Meet Sergey Fedorov, head of Onboarding at ANNA

Describe your role and your team

The role includes overseeing background and compliance checks, the look and feel of the app, UX, and making sure copywriting and interaction are seamlessly integrated so the customer’s experience is as smooth and straightforward as possible.

I work with a team of 10 people and together we are continuously monitoring customer experience, doing customer research, getting feedback and looking at how we can improve onboarding. It’s also part of my job to source new partners and liaise with the third parties to augment ANNA’s onboarding process.

What’s the next exciting thing you’re working on / would like to develop?

We’re working on new AI models for customer onboarding. As a team our goal is to automate more aspects of KYB (Know Your Business) and KYC (Know Your Customer) so it's scalable. You can’t manually check thousands – or hundreds of thousands people – that would require us to have thousands, or hundreds of thousands of agents! Because most cases are very simple, we’re aiming to automate the process and avoid using precious human time which is better off dealing with more complex or difficult cases. If you take the boring, mechanical tasks off peoples’ plates it frees them up to be true decision-makers in situations where they really need to engage their brains and instincts.

Of course the AI is safe, secure and we’re always checking that the ‘machine’ works. The different elements of the system are all connected and we can monitor circles of improvement.

This is a system that we are creating ourselves. It’s more sophisticated and advanced than any available off-the-shelf solution, so it’s really exciting. It’s a long-term project involving working with the Compliance and CX (customer experience) teams as well as scaling up and investing in more people to develop it.

In 2022 we’re going to help customers more by improving and simplifying how our CX agents work. In the ANNA chat function, when they’re helping customers, agents have to quickly find and recommend suggestions from a huge suite of tools. They can’t possibly know every action or shortcut so we’re going to design an intuitive system that offers exactly the right information at the right moment. This will save agents lots of time and ultimately benefit customers.

What’s a typical day like for you at ANNA?

Loads of talking! For more than half of every day I’m talking to everyone; my teammates, agents, other developers, product owners and stakeholders. And English isn’t my first language so it can be a challenge. The rest of the time I’m tracking and measuring how certain functions and processes are performing, coming up with new ideas and researching what’s going on. I’m constantly looking for inspiration – which can come from anywhere.

What do you like about working at ANNA?

I like the democracy of ANNA and that we’ve adopted the Holacracy way of running our business. In the past I’ve worked in a massive corporate company and you feel like a tiny cog in a huge machine. Even if you want to do something it’s hard to affect change as there are so many layers above you and nobody listens. At ANNA it’s truly different. You have a voice and you will be heard, you can suggest anything. The company trusts you and gives you a chance to try new things, if they don’t work, you’re supported to improve.

What’s your favourite thing to do when you’re not at work?

I play squash, go running and visit the gym two or three times a week. But having said that, I think I’m quite lazy! Going for an hour’s walk is balanced by four hours lying on the sofa watching TV! I love doing things that save time – hence my interest in automation because it enables you to have more time for pleasure and to just relax.

I love sneakers. And I’m also really into music and love going to gigs. If I had more time I’d probably learn an instrument.

What would be your ideal alternative career?

I was a DJ and also in a band when I was a student, so maybe I’d do that? I reached a point when I had to choose between music – which was a hobby – and design as a job and needed to figure out which to invest in. I’ve been a designer for a long time but something like music or art appeals to me as they are ways of expressing yourself.