Rewiring Financial Engagement: How DailyPay Connects with Millions in Real Time

0:00:08.2 Kailey Raymond: Welcome to Builders Wanted, the podcast for people shaping what's next in customer engagement. Today, we're joined by somebody who knows how to meet customers where they are because she's building systems that respond in real time to what they need. Dar Miranda is the VP of Customer Engagement at DailyPay, a company helping millions of workers gain faster, more flexible access to their earned wages. But this conversation goes well beyond payroll. We'll talk about what it takes to earn trust in a high-stakes moment, how data and empathy can work together, and why engagement is becoming the most important layer of the customer experience. Dar brings a rare mix of strategic thinking and heart to her work, and today she's sharing what that looks like up close. Let's get into it.

0:00:53.3 Producer : This podcast is brought to you by Twilio, the customer engagement platform that helps businesses turn real-time data into seamless, personalized experiences. Engage customers on their terms across SMS, voice, email, WhatsApp, and more. Power every interaction with AI so conversations feel natural, not robotic. Adapt in real time, delivering the right message on the right channel exactly when it matters. That's the power of Twilio. More than 320,000 businesses, from startups to Fortune 500s, trust Twilio to transform customer signals into conversations, connections, and real revenue. Reimagine the way you engage with your customers. Learn more at Twilio.com.

0:01:42.1 Kailey Raymond: So Dar, welcome to the show. We're really excited to have you here. 

0:01:45.8 Dar Miranda: Thanks for having me.

0:01:47.1 Kailey Raymond: It should be a really fun conversation. I know that you've led product teams and customer experience at some pretty major brands, American Express and Sterling, and also a ton of high-growth startups, and now at DailyPay. And just to quickly familiarize folks, DailyPay sits at the intersection of fintech and the workforce empowerment. And so I'm just wondering, as an expert in this field, if there's an insight that you might be able to pull out for us about the modern worker that's shaping the way that you think about engagement today.

0:02:19.9 Dar Miranda: Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, one profound insight that continuously shapes our approach to workforce empowerment and engagement at DailyPay is this pervasive and often hidden impact of financial stress on the modern worker's daily life and consequently their engagement at work. It's no longer just about paycheck to paycheck. It's about the emotional and mental toll that financial uncertainty takes. We've seen through our data and countless employee testimonials that when someone is worried about covering an unexpected expense or making rent on time or simply having enough for groceries until payday, that stress doesn't magically disappear when they clock in. It spills over, impacting their focus, their productivity, their ability to present or to be present, sorry, and ultimately their overall job satisfaction. A couple of tidbits here that I want to like leave you with data points, right? 85% of workers worry about personal finances at work. 44% of workers say that financial worries impact their productivity. And get ready for this one, unscheduled absenteeism due to financial stress costs about $3,600 per worker per year. That's not insignificant when you think about some of the volumes that we're dealing with. So a critical part of our mission is bridging this understanding for employers.

0:03:39.5 Dar Miranda: Many leaders intuitively know that employees face financial challenges, but they often underestimate the sheer depth and breadth of that stress and how it directly impacts their bottom line through absenteeism, turnover, and lower productivity. We help them see that financial well-being is not just a personal issue, right? It's a foundational element of employee engagement and business performance. Furthermore, we're facing the reality that the modern workforce isn't what it was many years ago. We're seeing more and more individuals across various industries managing multiple jobs to make ends meet. And I was talking to one of our clients, a retail associate at one of our clients, and she's like, well, I have another job. I have that one for savings and this one for my day-to-day expenses. So this amplifies the need for immediate access to earned wages as traditional bi-weekly pay cycles become even more and more disconnected from real-time cash flow needs across different income streams, right? So for these workers, having this flexibility of earnings isn't a nice-to-have. It's a necessity for balancing multiple commitments. We're not just providing a financial tool here. We're giving them peace of mind, reducing that stress, and allowing them to bring their full selves and their full attention to their work.

0:04:57.9 Dar Miranda: And this translates directly into higher engagement, better retention, a more resilient workforce. So it's shifting from employer-centric pay cycle to employee-centric pay model that truly just respects the realities of the worker.

0:05:11.4 Kailey Raymond: This is so interesting. I love some of these stats that are really just concrete to articulate the way that stress is compounding into financial loss potentially for companies. It's a really nice way to put it for employers to make sure you're understanding that you build benefits and structures that are working for not only you, but obviously for your employees. Really cool insights. I'm wondering if there's anything that you could share about the things that you're building right now. What's the boldest thing that your team is building right now?

0:05:45.8 Dar Miranda: Oh boy, you know, using the word bold puts so much pressure on it, doesn't it? Right? But no, part of being bold is just taking an honest and hard look at what we're doing. So the boldest thing we're building right now isn't a product or a feature, although we do a lot of that by the way, and we do enjoy investing in that. But the boldest thing is really this fundamental shift in how people interact with their pay. So we're moving away from years and years of habit of how people get paid, and we're building a system that transforms cash flow for people. It's bold because it challenges established norms, right? And it requires to rethink every assumption. And it has the potential to truly empower users in a way that hasn't been done before. This isn't an incremental improvement. This is a complete reimagination of pay. So we're intentionally dismantling these traditional hierarchies and empowering every team member to contribute directly to our strategic direction. It's bold because it's a massive organizational shift and requires a huge amount of trust and vulnerability and kind of like flies in the face of how many established companies operate.

0:06:50.7 Dar Miranda: And we like that. We'd like to be a little bit rebellious in that sense, but we really feel that that's essential to foster the innovation and agility needed to build truly groundbreaking products. That's just part of our culture and how we think. We're really relentless about moving forward and it's really cool to work, you know, with people who just never settle for the status quo. And we spend so much time looking at our data to find the opportunities and then we pair that with asking like bold and vulnerable questions about like why that data might be what it is. So again, it's not one thing. It's the mindset shift that's truly like revolutionary here.

0:07:26.9 Kailey Raymond: Yeah, I love that. I mean, making sure that you have a company culture that's built around that kind of innovation cycle and empowerment and making sure that you're getting the best ideas and building in customer feedback into that. I have an insight from, you know, some of the data that you're talking about, which is, as I understand it, your users check the DailyPay app five to seven times a week, which is a very engaged user base. So, you know, I'm wondering that like real time engagement that you're seeing with your users, how does that influence your roadmap?

0:08:04.0 Dar Miranda: Well, in a pretty cool way. And, you know, that's the average, but we see, you know, there are clients that we have that even have like folks check it twice a day. But let me give you a stat. 55% of employers rank DailyPay amongst their top three most engaged benefits. This is usually next to medical, by the way. So think about that for a second. And when you have that kind of engagement, it opens up so many possibilities on the roadmap. So that five to seven times a week stat to us is like the most powerful indicator of how deeply ingrained financial awareness and control are becoming in the daily lives of modern workers. It tells us that this isn't just a, hey, break glass in case of an emergency tool, right? As sometimes people tend to think, it's actually a habitual check-in. And we are the workforce's daily companion. With this, we can think about other things that are present in the worker's life, right? And what we've learned about that level of engagement is that there's a constant need for financial transparency, right? People aren't just checking to see how much money they can access. They're checking to see how much money they have earned and how their hours are translating into income.

0:09:17.4 Dar Miranda: This tells us that financial clarity is really a continuous need. The other thing that kind of like learning here is that this provides proactive financial management, not just reactive. Look, on-demand access is crucial for emergencies, but we see a significant portion of that engagement driven by proactive budgeting and planning. And what people are doing is based on how much they've earned, they're making small frequent adjustments to their spending or even planning to pick up an extra shift based on that projected income, right? And then the other piece is the earned identity is really powerful. Like seeing that money accrue just reinforces this idea that their hard work is directly and very tangibly translating into value for them. So how does this influence our roadmap? Well, it gives us a lot of great ideas and great room to play with here, right? It pushes us to really think beyond just being a pay-on-demand provider, right? And really providing this comprehensive financial wellness hub for the modern worker. This includes things like enhanced transparency features, right? So we're always building on more granular views of earnings and shift breakdowns and insights that help people with that planning, right?

0:10:30.2 Dar Miranda: It allows us to really invest in proactive planning and budgeting tools. And we are investing very heavily, not just with things that help users see their money, but plan with it, which is extremely powerful for this space. This also gives us an opportunity to invest in personalized financial guidance, right? We have that captive audience and we have the data and the ability to help with that. It just tells us we're not solving a short-term cash flow problem. We're really helping people fundamentally change their relationship with money.

0:11:01.8 Kailey Raymond: Really powerful to be able to have such an engaged user base to gain that insight around, oh, what we're actually doing is we're a financial wellness company at this point. Like we are really transforming the way that people think about their money. And that opens up, I'm sure, a lot of decisions about where you actually want to go and build more roadmap for sure. That's super interesting. I'm wondering if there's anything in your data about your users that might have surprised you about how they're engaging with your app. Is there like an aha insight that might have changed the way that your team thinks about how it's delivering value?

0:11:40.4 Dar Miranda: Yeah, and it's tied to what I just said. It's very related to what I just said, right? So when we first launched DailyPay, our core assumption was that users would primarily engage with the app during these moments of financial urgency, right? The unexpected bill, the sudden expense, or, you know, right before payday because, you know, you're just not going to make it, right? So we really thought of this as a crucial financial safety net, right? Like I said, that break glass in case of emergency tool. But the biggest surprise and our major kind of like aha insight was discovering that for the vast majority of our users, the app just isn't a reactive tool, right? It's the proactive daily financial dashboard and a source of motivation. So our initial hypothesis was about need, but really it was about realizing it's fundamentally about control, transparency, and the psychological impact of seeing your hard work translate into real-time value. So here's what surprised us, right? The sheer frequency of engagement. Five to seven times a week is incredibly high for a financial app. So, you know, there's something, it's not just about accessing money, which a lot of people at the beginning think.

0:12:48.0 Dar Miranda: And we deal with this too. Like we see this when we talk to clients or prospects. That's initially what they think. So we spend a lot of time educating them. That's, you know, like the different hypothesis, right? Or the different thing that the data is showing us. The other thing that surprised us is the proactive budgeting and planning. A lot of folks say, God, I wish I could budget. I'll budget when I have money and all. No, no, no. Users are actually using the app very interestingly, not like, you know, these traditional budgeting apps, but to have that visibility, that control. And then they're planning ahead, right? They're self-managing their finances in a way that the traditional bi-weekly pay doesn't allow them to do, right? Because you have to wait. You have to, you know, especially with folks with hourly pay or variable pay, you have to wait to see how much they're making to make these plans. Not anymore, not with this visibility. And, you know, the last thing that surprised us is a little of this like gamification of work. Work isn't a game. And I hope all employers out there heard this. Work isn't a game.

0:13:43.8 Dar Miranda: But there's this powerful psychological effect, right, of seeing your earnings grow with every hour worked. It's like a real time scoreboard for your labor. So many users told us that it made them more motivated, more likely to pick up an extra shift and feel even like a stronger connection between their effort and the reward. So this wasn't something we fully, like hadn't fully anticipated, that motivational power of real-time earnings. So as you can imagine, that's going to change how we think about value in a super profound way. You know, we initially thought offering, we were offering a liquidity solution, but that financial clarity, peace of mind, empowerment and control, that motivation, those were surprised to us. So this shift means that our roadmap isn't just about faster payments or more access points, right? It's really about building a full suite of tools that support proactive financial management and provide these like richer insights into earnings and generally empowering users to not just survive, but thrive financially. So we really are the partner in the daily financial well-being.

0:14:50.1 Kailey Raymond: I love this because one of the things that I just kind of keep going back to is one of the biggest things that a company can do for its, you know, customers is creating that trust and making sure that you are providing that level of transparency. It's not an easy thing to accomplish, but the way that you do it is by revealing like, you know, undoing the curtain a little bit and making sure also to the point around real-time is the demand of consumers now in the real-time era is so, so pervasive. It crosses every single industry and to be able to provide that, you know, with that consumer demand is such an alignment to build that trust, which is really, really great. I'm wondering the kind of like other side of this, if there's something that you might have tried that maybe didn't go quite as planned, but it taught you something really critical about your customers.

0:15:50.3 Dar Miranda: All organizations, including us, have examples of something that we tried that, you know, initially we were like, you know, we thought we were gung-ho, we thought this was like the best thing, but then we learned a lot. So early on, as we were thinking about how to best support our employer partners, because remember, our employer is our direct, you know, customer as well as their employees. But as we thought about how to support them in communicating the value of DailyPay to their workforce, because remember, we talked about engagement earlier, and this is a big component, we explored what actually seemed to be a really straightforward solution, right? Which is leveraging SMS messaging to streamline onboarding and ongoing engagement, right? The idea was to make it incredibly easy to send out prompts and reminders or even quick educational tidbits about DailyPay via text, like really meeting the employee where they're at, right? Because who doesn't have their phone with them on this day and age? What didn't go as planned was the unexpected complexity and nuanced impact on both our employers and their employees, right? While seemingly simple, managing SMS campaigns at scale for thousands of diverse employers, each with their own unique communication guidelines, 

0:16:59.4 Dar Miranda: Compliance requirements, and specific messaging needs, just became this massive undertaking. And we found out that it was far more complex than just hitting send. So what we realized was that if communications is tricky for us, right, this also means that it's also very tricky for the employer themselves. So that insight changed everything. You know, we realized that our role was not to take over their communication, but to become their trusted partner in advising them on how and when to communicate effectively, right? And we also had the data that they sometimes lack. So we can help them understand the power of multi-channel communications and the effectiveness of those channels through our performance data. So we learned a couple of critical things. Like number one is like employers value brand control above all, right? Our employers are really meticulously building their own internal communication strategies and employee engagement approaches. And they didn't want a third party like DailyPay just coming and taking over, right? They wanted to integrate our value into their existing channels, but not create like, you know, potentially like separate channel that's going to conflict with that. So now we work together. Like we have actually greatly entrusted our partnership in doing this.

0:18:12.0 Dar Miranda: The other thing that we learned is that context is king, right? It's not just about the channel. Here's something that we have in common. Employee experience, like a good employee experience is something that we both deeply care about. And we've proven that time and again in partnership with our clients. So it's not just about what we communicated, but when it and how it fit into that broader employee experience. So the aha moment here fundamentally shifted how our team thinks about the value that we provide to employers in terms of communication. So we took that learning and turned it into something where we can all win. So instead of trying to own the communication channel for them, we focus heavily on enabling them with the best tools, data, co-branded content to communicate DailyPay effectively themselves in addition to using our channels, right? And this just means that we're helping them with something that they're struggling with already. So once we recognize that, we realize that we can work in partnership and be very effective and provide value well beyond earned wage access or on-demand pay.

0:19:14.2 Kailey Raymond: That is so interesting. And it's such like a nuance to B2B to see kind of companies that you have multiple audiences that you need to engage, but ultimately the person that's paying you is the company. It's the employer. It's not necessarily the employees, but without their engagement, it's really hard. So how do you drive that engagement? It is really interesting.

0:19:40.4 Dar Miranda: What's even more interesting is that this is a free benefit for employers. They're still getting benefit that they didn't expect. They're getting higher engagement that they've ever seen. So now even they've started thinking about, well, okay, wait a minute. They have this kind of engagement. What else could we do with them? So it's this really interesting partnership and it goes well beyond on-demand pay. So now, imagine that we're working with like HR and payroll teams, and these are folks who have a lot of trouble reaching people, but we're helping them to do something that they didn't realize that they may not have been doing well and then leverage us for that. And again, that just deepens the partnership.

0:20:16.4 Kailey Raymond: That's so, so interesting. And one of the things that, I mean, you said all of these companies, they want this control over their communications. It makes perfect sense to me. And there's a lot of need to personalize it based off of, you know, who the employer is, who the employee is, and making sure that the context is kind of built in, which is kind of bringing me to this thought around, like, the need around personalization. And you're thinking about automating a lot of things. Like, all of those things are things that I think about in relation to AI and how AI can insert itself into some of the workflows that you're thinking about. Because in theory, you know, AI could help us build these automations that are super personalized every single... Yeah, you get it. You've heard that. And it's really hard for a lot of companies to actually pull that off. And in a business like, you know, you're dealing with, it's really important. We're talking about people's money. It's really important. We're talking about people's stress. And so where do you draw the line between automation and human connection? And how do you make sure that that trust that you're building is still there when you're scaling with AI?

0:21:26.3 Dar Miranda: Yeah, wow. What a truly great question. And this is the question that we grapple with constantly at DailyPay. And it's absolutely critical to our philosophy because we're not just a tech company. We're fundamentally in the business of client and user success. So for us, the line isn't about either or, but really how do we leverage AI to enhance our human connections, right? So allowing us to really deliver a more impactful and empathetic support at scale. So we draw the line by thinking about AI where it could best prepare us to be human and where it can help us reveal opportunities for greater value. So not surprisingly, right? Like you mentioned this, we automate as much as we can with AI for proactive insight and efficiency. So our AI-powered systems are meticulously analyzing user behavior and common issues and really allow us to anticipate their needs and streamline these routine interactions with the app. But that doesn't replace that human interaction. It just helps us be better prepared and anticipated and get ahead of it a little bit. We reserve, you know, or where we draw the line right here is that we reserve human connection for empathy, deep problem solving, and strategic partnership.

0:22:38.8 Dar Miranda: So, you know, when a user has a complex situation, unique problem, that's really where that human connection becomes indispensable. Oh, and when you think about our client success scene, AI really becomes, it becomes a powerful research tool, but it will never replace that human connection. So how we build trust when scaling through AI, especially as you mentioned, a financially sensitive area, this is people's pay. We take this extremely, extremely seriously. So our whole philosophy is really rooted on ensuring that it elevates the human experience, right? So we use it as a prep tool for human success, right? So we use it to be as prepared and forward as we can, we can possibly be before a human interaction occurs. And that's both with our clients and with the employees who use this as well. So it just opens up the room for us to invest deeply on the human side while scaling. The other thing is, look, I'm sure you've heard this before that AI is an insight amplifier. It's so incredibly powerful in seeing opportunities and trends in vast amounts of data that would be impossible for humans to discern quickly or at all. It's just impossible, so we leverage that to give us the insights that we may not be able to see.

0:23:54.3 Dar Miranda: And you know, those blind spots that sometimes companies have, if you're not using AI to surface some of that and really do that in the service of your customers, I think you're missing out on opportunity. And there may be opportunities, gaps, or even pitfalls that we are not seeing that would be revealed in data but like I said, it's just not going to be available to the naked human eye. You know, there's only so many spreadsheets you can look at and try to gather insights and you are not going to get it. So, you know, AI does that. The other thing is, and this is, I want to stress is how we build trust. This is people's pay. Reliability, accuracy, consistency are all critical corner stones of having folks trust us with their pay. So our, you know, AI and automated systems are meticulously built and rigorously tested to ensure that there's accuracy in the calculating the earned wages and executing transfers, right? Look, when people can rely on our system consistently, trust builds organically. So any error, no matter how small, is non-negotiable for us. It just isn't. So for us, just to kind of like summarize, it isn't about replacing human connection. It's about supercharging it.

0:25:08.5 Kailey Raymond: Yeah, I mean, that makes perfect sense. It's like how many Tableau dashboards can I possibly look at with the human eye every day to tell me what trends are emerging when a computer is way better suited to do that work.

0:25:21.1 Dar Miranda: That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And that's using it in a smart way. I could be spending hours, you know, looking through data and it's not the story isn't going to jump out at me. Where we can use the human piece and we do use as human pieces to ask those questions. Why might this client be behaving this way or that way, you know, et cetera. So that is where that marriage of that curiosity and that those questions and the technology is really, you know, just a secret to success.

0:25:50.8 Kailey Raymond: Those are my favorite ones where we have, you know, all these kind of new dashboards where we can interrogate with a chat bot. Why is this happening? And it'll say, this is why it's happening. You're like, this is why AI rocks. You know, that's the cool thing.

0:26:05.0 Dar Miranda: Time and again.

0:26:06.3 Kailey Raymond: Totally. While we're on the topic of insights, like, you know, AI is helping you to really accelerate and amplify the insights that you're able to draw from your data. Is, you know, is there anything that you've drawn from this that has allowed you to better serve either employees or employers in an unexpected way?

0:26:26.9 Dar Miranda: Yeah. Okay, this will reveal how nerdy I actually am. 

0:26:31.7 Kailey Raymond: Let's go. Pull back the curtain. 

0:26:34.5 Dar Miranda: Right? No, no, no. But this is one of the most fun parts for me, personally, of working at DailyPay. But we're constantly diving into our data. And it's not just to track performance, right? But it's really to find patterns and, quote unquote, enigmas that force us to ask the tough questions, right? And this applies to insights both about employees and employers. So we're always looking for correlations that will provide tangible value to our clients and to our own teams. So, you know, recently, in the service of partnering even better with our clients, we undertook a deep dive into their engagement data, you know, comparing it to others and layering in a number of other data dimensions. We wanted to understand, like, why do some employers have significantly higher DailyPay engagement among their workforce than others? And if they do, what are some of the benefits that higher engagement on key metrics they care about, right? Like employee turnover and time clock compliance. The truly unexpected and powerful insight was this, right? The quality and consistency of an employer's internal communication strategy about DailyPay and their use of our communication channels directly correlates with significantly higher engagement with our platform, which in turn drives measurable operational benefits for the employer.

0:27:51.6 Dar Miranda: This is something you don't always think about, but it is a byproduct. And it's insanely powerful for employers. So we found that when employers truly leaned into communicating the DailyPay benefit, like using diverse, consistent channels, like internal comms, HR portals, and even managers talking about it. This is critical learning there. Their employees engage with the app at much higher levels. Not surprising. But the real insight is that higher engagement had a clear positive impact on metrics like reduced turnover. Like turnover is actually a very big problem for employers. And it's a bigger problem than I think people realize, but we have visibility into that, right? So workforces, and we have quantifiable ways of seeing this, workforces with higher DailyPay engagement showed lower attrition rates. It's like undeniable the data is there. So it really suggests that financial peace of mind translates to greater employee retention. The other benefit is improved time clock compliance. So we saw correlations between active DailyPay usage and more accurate time clock entries, right? So this indicates that there's a more engaged and maybe even more attentive workforce overall. And this is actually a common sense thing. If you don't clock in and out accurately, you're not going to get access to your PayDaily.

0:29:11.4 Dar Miranda: Right? So we're seeing very significant jumps. And this is actually a problem for employers. And there's other operational efficiencies, right? So as expected, higher engagement with DailyPay also led to reduction in costly pay per checks and other administrative burdens like that. We're not talking a small amount. And as a matter of fact, one employer is saving easily a quarter million a year just because of DailyPay usage. This is real money. And it's not often that HR and payroll teams can claim like, look at all the money I saved for the company, but they can with a solution like this. So our role extends far beyond just providing the technology, right? We're not just a vendor. We've become trusted advisors to our clients. And we now actively leverage this performance data to show employers the quantifiable benefits of a robust communication strategy, right? And then that's what really allows us or gives us the right to guide them on multi-channel communication, best practices, and other ways of partnering with us.

0:30:12.3 Kailey Raymond: It's a virtuous little cycle you've created for yourself there of, you know, like you're building trust with the employer, which builds trust with the employee. And it's just like, you know, this little flywheel for you guys. And it's a very great pitch deck for you guys to be able to put those ROI calculators on your, I'm like, I have my marketer's brain on right now, Dar. I'm like, I got a lot of things we could do with this.

0:30:35.2 Dar Miranda: Perfect. Perfect. Bring it on. We love the ideas. But yeah, you know, those are things, again, when people think we're just an on-demand pay company, I think it's, I don't want to say selling us short, but like kind of selling all of us short on, you know, the broader benefits that we could have and impact that we can have.

0:30:50.7 Kailey Raymond: 100%. Very, very cool what you're doing.

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0:31:46.6 Kailey Raymond: I want to bring it to the industry now. And so, you know, you've been in this industry for quite a long time. And I'm wondering, you know, we touched on AI. Obviously, that's having pretty profound impacts in a lot of ways for a lot of companies. Maybe it's that, maybe it's another thing. But what's one emerging CX trend that you're really watching closely?

0:32:09.0 Dar Miranda: Oh, boy. I'm going to give you a two-in-one answer here, which is, and, you know, I work in client success now. And the truth is, it doesn't matter what my title is. And nope, it shouldn't matter what anyone's title is. Like, we are all part of the customer experience. We are all part of the customer journey in one way or another, right? But I will say that, you know, client success, and I'll focus on that because that's kind of where I'm at right now, is really becoming so much more focused on driving growth, more focused than we've ever been, right? So the two-in-one here and the trend that I'm watching most closely is the integration of AI to proactively solve customer problems, but also unlock new growth avenues. So it's not just about reactively answering questions or the ability to reactively answer questions quickly. It's about shifting AI from this, like, cost center efficiency play, which typically, you know, how most organizations start, to a revenue and loyalty driver. And, you know, obviously in that, because we did touch on AI earlier, and I didn't mention this, like, look, there is, you have to do that responsibly. And it's just ensuring that AI is, like, ethical, transparent, and really, you know, augments human empathy rather than replacing it to, like, really build that trust.But I think we're seeing that unfold before our eyes, and I'm glad to be part of it.

0:33:28.8 Kailey Raymond: Yeah, I think you are spot on there. We see that a lot with, you know, whether it's intent signals or health scores or any of these things that machine learning or, you know, kind of these other technologies can help us draw insights from and perhaps add on upsells or cross-sells or say, like, okay, this person's about to churn because they haven't logged in. They don't have the five to seven, you know, logins per week for their employer base. So really, really smart around interventions, but also growth cycles. I love that.

0:34:02.4 Dar Miranda: Absolutely.

0:34:03.7 Kailey Raymond: Is there a company that you look to that you admire that you think is really engaging with their customers in a smart and trusted way?

0:34:16.6 Dar Miranda: Okay, I admit that I don't like this question because it's so hard to choose. It's like making me potentially pick a favorite child or, you know, I'm like a kid in a candy store trying to figure out what I want. Look, because you're forcing me, I tend to like companies that take something that we thought was a given and just transform how people think about it. So, you know, an interesting space that I'm just seeing unfold here is more instead of a company, I'll say like it's a category, right? And something that I'm just fascinated by is digital mental health platforms, right? So you see a lot of companies emerging in this space. And what's truly admirable and strikes me about how they engage with companies is their ability to de-stigmatize the sensitive topic and just, you know, provide like highly personalized and accessible support at scale, which, by the way, from a society standpoint is a great thing too, right? But they've just mastered creating this safe and private space where people can, you know, get professional help and, you know, tools on their own terms, right? And again, it's not the traditional, like I'm going to sit across on a couch with my tissues in hand and tell you my life story.

0:35:23.3 Dar Miranda: You know, they are meeting people where they're at through like text or video or other methods. So, and, you know, when you think about it, and we talked a lot about trust today, they're fostering trust in like one of the most vulnerable spaces next to money, of course, and just offering, you know, that consistency and that giving people control, like similar to what we're doing with pay, but like with mental health, I just, I truly admire the space.

0:35:48.6 Kailey Raymond: A guy that I used to work with, ex-colleague, has founded a, like an AI therapist company, and it's a really interesting intersection. And I agree that the access is just something that's so, so important. And I'm also like, oh, how do we make sure that that human connection still exists? And like, you know, so I think that all of those kind of questions that we ask ourselves around sensitive areas become very acute in, you know, mental health, finances, like these really big topics. So it's really cool to see access to care expanding with a lot of these, and it's something to watch. What's something that you think every CX leader should start or stop doing?

0:36:34.4 Dar Miranda: Okay. So every CX leader should stop limiting their scope to just this notion of, like, customer service, right? Like, stop thinking of CX as a department or a cost center. Like, they do their stuff over there and then we do our stuff, right? Start embracing CX as a fundamental business philosophy that impacts every single touchpoint, from product development and marketing to sales and operations. CX leaders should be at the table for every strategic discussion, right? Because true customer experience drives innovation, drives revenue, and sustainable growth, right? So don't, you know, stop limiting yourself to just fixing problems, right? And if you adopt that mentality, it really means that instead of missing the big opportunities, you're just reframing the way that you're thinking about the role of CX in finding opportunities. So if you want to do something powerful, just repeat after me every day, every morning when you wake up, I am driving growth for the company by bringing value to customers every day. That, to me, is a mindset everyone should adopt.

0:37:35.5 Kailey Raymond: Give it a mantra, everyone. Take it, you know, listen, look in the mirror. I love it. It's interesting, too, because CX, I feel like, has, you're right, it could be in its own lane, its own silo, if you will, but it really does touch every single part of the company and the insights that you draw allow you to build product, engage with customers in a different way, you know, it obviously impacts revenue, so there's just, I do think it's kind of like this great unifier if you can build those spokes and make sure that you can build those feedback loops within your CX organization, it can be one of the biggest growth centers that you have.

0:38:14.7 Dar Miranda: Yeah, absolutely, and something very tactical that everyone can do just to, like, reinforce this point is draw out the customer journey. Forget titles, departments, groups, teams, who cares? Draw out the customer journey. Kind of almost take, like, an outside-in look, map it out, and then invite your colleagues across all these organizations to tactically write out where they have input or not, where, you know, where the thing that they do every day, like, impacts that flow and that journey, and then it'll very quickly become obvious that it's not a department, it's not a title, it's a mindset.

0:38:50.8 Kailey Raymond: I love it. Builder is a mindset, and CX is a mindset. So we're going to ask one last question for you, Dar, which is, what's your advice for the builders that are creating more empathetic customer experiences?

0:39:04.2 Dar Miranda: Yeah, yeah. So my advice for builders is to live in your customer's shoes, especially in moments of stress or vulnerability. Don't just look at data. Like, I want you to feel the problem. And if you're building a financial product, you need to experience the anxiety of waiting for a paycheck or facing that unexpected bill, right? Empathy isn't just about understanding a pain point. It's about internalizing the emotional impact of that pain. So that deeply informed learning will lead to solutions that are not just functional, but really generally alleviate stress, build trust, and empower users in a profound and human way. And if you manage clients, they're not always going to see that. So you need to bring it to life for them, right? You can't do that if you can't tell the story well and demonstrate to them that you understand what their employees are going through.

0:39:57.8 Kailey Raymond: I love that. Building empathy really does start with sitting in the customer's shoes. From a lot of things we've talked about today, but like real-time pay, real-time engagement, it's really clear that you listen deeply, you build with empathy, and you've been unlocking something really powerful for both consumers and for your employers. So Dar, thank you so much for all of your insights today. It's been great getting to know you.

0:40:22.4 Dar Miranda: Yeah, thank you. I really enjoyed being here and thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you. I really enjoyed being here and thanks for having me.