There's a first to everything. Being at Cisco for three and a half years now, I was asked to co-host my first#CiscoChat. Should be in line with first day on the job, first customer presentation, first Tweet, right? Having just came back from the CEB Technology in Financial Services Summit, witnessed some great speakers and soaked a lot of great thoughts and ideas on digital transformation and customer experience for financial services, I was ready to do this!

I was in front of my computer, ready, at 1pm EST. Two minutes into it, I realized I needed extremely faster fingers. Five minutes into it, the 140 character limit was continuously nipping at my patience!

The chat kicked off with a burning question we've all been thinking about, do branches still matter to consumers?

I actually managed to get one response in since I was so busy responding back and forth to other Twitter fan's comments. Was I suppose to talk to them? I couldn't resist!

We moved on to digital transformation and what's driving the emphasis on customer experience?

And I can't agree with these fans more, 'simple as that'.

The chat really lit up in the room, wait, what room, when the question was on security and is digital safe for consumers.

With the blink of an eye, the hour past and I was on to my next meeting. I took a deep breath yet still smiling as my first#CiscoChat was so incredibly fun!

I sincerely thank my colleague Leni Selvaggio for prepping me, @CiscoCollab and Alyson Clarke from Forrester for joining us during the quick moving hour. Both had outstanding insights. It was unbelievable the amount of energy I felt during the hour. Digitization has really affected banks and this chat really proved there's never been a better time to do something amazing. Change is needed and impacting the very heart of banking.

If you missed our live chat, please view ourGive Banking Customers Face TimeStorify recap here. It's a great read! If you joined the conversation, please let me know your thoughts on how we did as we'll be hosting another live#CiscoChat towards the end of June on analytics for financial services. Please visit our Financial Services page and follow us on Twitter @CiscoFSI for updates.

#NeverBetter