Enhancing Trust and Engagement: Reimagining AMEX's Digital Referral Strategy

Challenge

American Express sought to explore an untapped marketing channel to increase customer acquisition by simplifying the credit card referral process. As the UX lead, I was tasked with validating a chatbot-based referral system that would maintain AMEX's professional image and security standards. The key challenge was overcoming hypothesized user reluctance to engage with a chatbot for financial matters and sensitive information sharing.

AMEX Experiment Hypothesis Dashboard

What I did

  • Led workshops to identify and prioritize assumptions, reframing them into 25 testable hypotheses.

  • Conducted 9 rapid experiments with 50 target users over 16 weeks, using a Wizard of Oz methodology.

  • Developed multiple chatbot prototypes, both brand-agnostic and AMEX-branded, to minimize bias and focus on user experience.

  • Led qualitative tests with 38 potential customers and 12 stakeholders to gather insights on preferences and concerns.

  • Analyzed user interactions to refine the chatbot experience, addressing security and professionalism issues.

I leveraged Twilio and Google Voice for prototyping, and used Sketch and InVision for design iterations.

AMEX screens

Outcome

Our rapid testing and iteration revealed:

  • Users preferred professional language over casual tones with emojis for financial services.

  • There was strong resistance to sharing sensitive information via chatbot or text.

  • Incorporating AMEX branding increased user trust and receptiveness.

  • Clearly communicating benefits for both referrer and referee motivated engagement.

  • Users favored a seamless, multi-channel experience over interacting solely with a chatbot.

These insights led to:

  • New Channel: Successful addition of a new customer acquisition channel for AMEX.

  • Increased Engagement: Improvement in the referral journey by incorporating professional communication, brand elements, and clear value propositions.

  • ROI: An increase in sales from 0% to 13% in the first quarter of launch with a limited audience.

  • New Technology: Actionable insights that influenced AMEX's investment decisions regarding chatbot technology and marketing approaches.

  • Stakeholder Alignment: Unified stakeholder alignment on the direction and potential of the new referral system.

Looking forward, these findings pave the way for future initiatives leveraging conversational interfaces while maintaining trust and engagement with customers. The multi-channel approach discovered through this project can be scaled and applied to other areas of AMEX's customer interaction strategy.

AMEX logo

 “It got to a really great place. It’s the right level of traction to move it forward.”

– Carl Barkey, AMEX Vice President Enterprise Digital Acquisition Products