How to Ensure Big Wins in Product Development, with Sarah Sprague Gerber of MoneyLion

Episode Summary

A successful product is unique, or at least arguably better than its competitors. However, that in itself is not enough to guarantee success.  And a seamless, frictionless, transparent user experience is table stakes today. To win big, you need to humanize the experience and introduce human elements into your product.

In this episode of The Digital Banking Podcast, host Josh DeTar welcomed Sarah Sprague Gerber, the Director of Product at MoneyLion. They talked about building trust through an error-free experience, why product gamification works, and the importance of vulnerability and transparency.

Key Insights

⚡ Gamify your user experience. Gamification is an effective technique for users to interact with your product. Gerber shared her product streak example: “It really fires you up to want to complete it. And I think there are still a lot of different opportunities that I’m trying, and the industry is also trying to bring that element into finance,” she said. “What do we want someone to do when they come in two minutes a day and look through their finances? We saw a pretty big jump way back when we introduced the concept of a streak. Nothing tied to it — we just give you a little celebration when you scroll and complete a few things on that day. And we saw people would get so motivated and competitive to really keep their streak going.”

⚡ The key to building trust is delivering a bug-free experience. A seamless and error-free experience is essential for customer satisfaction and trust. Said Gerber, “Don’t just say, ‘Oops, something went wrong. It was us, not you.’ No, we want to say, ‘Hey, this is an opportunity to educate. Here’s how you can keep building your credit history. We’ll let you know when we get a credit score back for you. And we’ll kind of keep trying.’ Because that can be such a long process, and someone might not know what’s happening at all. And so I’ve been excited about small things like that. There’s so much opportunity in those small pieces.”

⚡ MVP vs. MLP (Minimum Viable Product  vs. Minimum Lovable Product).Keeping both MVP and MLP in mind is a good starting point while building a product. MLP is one level above MVP. According to Gerber, your product needs to not only be viable but also lovable. “Maybe that MVP part is something that you only released internally,” she said. “There are different pieces, and then you identify, ‘Okay, we’re actually going to add this to make it more lovable before we go broader.’ And that’s kind of part of those release stages there. So it really just depends on what you’re trying to do.”