Edward Zaval, Chief Customer Officer at DailyPay
Tell me about your career journey in Customer Success. How did you get to where you are today?
I’m really proud of being a career-long services professional and customer advocate. As I like to remind my team, I began my career as a technical support engineer providing phone support to IT enterprise customers.
Prior to joining DailyPay, I served as the Senior Vice President of Global Customer Engagement – Success, Pro Services, and Training Delivery at Skillsoft, providing multi-modality learning content to client employees.
Throughout my career, I have had the privilege of leading 24/7 global services for networking and telecommunications equipment providers including SevOne, Coriant and Alcatel during the hyper-growth period when smartphones and video apps created exponential bandwidth demand and growth. Five 9’s availability for voice and data made a responsive support capability a top priority for these vendors and their customers.
Then software ate hardware, then the cloud ate software – subscription-based products emerged and with that the Customer Success function. The Customer Success Manager (CSM) role is a relatively newer role and it was a natural evolution for support to help clients drive application adoption and ultimately full value realization of their subscription service, with the goal of making it an easy decision for a client to maintain their subscription.
Then and now, I love the satisfaction of helping customers remove whatever friction they are experiencing with the products and services…to the point where when asked how likely they are to recommend our company’s product to their friends or colleagues, they respond with a resounding 10 out of 10.
Why DailyPay? What about its mission excited you about joining the team?
Purpose at the intersection of clients and their employees. The mission is to provide employees access to their earned wages, for the expected or unexpected, to avoid overdraft fees, late fees, or worse–payday loans. Combine this with providing a B2B value realization to employers, at no cost by the way, that provides our client partners a talent acquisition differentiator and an employee retention tool.
As the new Chief Customer Officer at DailyPay, what has surprised you the most about the team and operations here at DailyPay?
Customer centricity. A lot of companies talk about it but few deliver on it. My colleagues in DailyPay’s product and engineering teams understand that behind the best customer success and support organizations is a really great platform and app UX.
Additionally, as a services leader, one of the first things on my “to do” list was to make a few customer support secret shopper calls to DailyPay’s 1-800 number to test out the support response and speed to answer. Suffice it to say, I was very happy with our team’s hold times and service soft skills.
Having had a chance to speak with some of our Clients and Partners, what are some of the biggest takeaways you have had?
I love answering this question. I began emailing client stakeholders and senior HR and payroll leaders from a variety of industries and brands two weeks into the new role. I suggested an introductory meeting so that I can hear directly from them, and their teams, about our partnership and the customer experience at DailyPay. In almost every case I received a response within hours suggesting to me that our client partners are engaged. Our clients realize the benefit and differentiation of having the DailyPay brand and benefit offering in the current U.S. labor market with jobless claims at a nine-month low.
What are you most looking forward to in the next year at DailyPay?
That’s an easy one…meeting DailyPay clients at industry events and Executive Business Reviews. These relationships and open discussions unfailingly provide feedback and innovative ideas for client and user experience that ultimately shape DailyPay’s support and services.
Also, wearing my new DailyPay swag outside of work…the brand recognition. It has already happened twice with my new DailyPay logo hoodie sweatshirt. In a retail shop and restaurant setting, people have stopped to ask me if I work for DailyPay. And, upon my reply that I do…I hear the words every CCO aspires to hear, “Oh, I love you guys!”.
Outside of DailyPay, what are your favorite pastime activities?
I really enjoy spending family time with my kids… my adult kids. Other parents of adult children might be able to relate to this; I am always working to pin them down to have dinner with my wife and me, even when we’re paying.
When I’m not working to pin them down for dinner, I personally enjoy spending time by the beach and hot yoga.
Read more about DailyPay colleagues, here.
