Travis Knepper

Devised the vision, strategy, and roadmap for merging three contact centers into a unified omnichannel platform. This entailed an integration of AI, a shared CRM, and automated customer appeasements, consolidating data from various sources and systems.

As the founder and CEO of RideHop, a SaaS startup, I utilized Lean-Agile methodologies to lead the company from ideation to product launch and iterative growth. We developed and launched multiple mobile apps and web applications, leading cross-functional teams of developers, designers, and QA throughout the product lifecycle. Achieved profitability in 24 months.

The RISC incident management tool, Trapeze Group's newest SaaS product, was successfully developed through the innovation programs I created and led during my tenure as the director of new product initiatives.

The journey began with the ideation boot camp, an employee-wide program designed to foster customer-centricity, design thinking, and lean startup concepts. This boot camp catalyzed generating ideas and identifying market opportunities. The initial insights and hypotheses for the RISC product came through this ideation program.

The idea was then transitioned through internal incubator and accelerator programs. These phases further nurtured the development of the RISC incident management tool. The collaborative efforts of cross-functional teams also ensured user feedback and market research incorporation into the development process.

Through these programs, the product underwent rigorous testing, validation, and refinement, resulting in validated business cases, a qualified sales funnel, and the successful transition from ideation to launch (0 to 1) for the new product.

Directed a collaborative process to design and implement new roles, workspaces, processes, and technologies to improve mortgage fulfillment logistics, resulting in a significant productivity gain that scales with loan volume.

The RideHop platform displayed context-relevant advertisements to transportation users. These ads were targeted by rider type, time of day, geofence, and transit route. Examples include promoting a discount on coffee to morning commuters or promoting the destinations like the Florida Keys to skiers in Colorado.

At RideHop, I spearheaded an IoT mobility initiative from inception to commercial launch, which involved tracking bus fleet positions in GPS-denied areas. This project required IoT sensors, mobile apps, and data visualization tools. As the startup founder and CEO, I managed the day-to-day operations and led cross-functional teams in design, Agile software development, customer support, and project delivery.

I have led a personal safety-related IoT initiative involving IoT-connected safety vests for rail workers. This wearable technology alerted workers of oncoming trains and tracked the wearer's position in GPS-denied areas. The project required the integration of IoT sensors into the safety vests and the developing of a mobile app that fed data in and out of the physical products. This experience demonstrates my expertise in designing wearables and IoT app design and my ability to collaborate effectively with hardware engineers.

I led a project that significantly reduced chargebacks and refunds by creating real-time transaction screening rules and partnering with Stripe for fraud detection analytics. I then aggregated data from logistics partners and payment processors to create automated API integrations with a chargeback dispute service. This culminated in a streamlined chargeback process and an automated customer appeasement protocol, combining mobile app workflows, back-end verification, and refund processing.