Corey Westphal is the Founder and CEO of Mobile Assistant, a FinTech company specializing in professional dictation services. Mobile Assistance emphasizes the accuracy and security of dictated notes facilitated by a US-based team. With over 26 years in the transcription industry, Corey began his entrepreneurial journey with a medical transcription company and later pivoted to revolutionize dictation in the financial sector. As a forward-thinker, he continues to explore new technologies, including AI, to enhance the value of Mobile Assistant's services. His dedication to providing structured, reliable documentation has made Mobile Assistant a critical tool for financial professionals looking to streamline their work processes.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[1:50] What inspired Corey Westphal to create Mobile Assistant?
[2:11] The unique problem-solving approach Mobile Assistant takes to serve financial advisors
[2:55] Corey explains the evolution of his business from a medical focus to fintech
[7:49] Exploring different ways to use dictation data beyond its transcription
[10:09] The recent development and advantages of Mobile Assistant's open API
[19:30] Understanding the challenges in driving customer adoption and success rates
[23:24] The potential for integrating Mobile Assistant with CRM systems and other tools
[27:48] How to improve onboarding processes and leverage client experience teams for better customer success
In this episode…
Have you ever considered the intricate role of precise documentation in financial advising? Imagine having access to a solution that captures every detail and structures it in a way that powers growth and compliance. Would this transform your practice?
Corey Westphal, an expert in financial technology, dives deep into the world of professional dictation services tailored for financial advisors. He shares his insights on transitioning from medical transcription to the financial sector, emphasizing the significance of the human touch in ensuring high-quality, accurate data capture. He highlights how dictation templates have revolutionized note-taking for advisors, providing a structured, consistent, and efficient way to document client interactions. Corey also reveals his journey in building a dictation fintech company that seamlessly integrates with CRMs and other industry-specific tools to enhance workflows and data usage.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Corey Westphal, Founder and CEO of Mobile Assistant, about leveraging technology to streamline workflow and client documentation. Corey discusses how Mobile Assistant uses human expertise to ensure the precision of transcription, its onboarding processes, the importance of creating 'raving fans' instead of just customers, and how empathy for the customer's time and needs can lead to the development of revolutionary services.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
"Building Resilience for Customer Success with Chrissy Myers" on The Customer Wins
"Improving Customer Experience and Growth Through Operations With Jen Goldman" on The Customer Wins
"Scaling Business Through Community as an RIA With Joe Moss" on The Customer Wins
"The CRM Experience for Financial Advisors With Rick Williamson of Redtail Technology" on The Customer Wins
Quotable Moments:
"It's not just about saving time, it's about communicating with your team in a way that is standardized and replicable."
"I believe that the best financial technology companies out there are built to solve a problem for advisors."
"The dictation template addition to our technology was an absolute game-changer."
"The human component that are the transcriptionists behind the scenes, that's what makes us so different from other voice-to-text technology."
"We're growing, but also creating tasks and activities that affect the entire team — changing a lot."
Action Steps:
Evaluate the dictation and documentation process within your organization: Effective because it uncovers opportunities to enhance efficiency as noted by Corey's observation on advisor's time spent on note-taking.
Explore technology tools that offer templated structures for capturing information: By streamlining data capture, as per Corey's insight, consistency, and team communication improve.
Incorporate an open API strategy to integrate with various systems: This allows for seamless data flow and custom solutions, enhancing client experiences as discussed by Corey.
Implement a tiered onboarding process for new technology adoptions: Short, informative sessions increase user engagement and success rate, inspired by advice from Orion's CEO.
Seek opportunities to partner with complementary technologies: Collaboration can unlock innovative workflows and improve overall service delivery as Corey anticipates with his open API approach.
Sponsor for this episode...
This is brought to you by Quik!
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Meanwhile, our mission is to help the top firms in the financial industry raise their bottom line by streamlining the customer experience with automated, convenient solutions.
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Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:02
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn grow their business.
Richard Walker 0:16
Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of our past guests have included Chrissy Myers of AUI and Clarity HR, Jen Goldman of My Virtual COO and Joe Moss of Pro Advisor Suite. Today I'm speaking with Corey Westphal, founder and CEO of Mobile Assistant. Today's episode is brought to you by Quik! the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms, instead get Quik! using our Form Xtract API, simply submit your completed forms and get back clean context-rich data that is 99.9% accurate. Visit quikforms.com to get started.
And before I introduce today's guest I have to give a big thank you to Rick Burgess CEO of Forms Logic. Go check out their website at formslogic.com to see how they make new account opening and advisor transaction super easy. All right, I'm excited to talk to today's guest Corey Westphal is the founder and CEO of Mobile Assistant. He and his company focus on innovating and designing the most efficient ways for people to capture and consume ideas, thoughts and conversations using their professional dictation service. Mobile Assistant is a FinTech company that includes an essential human touch to ensure accuracy of dictated notes, using a US-only-based team of transcriptionist and managers, they're committed to investing in cutting-edge technology that improves the client experience. Corey, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Corey Westphal 1:50
Hey, Rich, thanks for having me. And great to meet you pretty recently as well.
Richard Walker 1:54
Yeah, I'm very glad for this connection. So for those of you who haven't heard this podcast before I talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they built, deliver a great customer experience and the challenges to growing their own company. Corey, let's understand your business little better. How does your company help people?
Corey Westphal 2:11
Yeah, well, I really believe that the best financial technology companies out there are built to solve a problem for advisors. That is the essential key, I think, to any technology that's going to be incorporated for advisors practice to really make an impact. And so what Mobile Assistant does it for the last decade, we've been providing an easy way for advisors to capture and document their client meeting interactions in a way that's structured, secure, and accurate. So that's in a nutshell, what we provide our advisors just an easy way to get those client meeting notes into their CRM.
Richard Walker 2:49
When I hear about technologies like this, I think, oh, that's obvious. But how did you come up with this? Because I'm not sure it was obvious before?
Corey Westphal 2:55
Yeah. So it's a great question. So I've been in the dictation and transcription game for a long time. It's been over 26 years now that I've been in that particular industry. I started the company with my father back in the late 90s as a medical transcription company. And so I think a lot of your listeners probably have experienced going to the doctor and either catching them doing some dictation after they've met with them or just understand that physicians have leverage that dictation tool for decades now. And so about 12 years ago, I really wanted to get us into some different verticals and looked at different industries that could benefit from highly accurate dictation solutions.
Tell you what, the financial industry was a no-brainer advisors, just like doctors, their time is so valuable, and they should be spending time meeting with and servicing their clients not typing their notes. And so it was a great fit for us. I actually, we had sold the medical transcription company over 10 years old now. And so it allowed us to focus just on providing our service to the financial industry. My dad was able to retire he makes bourbon now in Iowa, so he's happy.
Richard Walker 4:05
Nice. So how does it actually work? Does the advisor have to have a certain device? They have to take notes during meetings? What's going on?
Corey Westphal 4:13
Yeah, that's a great question. So what our solution is focused on is the post-meeting recap that the advisor will give us after they've met interacted with their client. One of the things that we want advisors to always focus on is you focus on the client, when you're meeting with one of your client or prospects, you shouldn't be spending a bunch of time like documenting during that meeting. You want to give your full attention to your prospect or your client. That's what they deserve. Right. And so what advisors are doing after they meet with their client, whether it's a phone call, or it's a coffee shop meeting or in their office, they have all that information in their short-term memory or jotted down on a notepad. Right.
And so they're utilizing our target mobile app immediately after the meeting to document and speak their notes. Now one of the things that we introduced to make that process easier for advisors is to do it in a way that's driven by templates. So built into the TalkIt Mobile App are templates that we've designed. And we give the advisors the ability to design their own. And so what a template is, is just an easy guide through the process, like, what's the client? Who is the client that you met with today? What are their goals and opportunities, things like that, that advisors need to capture after every meeting. And they can have a different template for the annual reviews, like a phone call, any different type of meeting, they can have a specific template for.
So now once they follow that guide, and they dictate their notes, so they have a way of kind of getting through the process without feeling like they have to just try to remember everything themselves. By the time they get the note back, it's transcribed by our human transcriptionist in that structured, organized way. So they get these notes back, and they look beautiful, they're able to go right into the CRM, and they've got that contact information that's already built into a lot of our API's that we have. And so we just try to make the process easy and structured so that all that data doesn't slip through the cracks.
Richard Walker 6:08
That template idea seems really, really smart. Because when you're trying to just dump out your ideas, your brain is scattered. But that template sounds more like an interview process. Let me ask you this question, then this question is this question and your brain reacts to that a little bit better? Probably to give more comprehensive notes, did you see an impact in quality when you introduce templates?
Corey Westphal 6:28
Yeah, the dictation template addition to our technology was an absolute game changer. Up until 2017, we had introduced an app years before that. But we expected the advisors to just hit a record button and speak their notes, right. And it seems like that would be an easy thing to do, right? Just speak your notes, just explain everything that you just got done meeting with your client. But it's not an easy process if you don't have a structure, or you haven't been doing dictation your whole life. And so what the dictation templates did is it really brought to the forefront the need for a structured organized process. And one that's replicatable.
That's one of the biggest differences using templates versus not using templates through the dictation process is the replication of process. And so not only is that important for the advisor, individual advisor, it made an incredible impact for teams, because teams of advisors now have a way of structuring the data from those client interactions and structuring it in a way that's replicable. And it's standardized. So now that data comes back, it's all in the same format and the same organized structure. And it makes it so much more valuable for the teams of advisors that have that data organized. And it's not just coming back in one big paragraph of information.
Richard Walker 7:49
Well, and not just one big paragraph of information where things are out of order and disjointed. Are you familiar with mind mapping? I am absolutely. It's one of my favorite tools for designing software, right. And for those who are listening, the concept is you start with a central premise. And then you branch out to other subject matters or nodes that reflect things. So for example, I did this with my beliefs. I said, here's my brain, I believe, what's my belief about money, life, love, school, work, etc. So you have all these branches. And the nice thing about the mind map is you can just interactively throw out the ideas to each of those segments. But note-taking is very different.
And that's why I liked this idea of the structure. In fact, I'm thinking how I take notes during calls with people. I have this kind of internal structure that I follow what tech stack you're using, what problem you're solving, how many advisors, that kind of thing. And then I end with what are the next steps, but I think you guys are creating so much more value in this. So I'm also curious, do people just call and leave you guys voice messages.
Corey Westphal 8:46
So that's the way they used to. We used to have a dictation hotline. It's still available, but very few of our customers use the dictation hotline anymore. The new technology that we have is mobile app-based. And so the talk and mobile apps available whether you have an iPhone or Android and that process and that way of capturing the information that dictation is so much more accurate, the audio is so much clearer. And it allows our customers to utilize the template-based platform that's built into the app. I think that's the biggest reason why the TalkIt Mobile App has been a game changer instead of just calling a phone number, utilize the app, utilize the templates if you want to use that process. And it's all right there within the mobile app.
The mobile app also gives them the ability to be able to review the notes at a later date. So once we do transcribe the notes and send it back, they're not just sent back by email and into the CRM. They're in the notes section for the TalkIt app. So a lot of advisors are using the mobile app, TalkIt as a way of just accessing those previous client meeting notes in a really quick, easy way. So when you're on the way to meet with a client, you can type in the client name within the notes section. And there's the last meeting note you had so you'd be able to quickly find the information without having to go and log into your computer or log into your CRM, you've got access to it, your mobile access to your notes at all times.
Richard Walker 10:09
Nice, nice. See, I'm still thinking about how you guys have really, you've taken something that's so basic, so mundane right note-taking, and thought through the human process to make this better. I love that you guys do that. So I'm curious. How do you improve now? What's next for you guys? Where are you headed?
Corey Westphal 10:27
Oh, wow, there's so many exciting new avenues for us to look at as far as where we fit in when it comes to the landscape of technology in the industry, in the financial industry? All the AI tools that are popping up, have it really it brings the question a lot to me, which is where does mobile assistant fit in? When it comes to those new technologies? Like does is it going to eliminate the need for mobile assistant? Or is it going to change the way that you can utilize your data? One of the things that it's brought to the forefront for me is the accuracy of our data is bubbled to the top of the most one of the most important aspects of what we do the human component that are the transcriptionists that are behind the scenes that actually are transcribing these notes.
That's what makes us so different than other voice-to-text technology, there's plenty of software that you can get for free, that will just transcribe your dictation, right? But when it's not accurate, you're gonna spend so much time cleaning it up that that's where the human component of what we've always done is been, I think, is even more important now than ever utilizing data that you can ensure that and you know this is a source of truth. I think that's what has put us to the forefront of how these AI technologies are going to utilize data. Well, they know that the data coming from Mobile Assistant they can they can trust that it's secure. And that's accurate. And I think that's where we're gonna have a really interesting interaction with a lot of different technologies in the future that one of the latest innovations last fall, we introduced our open API. So I know that with your company, I know Quik! definitely relies on API interactions to be able to get the data where it needs to go.
That's one of the biggest changes that we made is that up until last fall would be for open API, we were pushing the notes into the CRMs. And so we had to have a different API connection, different integration with all the different CRMs that we integrate with. Well, now we have the ability to present the data to organizations and to the CRM companies in a way that they can pull the information and put it where they want it. And it changes everything as far as how we interact with organizations on how they're going to consume the data that we're providing, instead of us pushing it where they want it, they can pull it and put it exactly where they want, whatever technology that they want to use.
Richard Walker 12:53
Man, it has brought up so many thoughts for me, and it's making me think of something kind of trivial, that might be fun. The advisor ends the meeting and knows they need to set up I don't know an IRA for one of their clients. What if your notes could sell click to prepare that bundle of forms for them? Yeah, and that client record and just have the shell of that transaction started so they can go in and finish it? So yeah, maybe we should talk?
Corey Westphal 13:16
Well, Rich, what I've thought about a lot as once, once we had our open API in place last fall, it started a lot of different thoughts that I had, as far as how we could get the data into different forms and get it where it needs to go, right? Because it's one of the biggest, I think your company, it's providing such an amazing service to advisors, because one of the biggest challenges that advisors have, I would say it's always it'd be in the top five of every advisor in the country, which is forms, how do I get the forms filled out? How do I get the data into the forms? How do I do that in a timely manner. And it's a big challenge for advisors. And so what I'm looking at is like how we can work and partner with companies like yours, to provide the data that's coming from the advisors and be able to get it into the forms in the way that it needs to be formatted and get it to where it needs to go. And so I think there's going to be a lot of ways that we can work together in the future. I'm excited for it.
Richard Walker 14:11
Yeah, for sure. I love thinking about the possibilities and trying to figure out how to make it work. But I think moreover, what we always have to come back to is, is it going to work for the customer? Is it something they'll adopt and use? Because it makes sense? And it's intuitive to them? Let me ask you a different question. There's a ton of AI coming out and like zoom, if you're on a meeting with somebody using zoom, it can record it. And as you said, the accuracy is not there. I get that. So and by the way, we have an AI-driven product that isn't accurate enough. So we augment it with humans, our Form Xtract process for getting data off forums, where there's low confidence on a value we give it to people and they validate it and verify it or fix it. So that human element cannot be replaced by AI not yet. So I get that but there's others that are giving all these transcripts or summaries or whatever. Do you see you guys taking what you've dictated, transcribed and using AI to interpret it or organize it differently?
Corey Westphal 14:11
Yeah, it's the next evolution of what the data that we're capturing. And we're providing back to the advisor, how can we add value? And one of the things that we absolutely are going to be looking at is how do we leverage technology out there to be able to not just organize the data? Because that's what they're already organizing it through the use of our process, but how do they take it? And what how do we present opportunities? That's a big one, right? How do you provide an advisor value from that information that they it's been captured and accurately documented? I think there's such a huge opportunity working with and partnering with a lot of different technologies out there that can do that. And so yeah, I'm excited to see where it goes. I just was sent an article yesterday that Zuckerberg with Facebook was interviewed.
And he was talking about how there's this rush of the executives to get more and more data through their AI models, right. And it was just one of the things that he did, I thought was amazing was he presented the idea that it's not just the data, it's the feedback loop of accurate data. And I think that's really interesting, because I think a lot of people have kind of gone to this idea that all this AI, like just send the information to them, it's just going to create this amazing process. Well, the problem is, is like losing control over what data those technologies are pointed to, is really dangerous, because then you don't know that it's an accurate output that you're getting from that technology. And so it just kind of brings to the forefront again, the accuracy of the notes that are coming from us is what's so important, because now any of those technologies can be so valuable, because they know that the data is is accurate and secure.
Richard Walker 16:57
So, to that point, a lot of the AIs that people refer to when they say AI, there's tons of different types, right? They're talking about the chatGPTs, the clouds, the large language models, if you will. So I love the use of those. But I think a lot of people overlook that how these models were developed was by training them with truth, ground Source Truth, like the idea that Google can identify cats in an image, how many images that they have to tell the AI This is the cat? Yeah, right. And I think the same thing is true, all the use cases that we try to think about. It's not about the AI itself, it's about the data that's going into it. And what's going to differentiate the different companies in the services is not that we all have chatGPT, because that'll be de facto standard for everybody. It's the data feeding it.
I want to give you an idea, Corey, because here's something I think would be valuable to our industry. If a zoom call could be recorded and transcribed? Well, I want to a large language model that is trained in the terms of that kind of conversation, like a financial adviser conversation to be trained specifically to get real insights that are useful to the advisor. Yeah, yeah. Have you seen that?
Corey Westphal 18:08
Well, I mean, it's a great idea. Again, I think it just boils down to how like a great example of like from our company, specifically, we reached a great milestone a few weeks ago, where we transcribed our 10 million Note of data coming from advisors. And what that really made me think of is, what amazing goldmine of information for the advisors, that's on our platform that we have securely stored for them. That as like, I love the idea of like, for the last, 10 years, I've always looked at it, like we have this amazing data and all these opportunities that are just that are sent back to the adviser, but it's almost like it's hidden, you know, and like being able to take that data and be able to have some technology, bring the information to the forefront and organize it in a way back to the advisors so that it provides a useful, like analysis of all those meetings that they've had, think about the advisors that have used this for 10 years, the amount of data that we have stored for them that it once we can get to the point where we can provide real analysis back to them. It's going to be amazing, I see that as being a really great next step for what we do with the information is not just deliver it, but actually deliver it in a way that provides analysis and reporting to just make that information even more valuable for the advisor community.
Richard Walker 19:30
Yeah, I love that. I love that you're thinking about it. Let me let me ask you a totally different question. You've been running this business for 10 years, you had a different business before. How hard is it been? To get people to understand what you guys do? And to see the value and say yes, I'm going to do it.
Corey Westphal 19:44
Oh, wow. That's a great question. I think when it comes to dictation in general, most people understand that, hey, it'll definitely be faster, right? It'd be faster than typing my notes. Dictation will definitely make them more efficient. It saves them time. But one of the things that has made a huge difference in literally the last five years is that the idea of having a process that you replicate, I do think replication, a process has become more and more important for advisors because they're growing, and these groups have the RIA is out there broker-dealers that are bringing on so many more advisors, and they have these onboarding process.
That is really difficult, because a lot of times teams that are growing, they bring on new advisors, they all have their own process, they all have their own workflows, they have their own technologies, we'll be able to provide like a customized guide, if you will, through this dictation driven templated process is what's made a huge impact for teams, because now they can grow in a way that they have got some standardization of the information that they're getting from those client meetings. That's been the biggest impact over the last few years. I've loved having that conversation with advisors that have never used dictation that it's not just about saving time, it's not just about making you more efficient. It's about actually communicating with your team in a way that is standardized and processed in a way that all the advisors are talking to each other and working through those client meetings in a way. That's really done in a replicable way.
Richard Walker 21:18
Oh, man, that is so insightful. I love that. I mean, when you think about trying to help a customer, you have to look at the kind of spectrum of where they are in their lifecycle, their business, their technology, stack their adoption of things. And you're identifying something really, really key. So I'm now curious, are you finding people who are at that inflection point who want to create process and they're finding you, or they're struggling to create process because they're growing? Where is the sweet spot with your customer base, where they're like, this is so obvious to me, especially now that you've explained, let's recreate the process and make it repeatable.
Corey Westphal 21:51
Well, I think what was really telling to me is, once we had our open API to market last fall, we had two enterprises that were currently already customers of ours, that immediately said, we're connected to your API, we need to do that as soon as possible because they recognize how important the data is to be able to pull it and get it where it needs to go within their systems to be able to not only make it more efficient, so that that information gets where it needs to go immediately. But it also it creates tasks and activities that they can have that really affects the entire teams. So I think that's one of the biggest differences is that having a way of closing the loop, if you will, on where how our process fits in with organizations, where it's not just the capturing of the data, and the transcribing accurately and getting it delivered back.
But how do you get it into the systems that they need, because we don't integrate with every CRM out there, we integrate with the big ones that are in the industry. But there's a lot of different technologies that a lot of organizations use, that they want to have our data delivered to? Well, now they have the ability to do that. And we've made it done. And we've done it in a way that it's self-service, they can build to our API in a very easy way where they don't have to have a huge commitment from us to do that they can actually control it themselves.
Richard Walker 23:11
So I suggested that maybe the notes that are dictated could say start a foreign package at Quik. But do you also see it starting? I don't know, illustrations and hypotheticals, financial plans, other types of tools?
Corey Westphal 23:24
Well, I tell you where I think that we're going to have the biggest impact and those type of processes that are automatically kicked off from our dictation templates and that process, it's going to come down to the integrations that we have with our CRM partners. Right now we've started kind of a integration redesign with Redtail and Orion, they're our biggest CRM partner, we have over a third of our customers are actually Redtail integration users. And so because of that, this new integration that we're doing with Redtail, that's where I envision it going is that not only are we going to deliver the notes into the contact record, create an activity.
But what if we can actually use it to create new workflows and assign those workflows to different members of the team and do that all from a dictation? Like, that's where we're going with our innovations. And it's going to be really important that the partners that we already have, those are the partners that are going to make those kind of huge leaps, and in the really the efficiency of how advisors are using us in combination with those CRMs
Richard Walker 24:29
Yeah, man, you stepped into a whole new ocean to swim in when you open up this API world, because I'm also thinking like, wow, you could build a whole bunch of Zapier automations and you could have just keywords or template items that you add to the template like kick off an email campaign for this prospect I just met so we follow up with them add this person to my newsletter. Simple, trivial things maybe or scheduled the next meeting for such and such date. You have just opened up a whole can of worms here. That's pretty awesome.
Corey Westphal 24:57
Well, I was just gonna say that think that that you just hit on what the core differences between like, what we've built and what we're building at Mobile Assistant compared to like the voice technologies that are out there that Yeah. Are they getting better? They're still 70 75% accurate, which isn't very good. But the difference is like if we can make Mobile Assistant more than just a dictation service and make us part of the process and workflow that's automated, that's the big valley. That's a huge value there that's going to change a lot.
Richard Walker 25:31
Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna ask you a slightly different question. Because one of the challenges that tech companies have is how do you ensure that a user actually adopt your product? Like it's a lot of work to do the marketing and sales, get them to try it, but then you have this whole adoption cycle? And you don't want to have them just lose it after they signed up for the trial or whatever. So how do you measure adoption? And how do you know somebody became adopted?
Corey Westphal 25:54
Oh,wow. Okay. So that's a great question. And I didn't know that you're going to ask this. And it makes me think back to a few months ago, I had a great meeting with Eric Clark. So Eric Clark, the now ex-CEO at Orion, he's in retirement. Not really, though, right? He's so busy in the industry. But Eric had some great insight for me in that, we talked about that exact question, which was, hey, we have a churn at Mobile Assistant, like a lot of technology companies, right, is that we're growing, but we also lose advisors that are just not adopting the service after they've signed up. And so that exact question is what he addressed. And he had mentioned to me that at Orion, they really took a look at the onboarding process.
And they shortened it, meaning smaller, shorter engagements for customers that are almost like a training series that are like three minutes, four minutes long, so that when someone signs up, like, when I sign up for a new service, like I don't want to watch a 45-minute training video, right? Right. But I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll watch a three-minute training video six times, because visually is helping me through the process. So that's something that we actually after that conversation I got with our marketing firm. And that's the project that we're just going to be released in here soon. Which is having video onboarding that's done in TikTok clips, if you will, you know, it's short. That's our attention span.
These days, it's like short intention to short little tutorials on how to get started how to start using a service and tool like, like Mobile Assistant. And so that's something for, you know, everyone listening, like, if you haven't thought about how you're engaging with your clients, when they are first sign up with you. I think those really those a lot of touches early and a lot of short touches are going to be a big difference maker.
Richard Walker 27:48
I'm gonna give you some evidence for that. In your round here, four or five of our company, we decided to reevaluate our onboarding process. We redesigned it and deployed it. And just by changing how customers onboarding and I'm talking about, did they go through four screens in the signup or one screen in the signup? Did they have to do 10 clicks or three clicks to install the software? That kind of stuff? Yeah, we literally eliminated 90% of our service requests, like, emails went down, phone calls went down, customers went up, adoption went up. It was incredible. It was one of the best things we've ever done was rethink how that onboarding process work so that it's more intuitive and faster.
Corey Westphal 28:26
Wow. Well, that's incredible. And that just shows you the impact that changing that type of onboarding process can have. Just to give you some more data that I think is really interesting. So we offer a coaching session, for an advisor that signs up never use dictation is really useful, because it helps them to kind of see, okay, what are these templates all about? Can I build new ones? Can I like how what's working for other advisors? I think that's the biggest question. And what we found is through our data over the years, that when a new trial signs up with Mobile Assistant, and when the advisor actually goes through the coaching process, which is 15, 20 minutes, the conversion to a sub-paying subscription was over 75%, someone that doesn't go through that process is about 35%.
So someone that signs up, and it's just kind of on their own to try to figure things out, even though the, I really feel like our tool is incredibly easy to use. It's very intuitive, you can speak your notes, they're going to come back to you, it's very easy. But just going through that little bit of a human touch, I would recommend that for anyone that signing up for any type of technology is like take advantage of the Client Experience team, that that technology company, I guarantee you if it's a really good one, they have it. They have a team that's just waiting to help you. And that's something that I think advisors, if you can think about they can think about doing that a little bit more where they have a new tool, they know what can help them. We'll find out from that company, how it's working for other advisors and leverage the client experience teams and they'll knock it out of the park then right out of the gate.
Richard Walker 29:58
Yep, no, I totally agree with that. I don't feel like we get enough inquiries from our customers and with enterprise customers, I constantly tell them, lean on us. Ask us. Please don't tell me you spent two weeks on a five-minute problem that we could have just had a conversation about. Yeah. But even with our end users, I mean, we have live chat built right into the product, they can go still click and start getting help. But people at our company answer phones too. So I think that's super important. Corey, this has been an amazing conversation, and I want to keep going, but we have to wrap this up. So before I ask my last question, what is the best way for people to find and connect with you?
Corey Westphal 30:32
There's so much good information on our website, just mobileassistant.us is our site, you can sign up for a free trial there, you can sign up for a coaching session that I just mentioned, you can learn about our pricing, you can learn about the different technologies that we have that are built into the app. So our websites a great place to start. I'd also recommend anyone listening connect with me on LinkedIn, I've used LinkedIn more and more referred networking over the last few years. And it really it's an amazing source of great people in this industry. So connect with me, just you'll find me. So search for Corey Westphal Mobile Assistant, and please connect with me. I'd love to meet new people here.
Richard Walker 31:09
Awesome. All right, so here comes my last question. Who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role today?
Corey Westphal 31:17
Yeah, it's such a big question. And there's been so many great, great people in my life that have helped me in my career over the years, I am going to single out Brian McLaughlin. So Brian, the CEO at Redtail. For those that possibly don't know, he's a great, he's been such a great resource for me over the years. And it's because of the user basic at Redtail. I don't know if you've heard this before, but they consider them raving fans, they've used that term a lot over the years. And that's what their main goal as a culture within Redtail was to create raving fans, but you don't create raving fans unless your technology is not only amazing, but your client experience is amazing. And so Brian taught me a lot over the years of the different techniques and different tactics that they used as a company to really make their culture all about the customer and all about the raving fans that use their technology. And so shout out to Brian, he built an amazing company. And we're lucky to have them be one of our best partners.
Richard Walker 32:19
He is awesome. And now he's at Orion leading the ship there. I had Rick Redtail, Rick Williamson on my podcast last year. And at the time, he was director of training or something. He is so awesome. And he's built an incredible organization that he's elevated. So if you're listening to this, and you want to hear more about this, go hear that episode. Because it was a great one. He was so fun to talk to.
Corey Westphal 32:42
Oh, what a great personality. Rick is one of the best in the industry. I love it. I got to see him at Orion's ascent conference. He was actually running the show. He was the master of ceremonies. And it was so great to see him in that environment because that's where he shines, he's such a great personality to have in the forefront of a big event like that. And he nailed it knocked it out of the park.
Richard Walker 33:05
Yeah, but I do love everything else you said the raving fan concept is so critical to try to figure out and try to achieve so that's awesome man. That's so awesome. All right, I want to give a huge thank you to Corey Westphal founder and CEO of Mobile Assistant for being on this episode of The Customer Wins go check out Korea's website at mobileassistant.us. And don't forget check out quick at quikforms.com where we make processing forms easy. I hope you enjoyed this discussion. We'll click the like button, share this with someone and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Thank you so much for joining me today, Corey.
Corey Westphal 33:40
Yeah, Rich thanks for having me. This has been a blast and best of luck to you and everyone on the podcast today.
Outro 33:47
Thanks for listening to The Customer Wins podcast. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
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