Senior director of revenue operations
Krystal Little studied advertising and marketing in college, but the way her career quickly veered into software automation has been a boon for Stax (formerly Fattmerchant), a fast-growing payment processor.
Though Little never made it to Madison Avenue, her underlying marketing discipline plus a natural aptitude for technology enabled Stax to digitize and accelerate operations during the pandemic, which was a period of record growth for the seven-year-old startup.
“My instinct is to constantly look for a way to automate processes while improving the customer’s experience and business outcome,” said Little, who has been Stax’s senior director of revenue operations since 2018.
Little’s skills really came to the fore when Stax — a pioneer in selling merchant processing services via a flat-rate subscription model as opposed to the standard of pricing by transaction volume — experienced a surge of merchants seeking new ways to accept payments in early 2020.
Many merchants flocked to Stax’s cost structure, which provides predictability in an uncertain environment; while others were curious about switching to its new cloud-based contactless payments acceptance technology. It was up to Little to quickly devise ways to capture every lead and sign up merchants at scale during the crunch.
Little created a machine-learning process to greet Stax prospects with an on-screen chat box that guides them through the sales and marketing process more effectively than humans can, according to Little.
“An intelligent chat box lets them choose their own adventure, so to speak — they can follow prompts to get quick answers or opt for more detailed descriptions of services and upgrades through an intuitive design--or talk to a person,” Little said.
Krystal takes a three-pronged approach to leadership with her accountability, vulnerability and gratitude and ingrains those qualities in people around her.
The system automatically scores prospective customers based on information they provide to customize service offerings and begin the onboarding process, cutting out time-consuming steps and stages.
Overall, Little consolidated four different customer-contact processes into one, and these new processes helped Stax notch a 61% increase in monthly active users over the last year, reaching a total of 7,000 merchant customers.
None of the changes resulted in lost jobs, Little adds. Stax was already highly digital, and automating the sales process was the last mile. Employees who were answering phones now work on more specialized tasks.
Little’s own transformation from marketing ingenue to software automation guru began unexpectedly when she took a part-time job in college auditing child-support payments at the local courthouse.
Drawn to the potential she saw within existing software, Little overhauled the court’s clunky system so workers could quickly locate child-support payment status and take appropriate actions.
The courthouse’s software vendor was so wowed, they hired Little away for a full-time job after college. She became a road warrior, marketing software to government agencies in a large region while expanding her technology knowledge.
Little next moved to a retail media firm where she refined her software automation skills for several years, driving major consumer brand sales within e-commerce sites.
After being involved in a terrible car accident in 2011 in which her husband lost an arm, Little pivoted to developing a home business with him, where she developed software to automate real estate sales leads.
“When something like this happens, you can cry or move forward, and we recognized this was our only way forward,” Little said, adding that her husband has since become a successful full-time real estate investor and the pair also realized a profit from selling the software system she invented.
A few years ago, Little began looking for a new job in the Orlando area and she was drawn to Stax and its charismatic CEO, Suneera Madhani.
“I found Suneera on social media, fell in love with her, and when I saw they were looking for a director of sales I felt the job description was written for me,” Little said, noting that Stax felt the same way and quickly hired her.
Little began digitizing Stax’s systems before the pandemic, but the crisis created new urgency and clarified certain priorities.
“We learned that customers are distinctly different — some want a DIY approach to choosing merchant services, and the chatbot works best there. Others would rather talk to a human and [we] need to accommodate all these types equally through an omnichannel approach,” she said.
One of the lessons the pandemic reinforced for Little is that nothing should ever be static.
“You’ve got to constantly be looking down the road for what’s coming and prepare for that instead of just doing a great job at what you’re doing today,” Little said.
Leadership styles also are evolving, Little believes.
“The spirit of empowering each other is on the rise, whether it’s women influencing other women or colleagues helping each other tap new skills," Little said. "I also like seeing the rise of new corporate titles. New roles like chief brand officer [and] chief learning officer — that don’t come with the baggage of decades-old gender and racial bias — have provided more women a seat at the table."
Nominating executive:
Suneera Madhani, founder and CEO
What she says:
“Krystal takes a three-pronged approach to leadership with her accountability, vulnerability and gratitude and ingrains those qualities in people around her.”
