Sterling Morrison · Detroit

Servicing platforms and AI agents for financial services.

For six years I led the engineering behind Ally’s customer servicing across five lines of business, on three Salesforce instances with more than 5,000 users. Today I lead engineering and AI-agent deployments across chat, voice, SMS, email, and mobile channels at high volume. Through Sterling Blake Partners, I do that work for banks, lenders, credit unions, and fintechs.

Sterling Morrison

Sterling Morrison

Founder, Sterling Blake Partners

LinkedIn

About

Twelve years building the systems customers actually reach.

At Ally I was Principal Engineering Manager for the omni-channel servicing strategy: chat, IVR, web, mobile, and email across five lines of business, with architectural oversight of three Salesforce instances and more than 5,000 users. When Ally added a line of business, my team built the servicing platform it launched on. Ally Invest after the TradeKing acquisition. Ally Home with Better.com. Ally Lending from the Health Credit Services acquisition. The Ally Credit Card from the Fair Square Financial acquisition.

Since 2022 I have been Senior Staff at Fanatics, overseeing software engineering and AI-agent implementations for customer-facing and internal servicing, operations, and marketing technology across desktop, chat, SMS, email, IVR, social, and mobile, on a high-volume event-driven architecture.

Alongside that, I was a partner at New Collar for six years, where I sold and delivered dozens of web, Salesforce, and AWS projects for mid-size businesses. I also build products on my own. Posture 12 is live on the App Store and Google Play today.

I write code and I run teams. Most engagements need both.

Sound familiar

The situations I usually get called about.

  • An AI agent pilot that has been a pilot for nine months.
  • A chatbot that contains a fifth of contacts and frustrates the rest.
  • Three Salesforce orgs that grew up separately and now have to act like one.
  • A new product launching on a servicing stack built for a different one.
  • An acquired customer base still being serviced on the seller’s systems.
  • An IVR nobody has touched since the vendor left.
  • Agents copying between the CRM, the core, and a spreadsheet to close one case.
  • A compliance finding on customer communications with no owner in engineering.
  • A vendor contract ending with no migration plan.
  • Board pressure to put AI in the contact center, and nobody on staff who has shipped it.

What I do

Three kinds of work.

AI agents in servicing, pilot to production

Design, build, and ship agents into live chat, voice, SMS, and email channels, with the escalation paths, audit trails, and controls a regulated business needs. Salesforce Agentforce, or the stack you already run.

Service Cloud and Financial Services Cloud

Architecture and delivery for multi-instance, multi-line-of-business servicing: contact center, case management, omni-channel routing, and the integrations to core and back-office systems.

Servicing for a new line of business, or an acquired one

Stand up the servicing platform a new product launches on, or fold an acquired customer base into the systems you already run, without breaking what works today.

Shape of an engagement

Anything from an architecture review with a written opinion to leading delivery of the whole program. Scoped, with a defined end, and one named person accountable for landing it. You know the cost before we start.

Track record

Where this was built.

  1. Ally · 2016–2022

    Omni-channel servicing across five lines of business

    Principal Engineering Manager. Architecture, development, and delivery for chat, IVR, web, mobile, and email servicing. Three Salesforce instances, more than 5,000 users.

  2. Ally · New line

    Ally Invest

    Servicing platform for the brokerage after the TradeKing acquisition was folded into the bank.

  3. Ally · Partnership

    Ally Home

    Servicing for the mortgage business launched with Better.com.

  4. Ally · New line

    Ally Lending

    Servicing for point-of-sale lending built from the Health Credit Services acquisition.

  5. Ally · New line

    Ally Credit Card

    Servicing for the card business launched from the Fair Square Financial acquisition.

  6. Fanatics · 2022–present

    Engineering and AI agents for servicing, operations, and marketing technology

    Senior Staff. Customer-facing and internal stacks across desktop, chat, SMS, email, IVR, social, and mobile, on a high-volume event-driven architecture.

  7. New Collar · 2018–2024

    Dozens of delivered projects for mid-size businesses

    Partner. Sold and delivered web, Salesforce, and AWS implementations. React, Node.js, Salesforce, AWS.

  8. Solo · live today

    Posture 12

    Built and shipped alone. iOS and Android, in the stores now.

Employer names describe my experience. They are not affiliations of Sterling Blake Partners.

How it starts

A conversation, then a short piece of work with a written answer.

  1. 1

    Talk

    Thirty minutes on what is on the table. I will tell you honestly whether I am the right person for it.

  2. 2

    Assess

    A short, scoped look at the system: architecture, data, vendors, controls, and the team. You get a written plan you can act on with or without me.

  3. 3

    Deliver

    I lead the build, or take a defined piece of it. Defined scope, defined end, one person accountable.

Start a conversation

Tell me what’s on the table.

Five short questions, about two minutes. I reply within two business days.

What’s on the table 01 / 05

Where do you sit?