This Chimerican Life: How Chime’s User Research team connects Chimers with members with a podcast-inspired live stream

“Our co-founders and early product leaders envisioned Chime being hyper-connected to our members, knowing their pain points and needs — they’ve always had the insight that it would be critical to keep that connection alive in order for the company to succeed,” says Chuck Liu (he/him/his), Chime’s Head of User Research. Chuck joined Chime when there were about 80 employees, and communicating such a connection to members was pretty easy to do at that stage.

When he became a Chimer, Chuck constantly shared member stories and insights with the whole company. “It was easier to distribute knowledge about our members and for that to be internalized when we were a small team in the same room,” he says. “Early on, we started a habit of constantly asking: ‘What does that mean for our members?’” he adds.

Fast forward five years, and Chime is made up of over 1300 Chimers. “It’s natural that each individual’s connection to our members isn’t as strong as in earlier times,” Chuck says. “So my team and I set about finding ways to connect Chimers to our ‘why’ — Chime members. One method we decided to pursue was a unique approach: a live stream podcast-inspired interview with members about the very intimate details of their financial lives.”

Here’s the story behind his team’s effort, aptly called ‘This Chimerican Life.’

This Chimerican Life: The Why

So many functions at Chime — like Product, Design, Research, and Analytics — work with member data and insights daily. “Not every person who joins our team is used to such a focus on the user or member,” Chuck says. “All of the information we gather about our members holds critical context around Chime’s ‘why.’”

Chuck and his team wanted to understand whether other Chimers (who don’t work with member data day in and day out) felt in touch with the lived experiences of our members and understood what their lives are like. “For those of us working in tech, there’s often a separation between our own lived experiences and those of the people we’re serving,” he says.

What the User Research team learned is that Chimers didn’t have as deep of an understanding of our members as initially intended. “So we came back to first principles thinking about revitalizing Chime’s mission and who we are here to serve,” Chuck says. “We figured there was no better opportunity than to embrace one of the past few years’ most popular and consumed media formats — podcasting.”

Podcasts are a rich way to tell stories, and one that does so exceptionally well is This American Life*. The team took inspiration from the well-loved podcast to channel real stories about real people, understand their emotions, and truly see them for who they are.

“We didn’t want the conversations with members to be about Chime’s products, but instead be an opportunity to get to know the person, their life, their history, and how they think and feel about their finances,” Chuck says. “What it comes down to is that these are real people — if we see their faces and hear them talking about things like their finances, how they live in the world, and their family dynamics — and not about Chime — we can get an authentic picture of them and connect with their true needs.”

Creating empathy and providing value to Chimers

To get the word out about This Chimerican Life, Alexis Bakhtiar (she/her/hers), a Senior Research Program Manager on User Research team, makes This Chimerican Life widely available by linking to it from other program content and platforms, advocating that this is at the top of resources Chimers are using. “My goal is to build momentum and encourage folks to join the live stream,” Alexis says.

For Alexis, who facilitates the creation of new channels and opportunities for the research team to share their work effectively, there’s a difference between data and insights and true empathy. “Empathy brings a different level of connection to the work we do,” she says, “And that’s why it’s so important to make these interactions available to all Chimers. My role is to empower our team to share their work by establishing the means and platforms for their work to reach a wider audience of Chimers.”

“Being member-obsessed is so broadly talked about and embodied at Chime that sharing This Chimerican Life has been met with a lot of excitement,” she says. “When we review feedback collected from those who tuned in, 100% of Chimers found it valuable.”

Considering the member first

Chuck and his team took a very Chime approach to putting This Chimerican Life together: by always focusing on the member first. They decided to live stream the conversations with members to make it feel responsible and respectful of members while creating a synchronous feeling to the discussions for Chimers. They also decided that questions would rarely be about Chime’s products. “At the core of these decisions is the ability to help Chimers see our members as human beings and for our members to feel comfortable with us getting to know them as people,” Chuck says.

Initially, the team thought that proposing something like this to members — a deeply personal conversation about difficult topics — might not be well-received. However, members have placed trust in Chuck and his team to listen to them and were open to other Chimers being part of the conversation.

“Our members are offering up the space and time away from work and their families — many Chime members have dependents — to tell us about the things they’re going through,” Chuck says. “All in the hopes that Chime will help them someday. The fact that we have a community of members who trust us enough to make the space to listen to them means so much to us.”

As they reach out to members to participate, Chuck and his team provide them with full transparency about the details of the live stream. “Total trust is so important for Chime’s relationship with our members, so we set out to establish it before we even speak to them,” Chuck says.

The team has found a lot of trust — and with it, transparency from members. “I’ve been surprised by members’ excitement to share their stories,” Chuck says. “It turns out that people feel really empowered by a company wanting to understand them as a person so it can improve down the line.”

Feedback from Chime members who were featured on This Chimerican Life:

“I really enjoyed myself with the research experience. I was able to express myself and my thoughts and experience with being a chime user. I’ve never been a customer of a company who tried to get to know me.”

“I really enjoyed the Zoom call. The researcher was super easy to talk to. Perhaps most importantly I felt like he was interested in what I had to say. That was the best part.”

Tomoe Nakayama (she/her/hers), a Senior Research Program Manager on the User Research team, helps with preparing members for the live stream. “The first thing I try to do is show up as a friend to our members and let them know how important their voice is,” she says. “My goal is to make them comfortable by setting their expectations and being a point of contact for them.”

To prepare members for their This Chimerican Life conversations with Chuck, Tomoe tells them to first and foremost come as themselves. “I always say that we want to meet them as they are, they don’t have to do anything special, like get dressed up — we hope they come as their everyday selves,” she says. She meets with every member fifteen minutes prior to Chuck joining, during which she has a conversation with them as if they met at a coffee shop. “I make sure to reiterate that we’re here to get to know them, not just their finances,” she says. “We want to know where they’re going in life, their goals, their dreams, their fears.”

The unanticipated value of real, human stories

We all know that it’s really easy to celebrate the good things. At Chime, we have many testimonials about how great our members think Chime is and what they’ve achieved with the help of our products. “Those are motivational and make people feel great,” says Chuck.

But there’s something different that’s emerged through This Chimerican Life: “By digging into the real challenges, backgrounds, and living dynamics of our members — by taking a picture of their lives as humans — we’ve somehow added more value than any praise ever would have,” Chuck explains.

To get such real stories from our members, Chuck and the team took a deliberate approach to the questions asked in This Chimerican Life. Rather than focusing on a certain topic, behavior, or workflow, the team zoomed in on how to get to know people and develop a relationship with them. They looked at psychology and sociology to come up with questions to guide a conversation. “You can’t account for human nature — sometimes conversations go somewhere you don’t have questions for, and that’s when simply acknowledging the other person steps in,” Chuck says. “Often, these conversations become less of a relationship between interviewer and interviewee and more about holding space for the member.”

Bringing it back to the member

We all know too well how easy it is to get stuck in our own bubbles and comfort zones. “But seeing others and hearing their challenges can take you back to your own beginnings,” says Alexis. “Hearing the vulnerable stories our members share brings me back to why we’re doing this work. It remotivates and re-centers me every single time.”

For Chuck, it’s been feedback from members that has struck him the most. “They have shared how cathartic it is to share their experiences in this way,” he says. “They know that all they can do is work on themselves to improve their situation, but to talk to someone about it and feel seen — that a company would try to understand them from a personal perspective — that means a lot to them. What we don’t get to tell them in the interviews is how much it means to us and our ability and motivation to do the work we do at Chime.”

This Chimerican Life continues to grace Chimers’ calendars each month, providing great insights into our members’ lives. “Chimers, stay curious and stay tuned,” Tomoe says!

*Chime is not endorsed, sponsored, or otherwise affiliated with This American Life.