Flare Product Activation & CX Research Initiative
Head of Community and Customer Experience, 2021 to 2022
Safety technology startup, acquired by Smart Holdings in 2023
April 2021 - April 2022
Replacing assumptions with the real reasons people stalled.
OverviewPeople were buying Flare and not setting it up. I stabilized support, interviewed customers, mapped the experience for three personas, and scored each potential fix by impact and effort.
Conducted more than 30 interviews and 10 surveys across two research cycles.
Mapped three personas through six stages of the customer experience.
Shipped more than 10 systems from the resulting roadmap.
20%
increase in activation,
year-over-year
198%
lift in activation, one month
3,000+
activations in three months
-
The company could see the numbers but not the causes. Finding them meant mapping the full customer experience from awareness to daily use, for three different kinds of customer who each stalled for different reasons, and then deciding which fixes were worth the effort.
-
I steadied the support queue first, then mapped the whole customer experience to find the causes.
Support triage: Rebuilt the support platform to sort tickets by sentiment and priority, so the worst problems surfaced first.
Research: More than 30 interviews and 10 surveys across two semiannual CX projects, producing a roadmap, restructured metrics, and a full map of the customer experience.
Three personas, six stages: The Gifter, the Gift Recipient, and the standard Customer, across awareness, intent, purchase, delivery, unboxing, and product experience, with the specific barrier named at each one.
Scored solutions: Every fix evaluated on likely impact and time to implement, so we built in the right order.
-
A mapped customer experience and three personas, that showed the company where people stalled and why, replacing the story everyone had assumed with what was actually happening.
A scored roadmap, every fix weighed on impact and time to implement, so the team built in the right order and stopped debating priorities.
More than 10 systems shipped from that map, including a redesigned unboxing experience that lifted activation 198% in a month and a curated gifting flow for the 65% of customers the research identified as the biggest drop-off.
Activation held at a 20% lift year over year, and Flare was acquired in March 2023.
-
We had a reasonable story about why people weren't setting up their bracelets, and it was wrong. Changing behavior sometimes means changing what someone believes first, and every activation in those numbers is a person who set up something meant to keep them safe.
You can explore the project map (and a lot of my thinking process) in the Miro board below.