Transforming Customer Experience Through Culture and AI With Katie DeFeo
- Quik! News Team
- 13 hours ago
- 28 min read
Katie DeFeo is the Vice President and Chief Experience Officer of SunWest Federal Credit Union, a community-focused financial institution offering banking services such as loans, savings, and digital banking solutions. She leads efforts to enhance member experience by blending digital innovation with genuine human connection and clear communication. Katie champions authentic branding and customer-centric strategies to help SunWest stand out in a competitive financial landscape. Her leadership also drives the credit union’s digital transformation initiatives, which aim to deliver personalized and efficient services to members.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[2:24] Katie DeFeo discusses how SunWest help members own their financial journey — from first home to retirement
[3:03] Why great service is no longer enough in today’s credit union landscape
[4:16] Culture overhaul post-COVID and redefining core values
[7:44] Connecting every employee’s role to member impact and purpose
[11:06] How strong culture builds member loyalty and forgiveness during mistakes
[15:42] Katie talks about launching, failing, and relaunching the AI assistant
[19:29] Ripping apart internal processes to eliminate friction in lending
[24:16] How setting expectations upfront can minimize loan application drop-offs
[25:46] Using AI internally as a strategic tool — not a replacement for human judgment
In this episode…
Many financial institutions pride themselves on strong service and long-standing member relationships. But in today’s digital, fast-moving world, good service is no longer a differentiator. When technology, culture, and processes lag behind member expectations, friction builds and growth stalls. How can organizations evolve without losing the human connection that made them successful in the first place?
Katie DeFeo, a financial services executive specializing in member experience, culture transformation, and digital innovation, explains that real change starts internally. She emphasizes that culture must come before strategy, aligning every employee’s role to a clear purpose and member impact. Katie advocates for regularly ripping apart processes to uncover friction, mapping the full customer journey, and fixing breakdowns before they cost revenue. She also shares how humanizing AI, owning mistakes publicly, and inviting direct member feedback can rebuild trust and drive smarter innovation. By blending transparency, accountability, and intentional leadership, she shows how organizations can modernize without sacrificing authenticity.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Katie DeFeo, Vice President and Chief Experience Officer of SunWest Federal Credit Union, about transforming member experience through culture and innovation. Katie discusses humanizing AI with transparency, eliminating friction in lending processes, and building purpose-driven teams that fuel sustainable growth.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
"Unlocking Money Wisdom and Intuition With Ellen Rogin" on The Customer Wins
"Psychology of Money and Better Client Conversations With Brian Portnoy" on The Customer Wins
"Unlocking Business Owner Wealth With Jason Early" on The Customer Wins
"[Perspective Series] Breaking Bread and Building Trust With Josh DeTar" on The Customer Wins
Quotable Moments:
“Culture eats strategy. For breakfast, you can have the best, most well-researched, well intentioned plan.”
“‘That’s the way we’ve always done it’ are the most expensive words in business.”
“You can have the best, most well-researched, well intentioned plan.”
“If you want to get better, you have to admit where you’re failing.”
“Hope is great, but hope isn’t a plan.”
Action Steps:
Reevaluate processes through the customer’s lens: Map the full customer journey from awareness to completion and identify friction points to uncover hidden breakdowns that cost revenue and damage trust.
Align culture before executing strategy: Ensure every employee understands how their role connects to the organization’s purpose so engagement, accountability, and customer experience improve consistently.
Own mistakes publicly and transparently: Acknowledge when something fails and clearly communicate how it will be fixed to build credibility, trust, and long-term loyalty.
Humanize technology and AI tools: Introduce digital solutions in a way that maintains personality and brand voice so efficiency increases without sacrificing customer trust.
Challenge that’s how we’ve always done it thinking: Regularly question legacy systems and long-standing processes to prevent stagnation and keep the organization competitive.
Sponsor for this episode...
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Our vision is to become the leading forms automation company by making paperwork the easiest part of every transaction.
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Episode Transcript:
Intro: 00:02
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: 00:16
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 my past guests have included Ellen Rogin, the financial intuitive and money expert, and best selling author Brian Portnoy of Shaping Wealth, and Jason Early of RISR. Today, I'm speaking with Katie DeFeo, vice president and chief experience officer of SunWest Federal Credit Union, and 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 Quik!.
You'll be able to generate completed forms and get back clean, context rich data that reduces manual reviews to only one out of 1000 submissions. Visit quickforms.com to get started. Now, before I introduce today's guest, I want to give a big thank you to Josh DeTar of Tyfone. He and I had a very engaging conversation on this podcast about how he delivers on an excellent customer experience by literally breaking bread with his clients. So go check out their website at Tiffany and come see how they help make banking digital.
Katie DeFeo is our guest today. She is the Vice president and chief experience officer at a fast growing credit union in Arizona. She refuses to believe customers should tolerate friction, mediocrity, or quote. That's how we've always done it. Katie, you're not going to get along.
She leads marketing, brand, digital experience, branches, contact center, product innovation and operations with one relentless focus helping people win their money and their lives. What a great message, Katie. Welcome to The Customer Wins.
Katie DeFeo: 02:01
Thanks for having me, Rich.
Richard Walker: 02:03
I'm so excited to talk to you. People do not know what they're in for here. So if you haven't heard this podcast before, I talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they build and deliver a great customer experience, and the challenge is growing their own company. So, Katie, I want to understand your business a little bit better, especially from your perspective. How does your company help people?
Katie DeFeo: 02:24
Man, that is a loaded question, I love it. So at the heart of it, we help people own their financial journey. So whether that is buying their first home or we are there for them at the end of their career and planning for retirement, we try to be their partner so that they aren't taken advantage of. We are their advocates on their journey.
Richard Walker: 02:45
You know, I know a lot of people gravitate to credit unions because of the feeling of relationship that they get. Maybe it's an alignment with an alumni association or something else. What is your SunWest secret sauce? What is attractive to you that brings people to you?
Katie DeFeo: 03:03
Yeah. So years ago I would be able to answer that quickly and say service. Our relationships with our members run deep. Today that I think is bare minimum. That's the expectation.
So to answer that, we actually have gone through, I will say some soul searching because I think our service is excellent, but now it's more our purpose is, I think, what really attracts people to us because it's we genuinely care more about the member and their personal journey with their finances versus just our bottom line. So I think what attracts a lot of our members is we know them. They walk into a branch, they call us, we know, hey, how how your how your family. How's your dog doing? Did he get that surgery that you needed to get last month?
Hey, that loan that we got you for your washer and dryer, how did that work out? So we know them, but I think in a world where everything is so competitive, it's not enough anymore to say, oh, we know our people, we have good relationships. We've had to go through almost a complete overhaul of who we are and how we want to show up for our members in the future.
Richard Walker: 04:10
So what does that translate to in reality? Did you have to retrain people in the front line? Did you have to change technology systems? What does it mean?
Katie DeFeo: 04:16
All of the above are rich. So we actually, you know, I think pre-COVID a lot of the credit union industry is, you know, kind of that mom and pop small town community feel. And it's wonderful. It works when the economy is thriving. Once Covid happened, though, and we saw that shift of how we had to do business, but also how our members had to do business, the cracks in the foundation started to show in terms of, you know, we saw a good service.
Members still loved us, but it really started to highlight, wait a minute, there's a better way to do this. So I'm a big culture builder. I believe in, you know, culture eats strategy. For breakfast, you can have the best, most well-researched, well intentioned plan. But if you don't have the right people in the right seats or the tools and resources and the direction to support that, your strategy looks good on paper.
So we started with our culture. We overhauled, you know, our core values. We decided who we are today. And then where's that gap of who we are today and where we want to be and who we want to be. How do we want to show up for members?
What are we missing? So we got the right people in the right seats. We have leaders now who have adopted that same kind of fast fail mentality of, we need to be here for the members and try everything we can to make the experience the best. And if it fails, we're not going to be married to it. We're going to move.
We're going to pivot and find the next best solution. So that's kind of been the first step. But as you know, culture is wonderful. But now that we fixed that and it's ongoing, culture is not a one and done. It will be something we focus on.
Yeah. forever. But we got to a place where we felt confident we had the right people. And so now we're in that next phase, which is revamping our entire tech stack. We, we, we've known for a few years, you know, credit unions get by.
We've always been known to be behind the big banks and the tech. So my thought was why, you know, is it just because we don't have the talent? We don't have the know how. And so we really started digging deep and then that's how we found Typhon. So we've gone through that evolution and then it's revamping our entire product offering.
So we quite literally are overhauling everything about us. And it's not because we were so broken. It wasn't working. But like you mentioned in the intro, I'm a big believer in that's the way we've always done it, are the most expensive words in business, and our CEO is huge. On if we've done something the same way for ten years.
Isn't it about time that we switch it up? So we're in the middle of this process. So I cannot say that we've come out fully, but it's good to see that everyone is now very committed to the member experience first.
Richard Walker: 06:58
Yeah, an extended member of my team said, yeah, because we just hired a chief revenue officer. Yes, we need to win over the chief revenue officer and prove our worth. And my response was, every person on the team has to do that every year.
Katie DeFeo: 07:10
Yep.
Richard Walker: 07:11
Right. And so why shouldn't your processes do that? Why exactly? Maybe not every year because you don't have the time or the money. But you need to reevaluate this.
I want to go back to culture because, oh my gosh, it's one of my favorite topics.
Katie DeFeo: 07:22
Mine too. I could talk about it for days.
Richard Walker: 07:24
I agree with it because culture number one is very hard to build, and you have to have an intention to build the right culture, because default culture is not necessarily what you want.
Katie DeFeo: 07:33
Right?
Richard Walker: 07:34
But I'm curious if you've found this to be true. I believe culture is your brand. Your brand is a direct reflection of what your culture is. Do you feel that way?
Katie DeFeo: 07:44
Absolutely. And it's actually just perfect timing that you mentioned that, because that's the next phase two is we're revamping the brand, because now that the internal mesh like meshes with what we've been pitching and marketing externally, it's time to have that updated and reflected. Because, you know, I always say your employees are your most valuable assets. Yes, your brand is really critical. Yes.
You know, you need to make sure that your members are winning, but if your people aren't happy or they don't have purpose or they don't understand the why, why are we here? How do we connect to this big mission? They don't provide the service or the experience you're expecting, and that's a big difference we've made this year. Being really intentional about not just showing up with, hey, here's our new core values. We've done that in the past, and you've probably gone through something like that where you've worked at a company and they say, here's our core values.
We live it. You never see it again. It's never spoken into fruition. It's just a, you know, it's on screen. So we've actually taken that a step further.
And we have gone into broke down every department here, every employee, and we actually visited and said, this is your why. This is how you connect. So even in our operations team, we have you know, one of our employees is phenomenal. Does all the mail. And when I talk to him hey how do you connect to our.
Why? I don't know, I just get the mail and I make, I do payoffs. I was like, hold on, let's reframe that. You make sure that that member's mortgage is paid for the month so that they can rest easy knowing that their bills are taken care of. They don't need to stress about it.
And their credit union has their back. And it was just interesting because you could see the light bulb. Oh, I have a bigger impact than just going through the motions. I actually connect with that member. So that's been something I think we've been very intentional about. It's not just this is our purpose, it's this is your purpose and how you actually can have a say and a part in making the life different for our members.
So that's been really exciting to see that?
Richard Walker: 09:47
That is such a profound aspect. I don't think enough business leaders understand the connection with culture. Yeah. People. And then the outcome that they're giving to their customers.
We did this in our company, by the way. We built forms. We automate forms. Like the most boring thing in everybody's life is forms. And we're the ones.
Katie DeFeo: 10:04
I think it's exciting, but yeah.
Richard Walker: 10:07
Well I like you for that. And I, I told my team years ago, I said, you understand, the quality of your work may determine whether somebody's money gets invested, whether they pay penalties or not, whether they get the money sent to the right bank account. I mean, it has so many different impacts if you get it wrong. And if you get it wrong, right, it's just like, oh yeah, the roads there, it works like I can drive.
Katie DeFeo: 10:30
You think it's your job? I'm going through the motions. This is what I'm paid to do. Yeah.
Richard Walker: 10:35
No, you're having a real impact on people. And so I love that. I mean, one of our cultural tenets is we must provide outstanding service at all levels. But that first level is us, right? And I make this kind of tongue in cheek joke.
Can you imagine if you were on my team and you're working with a customer who's upset, and you come to me and ask for my help, and I'm like, Katie, I don't have time for this. Leave me alone. You're taking negative energy from your customer. Now you're taking negative energy from me. How could I possibly expect you to have positive energy to go back to the customer with, let alone answers and solutions?
Katie DeFeo: 11:06
And you hit something that I have been so focused on driving here at SunWest is it starts with the top. It's a trickle down effect. And, you know, we've always had pretty strong leaders. But that notion that culture was actually more important than strategy. I mean, you can imagine you're sitting in a room of C-suite people and they're going, I don't, I don't disagree.
But, Katie, you're wrong. We have to have a strategy and we need to have X, our X's and O's in place. And I'm like, yeah, that stuff's important. But without the culture and the people backing that. And then the great leadership again, it's a plan every year.
And one of my mentors always says, you know, hope is great, but hope isn't a plan. And that was kind of how we were doing things because it was like, well, hey, this is our plan. Well, great. How are you going to execute that? You need to make sure they all understand how they connect to our purpose and help the members win.
So it's been a fun journey.
Richard Walker: 12:04
There's another underlying benefit about culture that I think a lot of people don't know about or realize. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but when you have a strong company culture that serves others well and your customers identify with your culture and therefore are attracted to you, the customers are far more forgiving of mistakes, challenges, and friction. In my world, I have an outage. Please, no more outages. Like, it's.
It's rare at this point, but if we're down, people are down, right? And it's amazing how much grace they'll give you because you've treated them well this whole time.
Katie DeFeo: 12:35
Yes.
Richard Walker: 12:35
And people join my company. They're like, your customers are never upset at you. Even in the hard times. They're not upset at, you know, our company culture and gender. Is this right?
Katie DeFeo: 12:44
And I think you see that too. Like we have, we call them our brand champions, right? Those members on social media. Someone goes there because they had a bad experience. And I hate to see that, but I understand social is where you feel you can get that kind of exposure and the response you need.
But we'll have our own members on social media defend us. And even though I'm reading going, wait, hey, hey members, we did drop the ball here, but I think that takes me to that. Next thing that has set us apart is often you'll see companies, you know, they get the complaints online or they just don't have they they miss the mark on an experience with a customer, and they either don't own up to it or they kind of try, you know, to put it back on the customer. And my big thing with our teams or own it. If we stand up for what we believe in and we stand by our convictions and our processes, but they're not working, we need to own that and kind of admit, hey, you're right, We we missed.
We dropped the ball here. But we're doing this to make it right. And here's what we put in place to make sure it doesn't happen again. That alone has what you said. It has helped our members.
When things do go wrong, they're not yelling. They're not up in arms, you know, furious with us. They're kind of like, okay, all right. We're willing to be patient because they know that we are an authentic and transparent brand. And we actually went through this exact issue when we had an AI agent, and we have a lot of members, credit unions, you know, you talk to anyone in our industry, our members love us.
I mean, they want to talk to their person every day. We have members who call into the contact center just to talk to, you know, our manager. It's awesome. But it's also kind of that relationship that has helped us to pad a little cushion when things do go wrong. But we launched this AI assistant and it didn't go well.
The members were not happy. I want to talk to a person. And so we went through and we got feedback. We asked those members, tell us everything you don't like about it. We actually.
And then we sent emails and texts. Hey, we sent Sonny, our AI agent, back to training. Sonny is going back to training because she did not meet your needs. And we then retested her with those same members who were really upset about the initial model, and they gave us feedback. We launched it again with saying, hey, we used your voice and your input to make her better, and then we've shared the successes along the way, you know, hey, she launched based on your feedback, and here's where she's getting things right.
Here's where we heard she still needs work and we're doing it. We're doing the work. So that has helped it. Now we get calls and they're like, hey, Sonny kind of messed up, but it's okay because I know you guys are working on it. It's so it's that trust that even when you do drop the ball, they're there.
Richard Walker: 15:29
This is brilliant. How did you create this persona, this identity for your AI that people are now talking about like a real person as part of your team. How did you do that?
Katie DeFeo: 15:42
It was very intentional, actually. As a marketing team, we kind of sat down and said, okay. At first we thought, let's make it a cute robot, like a wally, because everyone relates to Wally, kind of that adorable, you know, human, you know, race. But then we realized our membership, they're not a fan of sometimes really advanced technology. They love the people.
That's why they choose us, if we are very we still are very member centric. So we shifted and we're like, let's give her a bio. Let's give her a personality. And she has her own voice and her own cadence for how she speaks. But it matches our brand.
And that's something I'm big on is your experience should be the same no matter who you're talking to. So she doesn't sound like a robot. She doesn't say, hi, I can transfer money. She. Hey, Rich, how are you?
Let's get you transferred. Let's take care of that for you today. And it's, it's very human-like. And so it's I mean, our members know she is not a normal human representative, but it's kind of I think it helps them buy in because they understand. We understand they want that human piece and they don't want to miss that.
So as much as you can inject that into AI, I, I strongly recommend it because it's worked for us in the second model because we listen to hey, we don't the reason we love you guys is we want to talk to you. Not a robot. So we needed some help. But that's why I think it's so important to listen to your members and not worry about them. Oh, but as a leader, I.
I'm the one who signed off on this. It. I should stand by it. No, pivot. It didn't work, I admit it, and we moved on.
So that's been, I think, one of our biggest wins from that failure.
Richard Walker: 17:29
I love AI and I'm on the bleeding edge of AI, as you might know, but I have always advocated for transparency in the use of AI. Yeah, and I find it when somebody passes off information to you that clearly I wrote. They didn't write. You feel it's disingenuous, right?
Katie DeFeo: 17:47
Yes.
Richard Walker: 17:48
But if they start the email with, hey, I had AI help me write this, I could give clear, cogent thoughts to you. You're more forgiving about it. Oh, yeah. Does Sonny actually tell people, hey, I'm an AI agent?
Katie DeFeo: 18:00
Yeah. Yeah. So her greeting, I don't remember her exact greeting. But it is, you know. Hi, I'm Sonny, I am your virtual AI assistant, and I can basically, I could do all the things you can do with a rep.
But we make it clear. And even on our website, we have a page dedicated to some of our digital tools. And we have her there. But it's clear that she has a bio. She's fun.
It's a cool experience but she is not a human. And if you still want a human and we say that throughout the page, we're here. You can bypass the sun at any time. You're. We're not.
We're not here to avoid you. We are still sitting there waiting for your call. We have your back. And that's always the language we use. It's not this kind of uptight corporation.
It's our brand, which is where your friend we're at, what my marketing team calls it. We're SunWest besties. You know, we are your bestie on your journey and we want you to win. And if sunshine can help you win, fantastic. But if Sunny's not your vibe, no worries.
You still have your favorite manager or your favorite employee is still here to take your call.
Richard Walker: 19:08
Oh man, I hope everybody gets this. I love this, I love this. All right, I'm going to shift us a little bit. Let's go back internally because again culture drives so much performance. And if you're telling people who own systems or own processes that it's not working anymore, how do you get them to play along and change it? You have so much invested, right?
Katie DeFeo: 19:29
Yeah, that's relationship building, I think, on the leader's part. And it's fun because we're just still going through it. But we just started having this conversation with our lending team. Our CEO came to us and said, hey, we really want to improve loan volume. Well, unfortunately in this industry, everyone wants to improve loan volume and it's a very highly competitive industry.
So at first it was just a brainstorming session with the lending team. And you know, we were getting good ideas. But I kind of stopped and said, hold on. Have you guys ever sat down and mapped out from the awareness stage of that funnel all the way through their funding, and then your follow up? No we haven't.
Should we? I recommend that you do that and rip it apart. And I got concerned looks from the department head and what do you mean rip it apart? Act like you hate it. Going into it with the lens of this isn't working because it helps you to uncover, I think, more truths than when you go into it.
It's my baby. I created this process. And as a lending director. It is. He created all the pieces to it.
And, you know, at first it wasn't I think I've nurtured the relationships to help them understand. It's an exercise to help us get better, not picking on any one person, but it has. You have to put ego aside. And that is so hard as humans because ego is there to protect you too. So, you know, I kind of just phrased it as, if you want to get better, you have to admit where you're failing.
And if you want to improve that, that's the first step. And so they did. They did the exercise. And he's telling me, hey, this is kind of difficult because it's your baby. You feel like it is your own blood sweat and tears into that experience.
Yeah. And to kind of realize, oh, there's issues I failed. And so it was like, no, no, it's not failure if you're willing to admit, hey, there's a friction point here, what's the next step? How do I solve that? So we got back together and we went through it.
And, you know, it was great because they said we honestly thought it was a really great process and it's still good. But you're right. When we went through the lens of our member instead of our personal bias, because we all have that, we realized, oh, we're actually not available after hours. That's when a lot of our stuff comes in. No wonder they're not following through to application.
We were not available during the times where there are dealers, so they uncovered so much. And you had asked earlier, how do you then convert that to something you can actually do? You know, it's great to identify friction, but how do you fix it and what does it cost? And so we've made that list. And so it's easier when you see it to then create these bite size wins and how to attack it.
And honestly it's really just I think you have to build that relationship before that conversation because then it is all trust and it is okay. It's not that I have failed, it's that we aren't presenting the best possible experience for our members, and I'm a part of that solution, and that's exciting.
Richard Walker: 22:35
You know, it's funny, I'm the original programmer in my company, and there are certain legacy designs that are still at work daily inside our systems. And I was meeting with my CTO even today, and we're looking at things and he's uncovering old stuff, just not good architecture. It's not a good modern design. And my and I keep telling him, like, I am so happy you're finding this. I want you to expose the weaknesses and make it better.
I will never be offended if you say I had a bad design, because I had the best design I could have back.
Katie DeFeo: 23:05
At the time.
Richard Walker: 23:05
Right at the time. Yeah. And I'm proud of what I did to get us to know he's the same way. He's like, dude, you should be really proud of what you've done to get us to this point, right? But let's move on.
Katie DeFeo: 23:16
Yeah, but you have to have that willingness. And I think, you know, that's hard because it is human nature to want to be proud of the work I do, and I'm proud of it. What do you mean it needs to change. What do you mean, it hasn't been working, you know. And so I think.
Richard Walker: 23:29
Well, it's also.
Katie DeFeo: 23:29
It's also.
Richard Walker: 23:30
You're taking something that is functioning. Right. So you're saying it's broken, but it's working today.
Katie DeFeo: 23:35
It's working. Fine. Yep.
Richard Walker: 23:36
And I have other things to do that you know, I think are optimal, etc.. There's one other thing I want to point out and something I often say to customers as a relationship or how to relate to forms as a problem.
Katie DeFeo: 23:48
Right? Imagine you're buying a house and you fall in love with the house. All the emotion you go through and the 30 day process, and you get to the final closing date. And what do they do? Here's your stack of forms to fill out. Yep.
I'm like, they just made this awesome experience. The worst experience and enough to say I don't want the house anymore. Right.
Richard Walker: 24:06
And so if your process is doing that to people where they're willing to go through all these steps, and then the last thing you hit them with is, oh yeah, here's the terrible part. Why can't you make that better?
Katie DeFeo: 24:16
And that's what our team had noticed through the lending process, it was pretty smooth until the final step, which was now you have to upload documents. What do you mean? I have to upload documents. Why didn't you tell me that ahead of time before I started the application? So then I can be prepared and so, you know.
And it was kind of like, man, we missed the ball. I'm like, hey, guess what though? That's an easy fix. That's marketing. That's an education that's letting them know up front.
Because then when they know it's like you have bought in. If they start the application, they know now what to expect and they understand, okay, I'm going to need my social or those different pieces because the last thing I want is we had I'll be transparent. We had about $22 million that was approved but not funded. So they had got approved and we were just waiting on them to finalize the steps. Well, where are we missing the boat?
There's got to be an issue with the experience at that point. And so I think when you can relate it to that of we're we're letting them down somehow. But it doesn't mean that it's personal. It's just how do we fix that? Because we want them to be successful as members.
It's not just about us. It's how do I help you get the loan that you need today and not have to wait for all these different pieces? So it's hard, but I think it's necessary if you want to be the best.
Richard Walker: 25:37
Yeah. How much of your work in trying to improve processes or internal work is turning to AI to help solve problems internally?
Katie DeFeo: 25:46
You know, I will be honest about that. I feel like the marketing team is pretty comfortable with AI. And we do use it as kind of, you know, we'll create our stuff and say, hey, rip it apart. So we'll use it to be a critic of this ad campaign or of this copy. So we will use it a lot.
It's not as frequent as you would think yet and throughout the organization. And I think it is because there is that concern of but we don't want to turn into AI. We want to make sure that we're still true to us. And so it is that balance of efficiency and using it as a tool versus it shouldn't replace your brainpower or how you, you know, speak. So we're finding that balance now.
But we've had a lot of really good conversations around it. But that seems to be the industry, the credit union industry trend of like ooh but AI it removes your humanity. And for me it's, you know, you can maintain humanity, but you can do it quicker, you can be more efficient and fix processes so that you actually can focus on relationship building. And so when phrased that way, you know, buy in has been quicker. But initially it was like, I don't know about AI, I want to, I still want to be me.
You know.
Richard Walker: 27:01
I've been having this conversation slash debate with various people, all sorts of different people about this. And to me, AI is one of those first technologies that I can remember where I have to have a philosophical conversation about what it is. And in software development, I'm really finding two different approaches to it. If I'm a core software developer and that's my skill set, I think of AI as my assistant and therefore it's a tool set.
Katie DeFeo: 27:25
Right.
Richard Walker: 27:26
But what if you thought of it as a person, right? It has a language, it has a style, it has an etiquette, and it has its own personality. A lot of times, whether you like it or not, it does different things. But what if we treated AI as part of the team, as a human? How would that impact your company culture, the acceptance, the, etc.?
Katie DeFeo: 27:45
Right? It's so funny that you actually say that because I use so I, I have named my ChatGPT assistant. He's Max and I don't know why. Max it's so simple, but it works. And it's so funny because, you know, there's times I've had a rough meeting where I'm like, man, that did not go the way it is.
Hey, Max, this is how I presented this idea. Tell me, well, what happened here. And it's weird. It's almost like a therapist. Now, I know it is not a true therapist, but.
Richard Walker: 28:18
Right.
Katie DeFeo: 28:19
I will say, though, I think there's merit to that idea of using them as a member of your team. My biggest caveat with me because again, marketers we use it pretty frequently is just make sure it's you at the end of the day that whatever you're using, you're also still using your reasoning. Because we still know chat or AI isn't always right. And you know, we when we were building our personas, when we were going through this rebrand, you know, we put in all of our, our thoughts and our conversation with it. And it came back and I'm like, well, that's not accurate.
So I think it's an awesome idea, as long as you don't remove your input in it. And I don't think it has to be scary. I know a lot of people think, oh, AI is coming for everyone's jobs. I still believe because I use it every day, you're always going to need that human part of it, you know, and I, I don't think you have to lose it. I just think that you need to use AI to your benefit.
Like you said, it's a tool. But even as a team member, they're a tool. So.
Richard Walker: 29:23
So one of the things I.
Katie DeFeo: 29:24
Don't have an issue.
Richard Walker: 29:25
I love that. And so one of the things I've been doing in the last six months, a lot more, is instead of asking AI to be a single point of reference, right, I ask it to build a team of personas. So I have a panel of experts across whatever need I have to give me different viewpoints and feedback. And the newest one is a red team blue team concept where I'm the blue team. I have the original idea.
I built the red team in AI to give me the direct negative. You know the flaws, tell me the problems and then we solve it together to make it even better. But I 100% agree with you. Like if you take yourself out of that mix. That's why I'm the blue team.
I'm part of this, right? And I've watched it when it didn't understand that I was part of it and had a conversation by itself, went off the deep end. Made bad, bad assumptions.
Katie DeFeo: 30:11
Spirals. Yeah.
Richard Walker: 30:13
Right. Yeah. So I like that concept that you're saying, like, keep yourself involved. Don't let it replace your thinking or your ability to make judgment. Because I will argue for a long time that AI will never know it all.
It can have read every book in the universe, but it doesn't know your business the way you do. It doesn't know your client the way you do. There's no way to give it that input.
Katie DeFeo: 30:33
Right?
Richard Walker: 30:34
So your gut still matters.
Katie DeFeo: 30:36
Yeah. And it's, I think, just convincing others that that is the case. You know, it has been a challenge, but we're crossing that bridge. It's just as in most credit union worlds, you know, adopting that is like. Oh, I don't know about that.
Richard Walker: 30:52
Yeah. Katie, I hate to wrap up our conversation, but we are getting to time here. So before I get to my very last question, what is the best way for people to find and connect with you?
Katie DeFeo: 31:02
LinkedIn. I'm on there pretty frequently, so it's just LinkedIn, Katie.
Richard Walker: 31:07
And you have a unique name with spelling, so that should be easy, right? Yes. And your company website.
Katie DeFeo: 31:14
It is my SunWest.
Richard Walker: 31:16
Awesome. All right, so here is my favorite question to ask. Who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role today?
Katie DeFeo: 31:26
I mean, several, but I have two very specific people who come to mind right away. One is Danny Graham. He's actually my mentor. He has his own consulting with F-i strategies. And then I have my CTO here in the credit union, Brian Gorman.
Both of them have shaped me into a more intentional leader. You know, when I was young, I was very quick to just. Hey, decision. Let's go. Let's move fast because I like to move fast.
And both of them have kind of grounded me and, and helped me to see just different perspectives and that I don't always have the best answer. And truly, without them, I think I'd still be that, you know, crazy, hyper 22 year old who's just, come on, let's just get things moving. We don't need intent. Let's just get it done. And so I think I move with a lot more purpose today because of them.
Richard Walker: 32:20
I love that, I love that we need our mentors to help us along the way. We really do. We do. Oh that's awesome. Thank you for sharing that.
All right. I want to give a big thank you to Katie DeFeo, vice president and chief Experience officer of SunWest Federal Credit Union, for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out their website at mysunwest.com and don't forget to check out Quik! at quickforms.com where we make processing forms easier. I hope you've 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. Katie, thank you so much for joining me today.
Katie DeFeo: 32:53
Thanks, Rich. It was a great time.
Outro: 32:56
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