Since 2015, Jason Fishman, VP of Finance and Operations, and I have been colleagues on the CardFlight team. Jason and I have worked closely together to scale and strengthen our Partnership relationships.
Based upon his accomplishments, Jason has been named to the 2024 ETA Forty under 40 honorees this spring. I recently spoke with Jason about how operational excellence helps our channel grow. This is an excerpt of that conversation.
What motivated you to become involved in the payments industry?
I joined CardFlight in 2015, shortly after the launch of SwipeSimple. At the time, I wanted an opportunity to join a fast-growing startup in the software and payments space, and CardFlight fit the bill. It really worked out because I’ve had the opportunity to not only shape the finance function, but also to have a direct impact on small businesses in enabling them to more easily accept payments.
From your point of view, how do clear and predictable contracts, pricing, and billing, combined with CardFlight's operational approach, enhance the experience for our partners?
Great question! This is really important work that happens behind the scenes at most companies. It is crucial to building and maintaining trust with customers. My team’s goal is to ensure quality, accuracy and timeliness for all of these core business functions. I think our commitment to a high bar on those fronts ensures our partners clearly understand the components of their contract and the price they’re being charged, allowing them to focus on running their businesses and supporting the small businesses that are using SwipeSimple.
We focus a lot on simplicity at CardFlight, in the product and also in removing friction for our partners. How do you lead the finance and customer operations teams to ensure we are a partner that is “simple” to work with?
First and foremost, when we’re designing an external-facing process or communication framework, we ask ourselves, “What is the most important thing our customers need from this process or need to understand from this communication?” If that key takeaway isn’t abundantly clear, then we make some adjustments. Whether it’s responding to billing questions or providing product-related customer support, we’re focused on well-structured and timely communication to ensure the customer (our partner or a merchant) is getting what they need as directly and quickly as possible.
We talk a lot about NPS (Net Promoter Score) and customer satisfaction ratings for SwipeSimple. What does a solid NPS score mean to you from a financial and operational perspective?
It means the CardFlight team should be proud of the value our product is bringing to our resellers and merchants! NPS is a simple yet effective way to assess the relationship a company has with its customers. While we continue to have strong NPS results driven by our customer-first focus, it also provides value data on how we can continually improve our customer and product experience to further improve our NPS. My teams take that feedback seriously and use it as one of many data points that inform our set of priorities as a company.
CardFlight has grown 1,500% since you started here. What are you most proud of making possible or delivering within your teams that has contributed to that growth?
I am most proud of finding ways to enable others to own and use their individual strengths to improve on and continue to scale key business functions. As I look around at how key financial and operational processes work today, I see many instances of workstreams - things like customer billing or how we provide customer support to resellers and merchants - that I was part of initially shaping at CardFlight. These things have significantly improved and scaled due the hard work of the team members that own those functions today. I’m proud of having been able to coach and enable many key contributors at CardFlight to be the ones responsible for these improvements.
Let’s end on a personal note. How do you as a leader of two large teams balance out your life? What is catching your attention outside of work these days?
I suppose it’s fair to say that my two boys - a 2 year old and a 6 month old - keep me busy outside of work. Often this consists of identifying every large truck and bus in the general vicinity of our house - and sneaking a nap when they are sleeping so we can keep up with the little guys. It can be challenging balancing work and family life. I’m fortunate to be able to do that at CardFlight, and I aim to bring that same opportunity for work/life balance to the people on my teams. We focus on clear and transparent communication about expectations and goals to ensure alignment within our team and cross-functionally. If we do that well, we find it provides the space for balancing out life and work.
