Jason Guevara
Last updated January 2023
Jason Guevara
Last updated January 2023
In planning for 2022, the team identified opportunities themed around improving the overall referral experience. The receiver experience was generic and didn't speak to valuable specifics around joining as a referral. Also, sending referral invites and maintaining communication was clunky and lacked system guidance. We set out to identify impactful features and capabilities that would create a more personal and enjoyable referral experience.
Responsible for collaborating on research, product strategy and end-to-end design of the personalized referral incentive experience.
Lead designer with input from other growth designers, 1 Content Designer, 1 Product Manager, 1 Researcher, 1 Data Analyst, 5 Engineers, 1 Product Marketing Manager, 1 Compliance Specialist.
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We conducted a detailed experience audit and evaluated learnings from previously run experiments. What we found was there was no shortage of potentially impactful upgrades to the referral experience. In order to prioritize the body of ideas, we conducted an ICE+ evaluation of each and ranked them to help us pare things down. Company-wide direction and intrateam strategic fit were used as tie-breakers. We came away with a suite of updates that we estimated would help us achieve ~47% of our H1 OKR goal.
Overview of our strategy in addressing the referral experience shortcomings in relation to company goals.
The group of opportunities were separated by two distinct themes. One was to create a tailored referral recipient experience in the effort to focus on the added dimension the referral bonus has on the new member mindset. The other was around better addressing the needs for simplicity around sending and managing referral invites so actions we knew led to increased referral success could more easily take place. Each of the individual optimizations within each theme would be handled as separate experiments to ensure effectivness.
Place value in the human connection for new referral members.
Getting someone to join and move their money is a big deal. Make it fun and rewarding.
In determining how we could make the sender experience more delightful and rewarding, the idea of a celebratory moment was considered. We believed getting a friend to join Chime is a big deal. The mutual benefit of the cash bonus as well as how Chime provides financial peace-of-mind to members is impactful. I hypothesized that celebrating this moment could help sustain sender momentum into inviting more friends.
I figured this idea was a sure shot to make it to the final, executed list. However, my pitch was centered on something that financial institutions have historically shied away from — human emotion. There was some skepticism around this premise, and so I sought out to reinforce my thoughts with further user research in video form to help win stakeholders over. Additionally, I made sure to propose multiple content strategies to hedge my bet on how much excitement should play a role in the experience.
Touch points in the successful referral experience.
After the dust settled on each of experiments, we were left with a total of 5 updates shipped. The receiver experience got personalization updates to the enrollment and onboarding flows as well as a succes experience for when they receive the qualifying direct deposit.
The sender experience saw an overhaul of Invite Friends screen to accommodate for a more robust offering of incentives. Additionally, we were able to build an improved suggested friends experience that led to a large bump in referral success. The key result was our Northstar metric, number of members who switch their direct deposit to Chime in their first 30 days of joining, saw a total lift of 17.4%.
Updated designs for the sender experience.
Updated designs for the receiver experience.