change your mortgage overnight, you're not going to want to change all your Bill Pay, right? That's all, that's a big problem. And so that's their leverage, right? They can provide you with C+ service and know that that's good enough because it's not going to push you out the door.
Brian Kale:Yeah. And while there's not really monopolies yet in the financial industry, as I mentioned, there's only like four major national players, a quadopoly if you will. all kind of do the same thing. And the banking industry for a hundred years has been built on closed system customers where, okay we get you with the checking account, and then we know within 12 to 18 months, we're going to upsell you on a mortgage, then car insurance. And you'll see this when they interact with you. Can I offer you this? How many emails do you get from these banks about all of these services? It says, you said they want to tie you into their ecosystem and then you can't play with anyone else. And there's been a lot of unbundling of many industries over the last 15, 20 years. There's some in banking where this prosper, the student lending, there's savings account with Marcus, which is Goldman Sachs, but the core banking products are still largely tied to the major banks. You can get a check as a consumer, you can get a debit card from literally anybody right now. But you can't get checking from them, you can't get insurance, you can't get mortgages all in one place. You can go to different places, which is good and bad for consumers. Like you can go to Prosper and get a 30% interest rate loan, where if you went to anyone else will be 20 whatever percent. And so that is good and bad, but then you're only have one place in one relationship for your lending product. So as a consumer, you should look for financial companies that connect to other tools and services that you want to use or already use, who are flexible, allow you full access to your information. And if they are tough with these tools, You should really ask, well, why? And it's because as you said, they're trying to entangle you to then sell you more products to make more money. And then it's LTV really, it's lifelong value off of you. They think that they get you on these three things. They're gonna make a hundred thousand dollars off you or more over 30 years. That's really the game for them. Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast. But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level? If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO consulting service may be a great fit for you. We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step. We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads. How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers. How to strategically package and position your products and services. How to increase lead conversion, improve your margins, and scale your business. To find out more about our consulting offerings and schedule a consultation, go to fiveechelon.com and click on Services. Now back to the podcast.
Eric Dickmann:Oh, absolutely. Well, and as somebody who's responsible for customer experience, when you look at the buyer's journey and the marketing that you do to attract customers. And then the buying process of actually get them signed up to become customers, and then ultimately the service process to keep them as customers, how do you sort of look at that as a holistic path as opposed to well, that's marketing's job, that's the servicing job. How do you pull it all together to make sure that that is a seamless experience?
Brian Kale:That is a very good question. I think that that's what's so exciting about customer experience and customer success is like a growing philosophy and business pillar. You know companies now, what is the delineation with sales between marketing, between service, between retention, all of this. And the reality is it's all kind of the same thing. And customer experience, customer success, these departments are responsible for the overall experience and linking marketing together with the product linking dev, you're like the voice of the customer, and you're really here to represent, understand their life cycles, understand their different needs at different life cycles, and how do you then leverage that through data to make better marketing decisions or product decisions, or even sales decisions. And you're seeing like a lot of marketing and even a lot of sales is becoming automated in marketing. And a lot of marketing is becoming seamless experiences and it's more about like when someone comes to your brand, do they find an easy route to sign up? Little to no friction, no payments, like can you just get someone like in the platform really quickly? Show them what they're going to get with you. And I think that that does a lot of the sale. And so with marketing and understanding your brand experience, it's like every interaction, does it match what the consumer thinks about you? And you said like Novo is really focused on like empowerment of customers are brought up several times. So like you look at our marketing, you look at our sign up flow our application, our website, there is a lot of like empowering language, empowering imagery, and then you apply, you can get a bank account open in like 10 minutes or less if you have everything ready to go, and most people do. And that is really empowering because if you were to go into a traditional bank, It could take you know, like a week to get it back in count. And so. Right away. You're rewarding people like you were empowering them off the bat, and that has this very positive feeling effect for them. And you see people instantly going on social media, they're super excited. And with small businesses, oftentimes, they're looking for legitimacy. And when they open a bank account, they feel validated and seen. Specifically since so many of the traditional players have overlooked that. And so customer experience really needs to understand that, sure everyone in the company understands that and that you reinforce it at every step.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah. And I know it's tough in a regulated environment, right? There are disclosures that you have to do. You have to collect certain forms of identification, their credit checks, and things for certain products. There are things that you just can't eliminate as part of the steps in the process. But sometimes you look at it and you say, there's gotta be a way that we can make this easier. I was cleaning out my closet the other day and found a package of papers for a home equity loan. And it's a doorway, you know? The thing is 50 pages or longer of just stuff that I've never read, because who's going to sit and read through 50 pages of disclosures, right? But. I think that there's gotta be a better way, there's gotta be a better way.
Brian Kale:I agree. You know, I think with those disclosures, a lot of that falls to our government. think they mandate that they have to send you in writing those things. The companies I'm sure would love to not send you those, but there has to be a better way. So like we started with a banking partner and we looked at traditional ways of applying for checking and debit accounts. And it was crazy. Like the main motivation for Novo's founders to start this company was they tried to apply for bank account and it was insane. And they said there has to be a to be a better way. Yeah, so we've made tremendous steps forward with collecting documents, self service, applying. You know, quickly linking your social media, quickly linking other bank accounts, quickly finding your documents online. And the good news is there's a lot of companies that are now you know, forming other businesses online. You'll have a Legal Zoom, you can get these documents online now and DocuSign, which is so you know, in the news a lot now that's enabled a lot of this digital transformation for us specifically. But it's so weird when I go to to my bank, sometimes you know,'one of my old legacy, personal banks. And they sit, like I have to fill out this PDF form and I'm like, can I get a DocuSign? And they're like, no, you can't. And it's like, wow guys. So, yeah, I think you're really spot on.
Eric Dickmann:Yeah, something like a DocuSign tool. I mean it's changed dramatically how easy it is to sign contracts. You know, adopt this signature, click here, here, here, and you're done. And so much of it, if it's done correctly is prefilled for you. So you don't have to be repeating the same information over and over again, which is a real problem with a lot of documents. But I love that and I think that's where a lot of innovators can come into established spaces and say, Hey, we can make this process better because some of the big players, their systems are so ingrained, it's very hard for them to make significant changes without years of effort and untangling their own complicated back office infrastructure.
Brian Kale:Exactly and what you're also finding, and this is what I kind of love about it, it's like a puzzle. You'll often find that there's not actually a regulatory or compliance, or legal reason. Something is the way It's just they've always done it that way. And everyone in the vacuum, oh, this is just how it's done, it's taken as a fact. And when you really start to read things and ask regulatory people, it's like no, actually, no, that's just you know, people just do it. And we found a lot of innovation there. Now you don't want to move too quickly because you will freak out. You know other banks and institutions. And honestly, a lot of consumers might get freaked out too. There is like this weird feedback loop that Oh, they think that there is supposed to be a certain level of friction because like, that's what banks do. So we've actually had, we've observed a lot of people come to us expecting the certain level of friction and frustration. And we're like, yeah, no, no, you're good, just go. That feeds your fun, don't worry about it. Like people will call us to fight over a$25 fee that you just talked about. Like oh yeah, that's hard to take care of. What? They'll tell us these weird stories. Yeah, no, no, you don't have to tell us anything. It's good, you were funny. Don't worry about it. It's really funny that I saw how many people come to us thinking that they have to treat us the way they do the other big players. And then it's like, No, it's all taken care of. Customer forward focus, right? That's good. Well, we're living in a time when there's a lot of pent up frustration about a lot of things, you know? We see it in our politics, but I think there are a lot of people who just have a lot of pent up frustration and when they dial that phone and they get that poor customer service agent, boy, it's not going to take much for them just to go off on the smallest little thing. So you know, the example that you used is great. You know people come, their barrels are loaded, right? They're ready for a fight, and then it's just taken care of. And that kind of positive customer satisfaction I think is what leads to word of mouth. And people start talking about, Hey, I had this great experience with my bank. Have you ever heard of them? Have you ever given them a try? You mentioned American express before. Yeah, they charge premium fees, but they're known for having great service. I mean, just to be clear, I love American Express. I definitely use them. Charging that fee because you're getting great service with it. Novo just to be clear, does not charge a monthly or call fees, so we have to come up with very innovative ways to provide customer service that we don't charge you for. And then just to kind of touch off what you just said is the specter of the 08 financial crisis is looming, ever large on us, especially as specter of the 2020 COVID crisis and potentially the market crash, the housing market crash, inflation. Like people are nervous, they were nervous. Coming out of a wait is conditionally nervous. All these market indicators, so they're very distrusting. You know there was all those Wells Fargo problems in the here. It's so people inherently are looking for alternatives. They're hesitant to switch because of how entangled they are. But they are desperately looking for someone who they see as being in their corner, who speaks to them, like a person, not like a number on a balance sheet, not a sales person, and just as like, can you just explain this to me in simple terms? And we want to be refreshing. And I think what you're seeing with a lot of innovators in the financial space right now is they're doing that. And Novo is one of several, who's playing into that. And I would say that the economic uncertainty plus disruption's coming. We'll feed into that even more. And my hope is that we were able to protect not Novo, but like we as a society are able to build these systems that can protect as much people as possible. It's kind of out of control like it did in a way.
Eric Dickmann:I do love the fact that you guys have picked a certain niche around small business, because I think that helps you be a lot more empathetic with your customers, right? When you're talking to small business owners all the time, you know, the kind of problems, the frustrations that they're facing, and you can develop solutions, or you can just develop ways to talk to them in their own language so that they know that you really understand their problems. And I think organizations that try to be all things to all people, oftentimes aren't to anyone because they're so generic. And you just feel like they don't understand at all the problems that you have or sometimes even their own products and how their own products serve them.
Brian Kale:Definitely. And what's amazing is as I talk of coming in a way, is so many people these days are small businesses, you, yourself, probably are. And so Novo is targeting actual, true small businesses. You hear a lot of people trying to calling them as micro businesses and no, no, no, these are small businesses, right? These are one or two person companies who got their star with an online website with a laptop and weekend of gumption, built their business and they're selling, and they're making a product relatively quickly with little capital. But they were only one or two person companies and you'll go to banks, you'll look at the regulation, they talk about multi-million dollar businesses. Small businesses is less than 250 employees and it's like, wow. That is wild. No, no, no, no. This is like real small. And many of these people have never had checking your debit accounts before. A lot of Americans, their primary bank accounts are Venmo and PayPal, spoiler those aren't banks. Um, if there was a crisis, the money on those platforms is in question. And so that is the atmosphere rent, and so speaking to those people and at the same time, the rise of YouTube. TikTok. there's a lot of education, your podcast. There's a lot of education for small businesses. You can very quickly find guides, really good information on how to become a profitable business in like a few days. And so those are the people that were banking, they often are very overlooked, and they just need help. They needed a place to store their money, receive money, and make payments. And they don't need bells and whistles. And I think that that's really innovative and exciting and understanding that frees Novo up to better serve those customers, as you just said. I think more companies should really think about who they're serving and why, and not try to be a jack of all trades, master of none.
Eric Dickmann:I think that's exactly it. I mean if you go to your company's website on the homepage, you're going to see that you've got integrations into QuickB=books and Xero, and things like that. You're not going to see that at Bank of America's website or Chase's website, because they're serving so many different types of customers, right? Do you have, you're going to have to drill into it to be able to find that kind of information. So it's very clear what you're doing. Hey, Brian, you know, I could talk all day on financial services and customer experience. This is great. I think you've shared a lot of insights. I'd love it if you could just share a little bit more with the audience about Novo and where they could find more information, not only about Novo, but about yourself.
Brian Kale:Yeah, so Novo. You know, banknovo.com. You can find us there, you can apply in minutes. As I mentioned, we're here to serve small businesses in the United States. We're looking to expand hopefully, but right now in the United States. If you have a digital business, you're selling online, you're an Uber driver, you're a consultant or contractor, you know, we definitely think we're here for you. No fees on month or transactions, it's all free. And give us a holler, reach out to me. Also find me on Twitter at Brian W. kale, or LinkedIn, ask me questions. Always happy to help. And yeah, we're really looking, we've had a great year so far. A lot of people have come to us and we're really looking for the next few years or so. So don't hesitate to reach out. Oh, that's great. No, I love your value proposition, I love the fact that you're targeting small businesses. And I'll make sure that we have all those links in the show notes so that people can find you and reach out and get more information. But I really love the concept and what you guys are doing. So thank you so much for being a guest today. I've really enjoyed our conversation and talking about customer experience. It's been fun. Yeah, it's been great. Thanks for having me. And I hope it really helped out for you and your audience.
Eric Dickmann:Absolutely. Thank you again.
Brian Kale:Great.
Eric Dickmann:Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. For more episodes, go to fiveechelon.com/podcast to subscribe through your podcast player of choice. And if you'd like to develop consistent lead flow and a highly effective marketing strategy, visit fiveechelon.com to learn more about our Virtual CMO consulting services.
