Chime invests in brand insights

With over 8 million customers, Chime is the largest and fastest-growing company in the online banking space. That velocity is fueled by its “research-first” culture and commitment to using Momentive solutions. With Momentive, Chime builds internal belonging and diversity, securely manages customer data, and conducts game-changing market research—which is how it landed a blockbuster partnership with the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks in less than a business day.

“The pace at which we do research is really aggressive,” said Chuck Liu, head of user research at Chime. “We either tend to do things really fast, or we want them yesterday.”

Liu and his team rely on Momentive market research solutions to execute rapid large-scale studies that power decisions across the business. This not only allows Chime to keep up with its members, market, and industry, it also paves the way for new and exciting brand opportunities.

Head of User Research
Chime

Partnerships are a critical part of building Chime’s brand, and the company’s researchers need to understand how co-marketing and co-branding opportunities with other companies will resonate with their audience. “We ask questions like, are their consumers the same types of people? Can we size the opportunity with other brands before we commit?” said Liu.

Answering these questions and making timely decisions about which companies will make the best partners requires hard data. The true test of timing came in the form of a sponsorship opportunity with the Mavericks. While Liu and his team had done some preliminary research, they were called on to run a fast and highly-targeted study that would drive the company’s partnership decision.

“We needed to know, would the NBA be a match for the audience we currently serve? Would our customers have loyalties with other teams or other sports? Could a partnership create tension?” explained Liu.

Head of User Research
Chime

With just six hours to provide Chime execs with the data, Liu immediately got in touch with the customer success team at Momentive. “I asked ‘how possible is it to do something like this, in this amount of time?’” said Liu. “I knew that in terms of standard industry turnaround times, the ask was kind of impossible.” The Momentive team sprang into action, providing support with both data collection and analytics, as Liu ran three market research studies.

Liu’s goal was to understand the potential impact of the Mavericks partnership in specific regions as well as nationally. “We needed to understand the sentiment of how sports related to our customers’ opinion of finances,” said Liu. “It was a totally weird topic like, ‘Hey, so what would you think if your bank and your finances were suddenly associated with this national team?’”

Liu was pleasantly surprised that the many challenges he faced—an end-of-day deadline, hyper-specific data needs—weren’t a problem with Momentive. “The fielding part was super impressive, because the audience types and geo-targeting were more complicated than what’s normal,” said Liu. “And the results were that missing piece that we needed to make sure we're making an informed decision.”

Liu was tasked with the Mavericks research project at noon. His Momentive results came in at precisely 5:04pm and, after quickly completing his analysis and creating a presentation, he delivered them by 6pm. At 8pm that evening, the Chime executive team closed the multimillion dollar deal.

According to Liu, this was the perfect example of how data drives all Chime decisions, and how that contributes to their success. “Chime is a research-first culture,” he explained. “We really start with trying to understand the underlying problems and sentiments, how people are feeling, and then we try to figure out ways to help them.”

This commitment to research was dramatically showcased in the Mavericks partnership experience, but it’s also infused into the company as a whole. “You look at all the presentations we do internally, you look at the strategies that we set for different teams, it all comes from Momentive,” said Liu. “Without that alignment, we wouldn’t be where we are today as a business that’s still growing. And we have to thank the Momentive team for helping us do that.”

Beyond brand opportunities, Momentive helps Chime protect sensitive data and ensure an equitable employee experience.

SOLUTIONS

Learn how our solutions can help you create better products, support your workforce, delight customers, and more.