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$12 million for Relay Network's 'secure messaging'

Matt Gillin grows 'secure customer messaging'

America "is in a customer service crisis," says Matt Gillin. To speed users past voice-mail hell, email anxiety, portal password amnesia and corporate confusion, Gillin's Relay Network, of Radnor, offers "secure customer messaging" for users of Citizens Bank, AAA, Direct Energy, and Independence Blue Cross, among others.

20 years after the Internet and email became ubiquitous, "80 to 90 percent of communication is still by phone," says Gillin, who founded Relay after he and his partners sold their Conshohocken payment card company, Ecount, to Citigroup for $220 million in 2008. (Citi still has a software group in the space.)

Top Relay officers like "chief experience officer" Paul Raden, president Steve Gillin (the Gillins are brothers), marketing chief Brie Tascione, revenue boss Jay Lavin are all Ecount/Citi alumni.

Matt Gillin stayed on for a couple of years after the sale to Citi's tech group, then headed by Paul Gallant. "Then we rented some space with whiteboards and started thinking about mobile."

Soon after, "AT&T sent me this text: 'You haven't paid your bill.' And I realized Citi used to pay my mobile bill but now I hadn't worked there for two months. And it's a good thing they texted me, or I would have lost service... And I thought: What if every company had this secure channel, built for services?"

Here's the sell: "Businesses are waking up to the fact they are missing a huge opportunity to improve their customer relationships," Gillin said. "Customer expectations have changed a lot in five years. Because of Facebook chat, LinkedIn and other social media, they have much higher expectations of how companies will service them."

That's a challenge, since companies have to keep customer data secure, no? "That's a huge opportunity," counters Gillin. "The old model of send an email and direct people to a portal -- where do customers go to resolve an issue, how easy is it, and how does a business educate its customers on product enhancement? And to easily take action?

"Relay is a fundamentally different approach. We call it 'connected service.' Rather than dealing with service incidents as they happen, we establish a personal 1:1 connetion with every customer on their own communication network. We're the only one in the market doing it."

When a customer signs up for a client's service, "we send notices via text to get them started. We can do email, we will be social. The key is that in the message we have a parallel system, a secure system, going into that private, Twitter-like feed. It has the customer's brand on it, with all the customer communications together.

"Say you (sign up for) Cox Cable. Anyone who ever signed up for cable knows the challenges, the scheduling... But with Cox, with Relay, next day you get a text: 'Joe, your box just shipped.' 'Joe, click here and we'll show it was sent to your door today. Do you want to sign for it here?'  'Here's a video on how to install it.' Or if you'd rather, 'Would you like to talk to a rep?'...That's really powerful.

"At Citizens, at Independence, you don't have to go to (a passworded Internet) portal. You don't have to download an app. You text message to your own secure messaging tool.  Information is delivered to you on a secured channel. They always know it's you so you don't have to identify."

Doesn't this lend itself to invasive marketing? "The information is always personal and relevant. Like, 'We saw you just had surgery on your knee. Here's the best aftercare practices.' Some tips. A video on the procedure you just had. A link to chat with your personal health coach. Three places in your neighborhood where you can do rehab.

"You see this need, in all industries. Our focus is in financial services, healthcare, and home services.

"We have 40-plus corporate clients, including 12 of the Blues, 4 big banks... and some major home service companies. Cox (cable TV). Direct Energy.

"Citizens says 85 percent of customers are using this product for their student loan. Milennials are messaging-oriented. Relay is ahead of that secured-customer-messaging curve.

"The key step is going from the text message to our secure space. You can deliver it via any public notification method. They can do push message, and private, secure two-way. Our platform manages all that. It knows to route you to your health coach. If you want to talk to Independence, you get routed there."

I asked, if all this generates enough recurring revenue, whether the plan was for Verizon or AT&T or some other giant telecom to buy Relay and its corporate customers. Gillin laughed. "Absolutely," he told me.

I told him it sounded like Philadelphia had worked out for Gillin and his group as a business, finance, tech-hiring and corporate-customer-prospecting location.

"Absolutely," he said again. "What NewSpring has done, what Josh (Kopelman) has been able to do, they all invest in Philadelphia companies."

They also invest far from home, I reminded him. But they do back Philadelphia firms, Gillin insisted -- "when they get a good idea in front of them."