In a list of most helpful inventions and discoveries, you probably wouldn’t think to put domesticated cows at the top. But it turns out cows have saved millions and millions of human lives over the last 200+ years, and we think they deserve a little more recognition. The smallpox epidemic had raged on for thousands of years, killing hundreds of millions of people, until a milkmaid in 1796 realized that her cowpox was protecting her from contracting smallpox. Edward Jenner, a surgeon, and zoologist, took notice and got to work. Shortly after, the smallpox vaccine was created. Then, the hard work began to get people to actually take it. Convincing people to do something that’s good for them can be difficult. And no one knows that more than Varun Krishna, SVP and Head of Consumer Finance at Mint. Let’s find out how he manages to get people to change their habits, and enjoy their experience along the way.
In a list of most helpful inventions and discoveries, you probably wouldn’t think to put domesticated cows at the top. But it turns out cows have saved millions and millions of human lives over the last 200+ years, and we think they deserve a little more recognition.
The smallpox epidemic had raged on for thousands of years, killing hundreds of millions of people, until a milkmaid in 1796 realized that her cowpox was protecting her from contracting smallpox. Edward Jenner, a surgeon and zoologist, took notice and got to work. Shortly after, the smallpox vaccine was created. Then, the hard work began to get people to actually take it. Convincing people to do something that’s good for them can be difficult. And no one knows that more than Varun Krishna, SVP and Head of Consumer Finance at Mint. Let’s find out how he manages to get people to change their habits and enjoy their experiences along the way.
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"The core of any good product is three fundamental things: it's useful, usable, and desirable." -Varun Krishna, SVP and Head of Consumer Finance at Mint
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Time Stamps
* (0:00) How cows saved the world
* (6:00) What is Mint?
* (8:19) Identifying your financial pain points
* (10:19) Making your product useful, usable, and desirable
* (16:52) FinTech in a post-COVID world
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Sponsor
This podcast is presented by Oracle CX.
Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at Oracle.com/cx/perspectives
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Links
Connect with Varun on LinkedIn
Narrator: Sarah Nelmes was a confident woman. From her physical strength to callous hands she earned from working as a milkmaid, there was little she couldn’t do. Including—but not limited to—ending a 3,000 year old global pandemic.
As a milkmaid, Sarah obviously interacted with cows daily and unfortunately, back in the 1700s, that led to contracting cowpox. Primarily suffering from a sore throat and fever, it wasn’t a particularly serious disease, but it did have one symptom which proved more impactful than any other...after looking at her fellow milkmaids and farmhands, she figured out she couldn’t get smallpox.
In a time where smallpox was decimating the global population—with a 30% mortality rate—cowpox gave her the self assurance to boast that she’d never contract it. She’d never have spot scars on her face, and she could live life with less caution than people of higher social standings. Which must have been a nice feeling.
One of the people she bragged to was Edward Jenner, a local physician in Berkeley, England with a serendipitous overlap in specialties: surgery and zoology. Making him the perfect person to bring her unique story of cows and death avoidance.
Unsatisfied with the current state of smallpox protection, which consisted of exposure to smallpox through a variety of methods, including blowing healed scabs of poxes into people’s noses. Edward figured there had to be a better, and frankly, a less disgusting way to do it.
He had a hypothesis that if he gave people the less catastrophic cowpox, he could potentially save them from contracting the much more dangerous smallpox. However, the way he went about it was, by modern standards, ethically ambiguous at best. His first test subject was the 8-year old son of his gardener. He slashed 4 cuts into little James’ arm and put one of Sarah’s cowpox into the open cuts.
James was sick for a few days, and then recovered quickly. A couple months later, Edward repeated the process, slicing the boy’s arm and putting in a pox, this time though, with a smallpox. To everyone’s relief—especially James and the gardener—he was unaffected and seemingly immune. On that day in 1796, vaccinations were born. In fact, this experience with cow pox gave us the word vaccination. The root of the word vaccination comes from the latin word for cow, vacca.
As word spread of the first academic implementation of the vaccination process, the medical community and general public were skeptical. Many were hesitant to put an animal product into their bloodstream for religious reasons, and as vaccines began to be mandated, many chaffed at the perceived government imposition. And I have to imagine that some were just grossed out. To be fair, the customer experience of scraping a cow disease into an open wound on your arm isn’t the most appealing.
Of course, we can hear echoes of this in the pandemic that we’re currently struggling with. But it isn’t just in regards to diseases that we need people to make better choices. Across time, geography, and industries, CX leaders have found an unfortunate rule: It’s easy to get people to do things that are bad for them, and difficult to get them to do things that are good for them.
So roll up your sleeve on your non-dominant arm and dig into a veggie platter, because today we’re exploring how to create engaging customer experiences that also benefit customers.
Intro: Welcome to Often Imitated, a podcast about remarkable experiences from the past, and how they inspire people to create great customer experiences today.
This episode is all about how to create a user experience that isn’t just easy to use, but is actually good for you. We explore it through the lens of Edward Jenner developing the smallpox vaccine, and how you can continue that legacy today. In this episode we’ll hear from Varun Krishna, Senior Vice President and Head of Consumer Finance at Mint. about how they’re getting customers to re-evaluate their spending trends and push back against predatory banking systems.
Often Imitated is brought to you by the generous support of our friends at Oracle. Make every interaction matter with Oracle Advertising and CX. Connect all your data and empower your entire business to deliver exceptional customer experiences from acquisition…to retention…and everything in between. Learn more at oracle.com/cx.
Narrator: Edward Jenner quickly became a household name. As news of the smallpox vaccine spread around the world, sometimes his name got lost in translation. However, one person who did revere him was Napoleon. He ensured his entire army was vaccinated and respected Edward so much that when the physician requested some English prisoners be released, Napoleon obliged. Taking on a worldwide pandemic and the notorious Napoleon Bonaparte? It was all in a day's work for Dr. Jenner.
Edward saved millions upon millions of lives. Unfortunately, as news spread slowly, and arm-to-arm open wound vaccinations spread even slower, over 300 million people still died of smallpox during the 19th century. But as delivery mechanisms for vaccines improved from a slash of the skin to a shot in the arm, the experience also improved markedly. Vaccinations became more widespread, and smallpox was effectively eradicated in 1980.
As we have seen, convincing people to receive even life-saving treatment can be difficult. What about customer experience executives who are trying to help their customers in much more small and subtle ways? To find a good example, we talked to Varun Krishna, the Senior Vice President and Head of Consumer Finance at Mint. He might not be saving lives, but at Mint and Intuit, he’s helping improve people’s financial health.
Varun: into its DNA is in financial products for both consumers, as well as small businesses. Um, most people know into it because of two big products , um, TurboTax , um, as well as QuickBooks and QuickBooks is a very popular small. Um, accounting, bookkeeping and kind of end to end business management solution.
And TurboTax is something that , um, you know, many households today use to file their taxes every year. And so those are the two big products that Intuit is known for. You know, our mission is really focused around powering prosperity. We've started more recently to focus on personal finance as well. And we have another offering called mint, which is a very popular, personal finance tool , uh, that I get to work on every day.
And , uh, that's really focused on a new vision and strategy where the company is looking to learn from everything that we've seen in our accounting team. Sort of DNA to start thinking about how can we create more prosperity for people? And that's really, our mission is to power prosperity around the world.
Uh, we're in the business of helping people with money, helping them with financial challenges, helping them run their businesses more efficiently and grow and acquire customers. And , uh, we're excited about that mission. There's a lot of , uh, opportunity and pain out there in the broader space and we're excited to go after it.
if you, I haven't used mint, I encourage you to download it, check it out. It's completely free. And what mint is. It's a product that basically millions of people use track all aspects of their finances. So as you sign up from it, you basically connect your accounts and then it connects to them, those accounts, and it organizes a picture of your entire financial life.
In one app. So you don't have to log into, you know, your bank account, your investments, account, your retirement account , um, you know, your credit card accounts, it aggregates all of that in one place. And then it helps you basically one have a holistic view of your picture and then get actual advice on how to actually improve that picture, how to grow your net worth and things like that.
So the product is super simple. You can download the app on iOS or Android. Um, you sign up, you add your accounts and that's basically it. Um, it kind of runs for you
Narrator: Unfortunately, financial health is a huge issue. As Varun explained to us, the first step to solving a serious problem like this is understanding it. And he and the team at Intuit have gone to greath lengths to understand the depth and complexity of debt and spending issues that affect consumers.
Varun: at a high level, as we looked at all of our data, we realized there's three big problems. The first one really has to do with debt. People are just in the wrong kinds of high cost, high interest debt, mortgage, student loans, personal loans. Um, these are things that are very deep, very multi-year credit cards.
Um, and the cost of defaulting on that debt is exorbitant and it becomes a never-ending cycle. Savings is another big problem. You just don't have enough cash in your bank account, cover day-to-day things or unexpected things. You know, your, your pet gets sick and you face an unexpected hospital bill.
This kind of thing happens a lot. And then the last problem , well, it really has to do with something that people actually can control, which is there own habits when it comes to money. And this is a really interesting problem that we think. Not a lot of people are doing anything about , um, there aren't a lot of products out there that really focused on this.
How do you, how can you spend the less, how can you spend smarter? And part of the problem is that people have huge cognitive biases when it comes to the relationship with them. And it manifests in things like things that you need versus things that you want. You know, we live in a culture where splurging in excess is in front of you every single day.
And all you have to do is open up Instagram feed and you'll sort of see that. And so it, we're kind of wired to want to spend money and it's, it's habitual. It's a really, really hard problem. And this is an area that we think mint very specifically can really help make a difference and a big part of our evolution of the mid customer experience and the product strategy is really trying to focus on this problem of helping people with their habits and in particular, around spending habits.
Narrator: Edward Jenner is the father of immunology because he created the basic vaccine. But as we have seen, it took a long time for that vaccine to catch on. As Varun explained to us, it isn’t just enough for a product to be useful. Other ingredients are necessary to create a customer experience that will catch on and improve lives.
Varun: the fundamental way that I look at product, and this is whether it's financial products that are designed for improvement all the way to engagement products, or even entertainment. I think at the core of any good product is basically three kind of fundamental things. It's useful, it's usable and it's desirable.
And I think that the best products of our time, I feel like they really understand how to deliver all three of these things in a singular sort of connected holistic experience.
So usefulness for me is a function of just does the product. Tangibly do something for you, right? Does it simplify a task? Does it make things faster?
Does it help you , um, uh, discover something that might not have otherwise been on your radar? Does it leverage your data to figure out an opportunity and present you with that opportunity? So does the product actually give you something of use of value? Um,
Narrator: Usefulness is the baseline of your product. It needs to be specific and targeted. Vaccines are a perfect example of this. Specifically focused on one disease at a time, they offer the chance for people to do the simple task of walking to their local drug store or doctor’s office to get what they need, and save their lives.
Financial literacy is a key part of everyone’s life. And unfortunately, it can be a hard skill to develop. Mint is the hallmark of what customers need. And once that need is established, the next step is making sure customers can actually access it, and act on it.
Varun: usability is also equally important, which is a lot of products can sort of deliver a tangible benefit, but they're incredibly unintuitive.
Um, they lack simplicity and there's a degree of almost elegance that's required there. And just making sure that not only does the product deliver the benefit, but it does. In a way that requires you as a customer to have as little time or as little effort as needed so that you can focus on things that you actually care about.
And so I think usefulness and usability kind of go hand in hand. It's easy to build something that's useful. That's not usable. It's easy to bill something that's usable. It's not useful.
you want to pressure test ideas and concepts. And, and what's interesting to me is oftentimes the best features are actually the simplest ones. And a lot of it's very counterintuitive. Cause a lot of people think that. Great experiences are complex. Like they require you to go through a journey and like do an activity at this point and then do an action at this point.
And like, just keep sort of going through your product when in fact, most experiences that are really awesome are just like very fast. They're very simple. They're almost invisible
Narrator: So you’ve established that your product is necessary for customers. Regardless of complexity, you’ve worked to make it as simple and intuitive as possible. You’ve made the CX seamless, and you’re anxious for customers to take part in the action.
Making a product desirable is an ongoing struggle. When it came to vaccinations, Edward Jenner and the government at the time struggled to convince everyone that it was desirable, and that’s a problem that continues to be tackled today.
Fortunately immunizing yourself against debt isn’t quite as unpleasant. And Varun has insights about how to make your product not only desirable, but irresistible.
Varun: the last piece of it. Is where I, I call it desirability, but that's where I think to your point, things like enjoyment and satisfaction and emotional , um, sentiments and feelings that you can give the user really start to matter.
And I think when you think about products that are designed to help people eat their vegetables, as you put it , um, or, you know, do something that may seem , um, you know, not that. Not that enjoyable, right. Difficult , um, um, or requiring sacrifice is that you have to basically find ways to create motivation.
And I think motivation for me really comes from progress. And I think as you, as you use products like mint or products that are designed for improvement, You have to be able to take satisfaction in progress. The app is in the products have to celebrate. When you go on streaks, they have to basically understand what your goals are and help you realize that you're making progress toward those goals.
They have to forgive you if you fall off track and say, it's okay, you know, it happens to all of us. It's going to happen again. You just got to get back up. And I think this is where. Desirability can really be achieved if you, especially, if you create user experience, that is, it's a visual, it is personalized.
It makes you feel like you're, you're, you're working with a product that genuinely cares about you. And from my perspective, you know, the reason I'm proud of into it, and I'm excited about our move into personal finances that we really. Want it to be more of an equalizer. We want it to be someone that stood for the consumer and that's why even products like mid or agnostic.
Right. You can connect any account, any profile it's completely free. And it is purely designed to basically provide a benefit to the consumer. And , um, as we really think about like, just how does mint become a better product? We're focused on those three vectors and continuing to sort of add more features that drive that make it more useful , uh, making those features as simple and easy to process and, and, and easy to execute and understand.
And then lastly, we are completely , um, you know, we started a really big design experience overhaul this past year, and we've done a lot over the years with mint and mint users are very particular. And I would say many of our, you know, um, attempts to really kind of evolve the design. Weren't all that successful because mint users are very used to using the product a certain way.
But with this particular design, we really listened to our customers and we focused on the things that mattered the most. And, and , um, I'm really excited about the feedback that we're getting. The, we're seeing a lot of the metrics moving in the right direction and we're getting a lot of customer love for the current mint app, which is pretty new.
Um, just kind of launched in the early part of this year.
Narrator: Useful, usable, and desirable are great goals, but how to actually achieve them? For Varun, one of the most important keys is focus.
Varun: have really clear principles around what you're solving for, you know, and this is where for us, you know, we had, we used usable, useful and desirable almost as like a, a yardstick on which to measure anything that we wanted to do.
We would ask ourselves, Hey, is this going to make the product more useful or not? And if so, why is this going to be become more desirable or less desirable? Is it going to be more usable or less usable? It forced us to basically whittle down. We'll restart to like the things that matter the most. And I think that's another really important thing is like, it's very easy for these things to become a lot of different things and for people to have their own interpretation of it and things can just balloon in scope and you have to keep calling it back, you know, that's not like you have to almost keep sort of saying, okay, is it ballooning or not?
And how do I sort of keep it narrowly focused?
Narrator: These steps can create a truly great and engaging customer experience. Varun knows because he’s done it. But even as he creates an experience that attracts more and more customers, he’s always careful not to take his focus off the thing that matters most.
Varun: looking forward, you know, especially as we think about a post COVID era, I think there's an opportunity for us to make a big difference in this space.
And I think that's something that I think is it's almost a moral accountability for all companies that are in. The FinTech space or that are working around, you know, banking, personal finance mortgage. Um, because I think collectively we work together , um, we, we can make a pretty big difference in the life of the consumer.
And I don't think that comes at the cost of, of success as a business. And it, I don't think it requires predatory practices. I think that there's a way to basically build and run a very successful financial company and just do good in the world. And so to me, that's a little bit of a call to action for.
Um, the FinTech world and, and I I'm excited to, you know, help into it and the role that we can play in creating a meaningful.
Narrator: As CX leaders make their experiences as useful, usable, and desirable as possible, it’s important to stay laser focused on what’s best for customers. We need to ensure that we’re acting in the greater good to help them navigate some of life’s most critical challenges.
A usable and desirable customer experience that isn’t useful won’t improve the world. And a useful cx that isn’t usable and desirable won’t have any impact. By combining these three elements, CX leaders can have a positive impact in their industries and on the world.
This is your host, Ben Wilson, Head of Content of Caspian Studios. Thank you for listening to another episode of Often Imitated. If you like what you’re hearing, tell a friend or leave us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. This podcast was narrated by me, Ben Wilson and produced by Mackey Wilson and Ezra Bakker Trupiano. You can learn more about our team at CaspianStudios.com
This podcast is brought to you by the generous support of our friends at Oracle. Make every interaction matter with Oracle Advertising and CX. Connect all your data and empower your entire business to deliver exceptional customer experiences from acquisition…to retention…and everything in between. Learn more at oracle.com/cx.