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Every product leader has to make them: the high-stakes decisions that define outcomes, shape careers, and don't come with easy answers.
The Hard Calls podcast, hosted by Trisha Price, features candid conversations with product and tech leaders about the pivotal decisions that drive great products and the pressure that comes with it. From conflicting priorities and unclear success metrics to aligning teams and navigating executive expectations, you will hear compelling stories and best practices that drive business outcomes and help you make the Hard Calls.
Real decisions. Real stakes. Real leadership.
Presented by Pendo
Learn more at pendo.io/
Follow Trisha Price on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trisha-price-3063081/
Trisha Price: Hi everyone.
I have an exclusive discount for
Hard Calls listeners to Pendomonium,
Pendo's Product Festival.
I would like to invite you to join me in
Raleigh, North Carolina from March 24th
to 26th, with an exclusive 30% discount.
When you use the code hardcalls30,
that's hardcalls, all lowercase,
and the numbers three zero.
Get your discounted ticket
at pendo.io/Pendomonium.
See you there.
Taking that back a level to your
product team, how do they think about
personalizing experiences for their
customers and their craft of product
and what data they use to make decisions
in the product on a day-to-day basis?
Daniel Haisley: There's an
exercise we call the Five Whys.
So whenever a particular problem
comes up and we called into like,
all right, look, we need to build a
feature to go and solve this problem.
We'll sit and we'll play the five whys.
Well, why is that a problem?
Well, that's a problem
because of this other thing.
Well, why is this other thing a problem?
And if you do that five times, then you
get to the, just a very fundamental issue.
And then we look to address that issue.
There have been so many times where, if
we've forgotten to, to play five why's
that we end up solving something that
is kind of a surface level problem,
but it's not the fundamental issue.
So with all the problems that we
come in, we'll we'll sit and we'll
play five why's to understand,
kinda get to a root cause and then.
Let's go out and talk to customers.
Trisha Price: Hi everyone, and
welcome back to Hard Calls, the
podcast where we highlight the best
product leaders from across the globe.
If you're new to the show, I'd like
to welcome you and invite you to hit
follow or subscribe so you can stay up
to date with all the latest episodes.
On today's show, I am so excited
to have Daniel Haisley with me.
Daniel is the Senior Vice President of
Product Management at CSI, where his
responsibilities include leading the
vision and delivery of digital banking,
account origination, data intelligence,
and loan origination solutions.
I was lucky enough to get to
know Daniel when I was the
Chief Product Officer at nCino.
Both of us are based in the same
beach town in North Carolina.
And we both came from SaaS companies
that support the banking industry.
After I left nCino and came to Pendo,
Daniel and I's paths were lucky enough
to cross again, not only because
Aperture, which is where he was the
Chief Product Officer, and which is
now a part of CSI since their recent
acquisition, was a customer of Pendo.
But beyond that, we partnered
on their product Data Engage.
Daniel and I share a commitment to
helping financial institutions and
frankly, any company for that matter,
with personalization and analytics and
achieving outcomes through great products.
Thanks for being here, Daniel.
Daniel Haisley: Oh, I'm
super excited about this.
Thank you so much for having me.
Trisha Price: We're gonna have fun
and I'm excited to just chat today.
So, as you know, this is
the Hard Calls podcast.
And so before we jump into learning
a little bit about you and your
view on product and how you've
helped the banking industry, we
gotta start with your hard call.
So, Daniel, tell us a little bit,
looking back over your career,
what you know, product leadership,
we make hard calls every day.
That's our job, and I think it's one
of the most fun parts of the job,
but also the hardest part of the job.
So share with us a hard call that you've
had to make and maybe what made it so
challenging, but also how did you make it?
Daniel Haisley: Yeah.
So, I mean, I can think even in
recent time, as we've gone through an
acquisition and so we were being acquired
as part of Aperture being acquired by
a larger organization, which was CSI.
And as part of that, we need to go
through and kind of unify and create
a unified product organization.
And if I think of the, just the
general realm of, problems or
challenges or calls to make.
There's always the call of well
in the market, what's the, what
problem do we want to go and solve?
Then there's in a B2B world, particularly
how to lean into relationships,
when to, when to be guided, when
to guide, what managing those
relationships with clients specifically.
And then third and what I think is
most importantly, it's the people.
It's the people side of things.
So I think one of the hardest calls
that which is really just a series of
calls that we've had to make over the
last three months, is to determine for
those people who are like these sorts of
acquisitions, they create opportunity.
And who's ready to take that next step?
Who's the kind of super ambitious
and, they've they put in time.
They're ready to do the next
step, or they think that they're
ready to do the next step.
And conversely, folks that may, they've
been around for a very long time and
maybe they know the, know the domain,
they know what it is, but aren't.
Just don't necessarily have the
same kind of fire and they're at
a place where they're, they're
kind of, they're just comfortable.
Setting an org chart and putting
people in positions where, I
think they can be most successful.
And for some people, that's
gonna be really stretching them.
For some people it's gonna be just
setting expectations of "hey, here's
the kind of the bar of excellence
and this is what we want to hit."
That's really challenging.
Because we have to, I've had to deliver
good news to folks and I've had to deliver
really challenging news to folks and doing
that in such a way that, keeps the team
aligned, keeps people inspired to go and
tackle and kind of meet a shared vision.
puts everyone in a position to challenge
the process but still be encouraged to go
and do that has been really challenging.
Trisha Price: I love that.
That's your hard call.
You know, those of us in product, at
the end of the day, we're often doing
acquisitions or being acquired, right?
It's a common outcome, often
an outcome to be celebrated.
So congrats to you and, and the
team at Aperture for that outcome.
But it does all come down to the people
and the culture that you had and you built
successfully that drove your success at
Aperture might not be the exact skills
and culture that you need as a part of a
bigger and different organization of CSI.
And so I think that's such a good
topic to bring up because at the
end of the day, these products.
They're built by people, right?
And our people are our biggest asset and
our most important asset to take care of.
And yeah, delivering the
good news is really fun.
But, you know, delivering the bad
news, while it's not the most fun
thing in the moment, I've always
felt like it's also a gift to people.
Because if you're not right, if I'm
not right for a certain organization,
at a certain point in time.
It's better off for everyone in the
long run if they can go work and put
their skills and time and effort at
somewhere where they are the right fit.
And while it's a hard call in
the moment, I think in the end
it makes it better for everybody.
Daniel Haisley: Yeah, it, it reminds
me, I had a a young lady that I worked
with for a number of years, and she was
just, you give her the thing, whatever
the thing was, and guaranteed she would
be able to go and, and knock that out.
As smart as you could ask for,
willing to work as hard as you could
possibly, like she was fantastic,
but swam with a very wide wake.
It would would be really challenging
for even for clients, but also
for coworkers around and in
some ways be, was inhibiting.
Yeah, inhibiting the growth
of the people a around her.
So making the really hard decision to say,
I think you have a really bright future
in front of you, but that may not be here.
Trisha Price: Yeah.
Daniel Haisley: That's a
really tough call to make.
But I don't, I've never looked back and
regretted making those sorts of decisions.
To your point, I think it ends
ended up being better for everyone
involved, including, and particularly
probably, especially for that person.
Trisha Price: Yeah, for sure.
Well, Daniel I know Aperture and
now CSI, a big part of what you do
is to help financial institutions
deliver amazing, personalized
experience to their customer base.
Tell us a little bit about that, your
view on, on how you do that, how you've
been so successful as a product leader
delivering these kinds of solutions.
Daniel Haisley: So I can I can
talk a little bit about, I mean, I
can talk a lot about kinda digital
banking and the banking space, but
this all correlates to just the
broader world that we, we live in.
Think of the way banking has worked
historically, particularly in the
community banking space where, where
we have traditionally operated.
These banks have competed by
physical location of the branches.
And I opened my first account when I was
14, 15 years old at Old National Bank
because that's where my parents banked
in Evansville, Indiana where I grew up.
And so naturally that's
where I got my first account.
And then I move on and we get to college,
I opened an account at Purdue Police's
Federal Credit Union, and I move just, and
the physical location of the branches kind
of drove those sorts of relationships.
But that changed dramatically over
the last 10, 15 years to where
it's not about physical location.
So what happened was when people walk into
the branches and you'd have conversations,
you'd establish relationships and rapport
with tellers and with people that were
running the desk and the branch managers
and so forth, and you'd share information.
Going to be graduating, coming up, Hey,
saving up I'm going to buy a new vehicle.
Hey, we're thinking of buying a house.
Uh, hey, Maria's pregnant.
What it looks like we're, we're expecting
and did, and all these life events.
And that helped to develop that
relationship and helped them to
be able to serve me uniquely.
But what happens when people
don't walk into branches anymore?
Trisha Price: Yeah.
And this, how do you give that
same feeling of being welcomed,
of knowing us as humans and
what's going on in our lives?
How do you do that digitally?
Daniel Haisley: That's right.
And at the end of the day, people
want to be treated and known.
For what they are, what's unique to them,
what are the unique skills or attributes
that they bring to the people around them.
So in a world where you're not
sharing those data points by having
conversations back and forth, and we
can talk about the tenets of that.
It has to come to data.
Like we are really fortunate in
the banking space that we have
information or like we, we can see
where people are voting with their
dollars, where they're spending money.
And that's, that is a manifestation
of what are the challenges,
what's important to them.
And so to be able to then use that
information to helps us out, okay,
what's important to this particular
customer, small business owner to the
consumer, whomever, and then provide
the right message at the right time,
at the right place within the user
interface, within the experience, wherever
that may be is the overarching goal.
To drive everything to be much
more personalized than it is today.
And I think that that manifests itself
well, outside of banking, I, one of the
things I love is I get my Spotify 2025
year wrapped and what did I listen to and.
It's all messed up because now my kids
are listening to, I'm all Taylor Swift.
Trisha Price: So your music
age is not correct anymore
because they've taken over.
Daniel Haisley: Yeah.
Yeah.
But same thing with YouTube and
with these other services, we've
become accustomed to these services
that have scaled to serve billions.
Trisha Price: Yeah.
Daniel Haisley: Still knowing
us and treating us uniquely
based on what's important to us.
Yeah, so, so much of our discussion
and so much of what we do as a product
organization, say, how can we do that
in the domains that we serve, because
that's the expectation that's set.
Trisha Price: So I love how you've
taken data, whether that's through your
partnership with Pendo Data Engage, or
you know, the banking core data, you
get access to, et ceterand really helped
financial institutions deliver this
personalized experience their customers.
I think that is.
Critically important in today's
day and age, like you said.
And I agree.
I think we all, because we have so
much experience with digital apps in
our day-to-day consumer and business
lives, we just expect that today.
And I think it's difficult for banks
to deliver without a partnership
with someone like Aperture.
So congrats to you, for,
for being able to do that.
Taking that back a level to your
product team, how do they think about
personalizing experiences for their
customers and their craft of product
and what data they use to make decisions
in the product on a day-to-day basis?
Daniel Haisley: There's an
exercise we call the five whys.
So whenever a particular problem
comes up, and so we called into like,
all right, look, we need to build a
feature to go and solve this problem.
We'll sit and we'll play the five why's.
Well, why is that a problem?
Well, that's a problem
because of this other thing.
Well, why is this other thing a problem?
And if you do that five times, then you
get to the, just a very fundamental issue.
And then we look to address that issue
that there have been so many times where
if we forgotten to, to play five whys,
that we end up solving something that
is kind of a surface level problem,
but it's not the the fundamental issue.
So with all the problems that we
come in, we'll we'll sit and we'll
play five whys to understand,
kinda get to a root cause and then
let's go out and talk to customers.
We, we've developed a hypothesis
now, so think just scientific method.
Alright, we think that this is a problem.
Now we'll get to the, alright.
Is it the problem that
people will pay to solve?
Is there value?
Is there.
Is, is this a problem?
And we've been really fortunate to, we're
in a B to B2C space, which can, yeah.
Can be super challenging at times.
but to be able to go to the financial
institutions that we serve and at times
actually to their users as well and say,
Hey, we think that this is an issue.
What do you think?
And how we go about holding research
sessions and we'll, do we have an
awesome design and research team,
what they'll do, like card sorting.
So we'll have 10 cards.
We say, we think these are problems.
Put these in the order that you
think we should go and address them.
And we do that at scale.
And then you start to get kind
of law of large numbers feedback
that helps inform what are the
problems that we wanna go and solve.
Trisha Price: I love that.
And you know.
There's nothing that can replace
the importance of knowing our
customers and developing really clear
product taste and product sense.
And that only comes from a deep
understanding of your customer, which
means we've gotta spend time with them.
What about data?
How do you think about both qualitative
and quantitative data feeding that
process in addition to those super
important customer conversations?
Daniel Haisley: So, data
is the, it's the gold.
It's the oil of the of the 21st century.
It's would say is the most valuable
asset that a lot of financial
institutions have or have access to.
They're also generally terrible about,
about actually being able to unlock the
value from it on behalf of the customers.
So for us, data is not something
that we kind of get into lightly
and ah, we'll just give this a shot.
We've been very fastidious about A in this
space, you have to bat a thousand as it
relates to data security and governance
and, and all of, all of the things
that allow us to sleep well at night.
So get all of the infrastructure in place
and then, then it's pulling in different
data sources and, okay I've got, I see
how people are traveling through the app
or not traveling through the app using
the data that we're getting from Pendo.
I see the information that's coming in
from our account origination solution.
So I get this, I see the information that
we'll have around like scheduled transfers
and where transactions coming through.
Now, how do we pull all of this together
to identify those opportunities or
identify the the needs and then tag
those strategies to go and, and solve.
If you don't have the data,
it's really difficult to do.
And what you end up doing is,
creating a high level... show me
everyone who has a checking account,
but no savings account and go and
market a savings account to them.
Well, sure.
Sure, but that's not,
that's not meaningful.
Trisha Price: Yeah, it's
not personalization, right?
Daniel Haisley: No, no, no, no.
Trisha Price: Yeah, and so it's, it's
interesting to hear how you use data, how
you spend time with customers to really
develop that point of view, and then, you
know, you then turn around and offer that.
Data to your financial
institution customers.
You are in a very unique B2B
to C sort of type business.
You have a very mature and robust product
team that understands this type of data,
that knows how to make those decisions.
Do the financial institutions that
you work with in the to see part
have that same level of maturity
and, and how do you help them?
Think like you do as a product team.
Daniel Haisley: Yeah.
You, you'll be slow to find any
financial institution that says
they don't have a data strategy.
And oftentimes that's we're,
we're setting up a data warehouse.
Well.
To do what?
Trisha Price: Yeah.
Daniel Haisley: Uh, and we
can help with all of it.
Trisha Price: What problem
are you gonna solve with that?
Daniel Haisley: That's exactly right.
And we see that issue as much as anything.
You can go and get data analysts
and data scientists and business
analysts and hydrate these pipelines
and get all of your data in order.
And, but if you can't, the the
biggest two gaps that we see.
'cause we can, we can provide all of
the tooling we can help with, with
getting, having the data organized
and having it in a usable form.
These two problems we see
are number one, ownership.
So getting through the, I dunno if it's
kind of corporate politics inside of a
financial institution that says, well,
who should be able to put this sort
of a message in front of customers?
Trisha Price: Mm-hmm.
Daniel Haisley: Where the
business lead says, well, I'm
responsible for, for the business.
I've got the P&L so we should,
when Technology says, whoa, this
is a technical thing, so we need to
make sure that our hands are here.
And the Marketing says, whoa, whoa, whoa.
We've got the brand, so
we all have to be aligned.
And what ends up happening is
just everyone just said, Ugh,
safe and need, and walk away.
Trisha Price: How do you
help them solve that?
Right.
How do you help them get out of
that paralysis of lack of ownership
of, because you can't deliver
personalization to their customers.
Yeah.
If you can't get them through,
you know, who owns and can
communicate to them in app,
Daniel Haisley: So often they, don't
recognize that that's the issue.
Everyone kind of thinks that
everyone else is doing the thing
and there's paralysis there.
Having executives at these
financial institutions that can
drive accountability, are aware
of, like, aware of the opportunity
and can drive accountability,
makes such a big difference.
And then the, like, the second
thing that becomes out of that is,
okay, you get all that in place.
You've got data in place.
You, you, you know who's
accountable for it.
They need to know.
The business, they need to know
kind of consumer psychology.
Yeah.
They need to know, need to understand,
to be able to focus on what is the
specific problem that you wanna solve.
Start with one problem, then to two,
then to three, then move on from there.
And so often what we see is
people have just, oh, we need
to get our data house in order.
We need to see analytics.
We need to get our analytics in place.
And have no idea how
they're gonna use 'em.
No idea what problem they
wanna solve with them.
Trisha Price: Yeah.
Daniel Haisley: So many of our
conversations with financial institutions
are saying, here's some problems
that we've seen solved elsewhere.
Try this.
Try to go, go and solve
that particular thing.
You're not getting
enough debit card usage.
We wanna drive debit card uses.
Perfect.
Here's where we've seen success elsewhere.
Somebody's, they're a, a micro
business, now they're moving to,
like a legitimate small business.
And so they're gonna get into aach
h and wire origination, which can
be a little bit more complicated.
Alright, well let's, let's use data
engage and let's put a video or a
walkthrough of the first time they
click on this, here's how to use this.
but the more granular they can be about.
What problem they wanna solve and for
whom the more successful they are.
Trisha Price: Love that for
these financial institutions that
you partner with, you know, you
talked about, let's try this.
Like they, let's get to the outcome
you're trying to solve and I can
tell you what best practices are.
I can tell you what's worked for
other financial institutions.
But you also talked about that consumer
psychology and the best product
people who are delivering products to
consumers understand experimentation
and a culture of trying and a culture
of failing fast and iteration and
not trying to get to perfection.
So are you able to have those
kinds of conversations as well
with financial institutions?
Like it's not the end of the
world, we can try this with a small
group of people, or are they just
paralyzed with the perfection?
Daniel Haisley: Technology has
helped in this front so much
in the last five to ten years.
Because historically to think if
you were going to set up an A/B
test or something and everybody
said, oh yeah, yeah, we A/B test.
None of them.
None of them actually did.
We're gonna AB test this particular thing.
It was so much work in
order to actually do that.
Yeah.
Carving off who, how, and then you'd have
to upload for this and only how in the
world are you gonna run the technology
to only show it to this group and blah.
And it was expensive.
That's not the case anymore.
Trisha Price: Yeah.
Daniel Haisley: So before, if you are
going to go through all of that effort,
then it's gonna cost you thousands, tens
of thousands or more in order to just
run that basic experiment, AB experiment.
Then you were going to measure,
measure, measure, measure, measure,
cut, and if your cut wasn't straight,
you're never going to do it again.
Whereas today that's not the case.
Yeah.
You can iterate on an idea,
have it live in 30 minutes.
Trisha Price: Yeah.
I mean, you could do that with your, they
could use data, engage to try different
onboarding, different experiments to
try to drive that debit card usage with
three different sets of their customer
base and see which one works right.
Or if you go back to general product.
You know, we had the ability
to vibe, code and get up real
experiences really quick and do
experimentation really quickly as well.
Both of those being great
solutions depending on what
you're trying to experiment with.
Daniel Haisley: Yeah.
It, so I'm, take it with a
little bit of grain of salt.
There's still some, we're in the, in
the banking space and you need to bat a
high percentage that you, with security
and data security and all those things.
You can't play around
with that in anyway, but.
Fa.
I wonder if we targeted this kind of
group with this sort of a message.
Would they originate more card?
Would they use their card more?
Would they open a savings account?
Will they...dude, try it.
It's easy.
Trisha Price: Yeah.
That takes zero engineering effort.
Daniel Haisley: That's right.
Trisha Price: And trying
three different messages.
One with video, one without one.
That's a three click, one that's a zero.
Using different segments
of your user base.
And seeing which one works.
That's a great sort of noose experiment.
Because to your point, you're not
introducing any new security risk.
You're not introducing any
new technology or tools.
This is data engage that you're getting
from CSI and Aperture that's already
approved and a known quantity yet.
Without engineering, you could try
to build three different messages
and experiments or 10, you know,
and, and see which one works
and, and gets you the business
outcomes that you're trying to get.
Seems like kind of a no-brainer way for
financial institutions to experiment
and really take on that product
mindset, that B2C data first mindset.
Daniel Haisley: It's a, it's a culture
change where it, it historically
is, well, if we don't get 80%
clickthrough rate, pick your number,
this really high clickthrough rate,
then this will have been a failure.
We will spend all this time
and all this money and so we
don't have to do that anymore.
Now we can just go and if
nobody clicks it, we say, oh,
what did we learn from this?
We iterate and we get
10% better each time.
Trisha Price: Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's the thing.
You get 2% better, 10% better.
That's remarkable numbers.
And to your point, you're not worrying
about getting it perfect the first time.
You know?
And you can roll it out.
You can roll it out to such a small
subset of the overall population.
And then coming back to where we
started around personalization.
It's not even just what's the right
message in trying a couple and
running an experiment to figure
out what the right message is.
It's figuring out what is the right
message for the right person and using
personalization concepts and data.
To really drive the perfect
message for the perfect person.
And so experimentation for these financial
institutions needs to your point, not
be about, you know, click rates, it
needs to be about the end outcome.
Having that product mindset and then
delivering different personalized
message to different segments of the
user base to really drive those outcomes
Daniel Haisley: A hundred percent.
A hundred percent.
Trisha Price: That's an exciting
proposition for financial institutions,
especially when you talk about your
customer base, which are typically
community and regional institutions.
These people don't have huge,
large data science teams.
They don't have, you know, all of you know
the tools brought in that you do and I do.
And so for you to be able to package up
something like data engage for them, that
is a real gift for them to be able to take
on a true product mindset, and I think
for the listener of hard call listeners
of hard calls who are product people, this
is something really interesting, like how
do you as a product manager when you're
delivering solutions to an industry.
That might not be as technically
savvy or have the kinds of technical
and R&D budgets and people that
we all have as product companies.
How can you package up data partner with
different companies to be able to give
some sliver of that to your customer base
so that they can really focus on outcomes?
I think that's a, that's a
really interesting general.
Solution and trick for product people
to, to really take a step back and think
about, you know, we always think about
our customers and building and delivering
solutions, but like giving them a bit of
a tool set so they can drive outcomes,
especially if you're in a B2B to B2C
product space, I think is something
people don't put enough time into.
Daniel Haisley: Yeah.
The ability to give them the
opportunity to differentiate.
In some level of a commoditized space,
if you give someone an easy way to
differentiate themselves and to give
their customers an answer to, why
should I give my business to you?
Why should I bank with you?
Why should I use your app?
Why should I?
Because people want to hear
their names and they wanna know
that you know them uniquely.
And so to the extent you're able to put
those tools in their hands where they
can move fast and they can learn from
it, and iterate and, and get better each
time, it's, it is the way of the world.
Trisha Price: I love that.
So many traditional businesses
over the last decade have been
moving from physical to digital.
It hasn't stopped.
They're also now moving not just
to digital, but to ag agentic
experiences and agentic AI.
And so for those of us in
product who are focused on, you
know, deep, deep vertical SAS.
And helping these institutions who
are moving from physical to digital
understand what personalization means
and what product management mindset and
what data is needed to be successful
in that transformation is, is a gift
that we can give to our customers.
And I appreciate the way you guys
at Aperture CSI have done that
for the banking industry and,
appreciate the fact that we've been
able to partner on that together.
Daniel Haisley: But yeah, it's,
Pendo has been a tremendous partner
for us and we've grown and evolved
together, and think that the
brightest years are certainly ahead.
So we're in the on, on the right path.
Trisha Price: Well, congrats Daniel.
Thanks for opening up and sharing
your acquisition story and your hard
calls on people through acquisition.
I know that's something all of
our listeners will relate to.
And then for just sharing, not just
personalization for the banking industry,
but overall product management in the
B2B to see world and helping institutions
transform from physical to digital.
So thank you for being on Hard
Calls and sharing all that today.
Daniel Haisley: I love it.
Thank you so much for having me.
Trisha Price: Thanks.
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