CEO & Founder, Crone Consulting, LLC

Crone Consulting, LLC helps credit unions and other financial institutions transform payment and service interactions "in the wild" into a CRM driven, personalized and social experience.

As CEO and Founder, Richard has assisted numerous credit unions and other financial institutions, their trade associations, CUSO's, processors and consortia in every major self-service and digital payment innovation in North America and internationally.

He has direct, deep and recent deployment experience with new disruptive payment and mobile banking options. This includes defining and executing credit union-oriented omni-channel strategies for mobile and social payments, self-service, order ahead, Buy Online Pickup In-Store (BOPIS), mobile self-scan & go, autonomous and invisible checkout (e.g., Amazon Go).

In addition to advising credit unions and banks, merchant clients include leading grocery, grocery buying consortiums, convenience stores, petroleum sellers, big box, multi-lane, supercenter, warehouse and specialty retailers, fine dining, fast casual and quick service restaurants (QSRs) as well as large recurring billers such as utilities, telecommunications providers and the like. He has advised and delivered keynote speeches for every major trade association supporting banks, merchants and recurring billers including CUES, CUNA, NRF, FMI, NRA, NACS, AFP, NACHA, BAI, ABA and the like. He has also been quoted and authored bylined articles in their publications and blogs, as well as being quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, MarketWatch, New York Times, Forbes, USA Today, Business Insider, Digital Transactions Magazine, STORES Magazine, Advertising Age, American Banker, PaymentsSource, The Atlantic Magazine and being interviewed on live television and radio for Fox Business, NPR, KCBS, Marketplace, Bloomberg Radio and many others.

He has performed due diligence on many of the largest M&A deals and tier-one venture-backed investments in mobile and social payments, autonomous and invisible checkout.

Clients using Crone's Best Practices Benchmark Database™ and Service Interaction Analysis™ have achieved 10 – 30% payment processing cost reduction and/or revenue increases, while boosting member satisfaction, loyalty, cross-sell effectiveness and product penetration.

Mr. Crone is the inventor of the Service Interaction Analysis™ for financial institutions, a proven methodology for objectively measuring member preferences by channel, product and functional touchpoint throughout the member experience journey. His catchphrase, "the One Who Enrolls is the One Who Controls," is widely quoted throughout the industry. Mr. Crone holds a Master of Business Administration degree, beta gamma sigma, and a Bachelor of Science degree, cum laude, from the University of Southern California.

Managing Partner, Crone Consulting, LLC

Heidi Liebenguth is Managing Partner and Research Director at Crone Consulting, LLC, helping financial institutions as well as retailers, billers, payment networks, processors, start-ups and investors transform payments from a cost of business to revenue-producing new lines of business.

Heidi assists all types of financial institutions as well as major retailers, restaurants, device makers, and payment networks define and implement their mobile customer service, mobile payment and mobile banking strategies. Her work helps clients empower the mobile device as a cross-channel enabler, both in-store and in the wild, throughout the customer journey. She is responsible for developing Crone Consulting LLC's "Five Mobile Trigger Points™."

A subject matter expert on all facets of customer self-service, self-marketing and loyalty, Heidi assists clients in leveraging mobile and social payments as a basis for CRM and mass customization. She has performed extensive research and provided strategic assistance on payments optimization strategies that reduce costs and promote loyalty for financial institutions, retailers, and CPGs with programs that boost sales and increase "stickiness," and the like.

Heidi has conducted extensive research on emerging/alternative payments; the impact of Apple Pay, Venmo, Amazon Go and others on issuing banks and accepting retailers; various forms of embedded payments, autonomous checkout, order-ahead and scan-and-go technology.

She has served as a speaker and panelist for the NRF, FMI, National Restaurant Association Show, and NACS as well as numerous banking and technology conferences, and as a leader of the NACHA Payments Alliance Mobile Wallet Team, a cross-industry effort by 100+ contributors representing every facet of the payments ecosystem to define interoperability for Mobile Wallets between Financial Institutions and Retailers.

Prior to joining Crone Consulting, Heidi worked as Advertising Manager at ABC Channel 7 in Los Angeles, and led her own firm providing advertising, public relations and communications strategy for business, non-profits and education.