Meeting our members where they're at is critical to delivering a best-in-class member experience, and our Social Experience team is dedicated to delivering on that promise.
We'd like to introduce Jake Ford, Chime's Social Experience Manager. In honor of National Customer Service Week, we're highlighting several members of Chime's OMX team—read on to learn more about his journey to delivering the best social experience, the work his team does, and how they meet members where they are every day.
While Jake calls his path to social and community work an accident, his approach to serving members on Chime's social channels is nothing short of deliberate. "I was going to school for computer engineering and, in an effort to pay for my tuition, I took a job as a tech support representative at a call center," he says.
Eventually, Jake moved from tech support to an escalations team, and then a unique opportunity to work on a new social media team arose. "Personally, I wasn't a big social media person at the time, but I wanted to try it out," Jake says. "As I discovered the complexity of issues on social and how rewarding it is to build relationships with people online, I fell in love with it. I loved the work so much I ended up dropping out of my computer engineering program to pursue an opportunity that took me out of state to lead a new social media team."
After a couple of career moves, Jake found himself considering Chime—and remembering a time when he felt blocked by the financial services industry himself: "I had just moved out of my parents' house and had $40 to my name," he shares. "I went to put gas in my car and didn't realize I was authorizing more money to be spent than I had and got charged a bunch of overdraft fees, on top of getting stuck at the pump. I was drawn to working at Chime because I care a lot about making the financial world more equitable and contributing towards preventing experiences like the one I had when I was younger. Working for Chime seemed like a great opportunity to give back and apply my skills to a company that really has members' backs."
Meet the Chime Social Experience team.
In his role at Chime, Jake leads the Social Experience team, which is responsible for three main areas:
Community Operations: The team interacts with Chime's members where they're active in online communities, like Reddit and Chime's Facebook group, Chime Crew Group Chat. They manage each of Chime's affinity communities, and also look for positive moments across all social channels to engage with members, celebrating them and their wins.
Social Media Care and Reviews: This team's core purpose is to provide support for members on digital platforms. Chime markets to our members on social media—this team works on providing accurate, concise, and practical information for members looking for help on the same channels.
Social Listening and Flagging: This team actively analyzes social media data in real-time, looking for anything that impacts Chime or our members. They take feedback and insights from what they detect to share them with internal stakeholders, driving decisions around improving Chime's products or providing context around what's happening in the world that's important to Chime and our members.
"Marketing builds Chime's brand online and on social through meaningful content, campaigns, and activations, and my team reinforces that brand by supporting and engaging with our members wherever they are," Jake explains. "We're always thinking about how to complement Marketing's work with valuable information, helpful support, and meaningful connection with our members. Whether we're celebrating our members on social or offering support to resolve an issue, we want to engage with them authentically and with empathy."
Why meeting members where they are matters.
As Jake sees it, the Social Experience team's work matters for Chime's members for several reasons:
It supports our existing members: "Chime doesn't have brick-and-mortar locations—we're a digital-first brand—so we must show up digitally to stay true to our brand and meet our members where they're showing up and discovering us," he says.
It keeps up with a rapidly changing landscape: "People are rapidly moving away from traditional contact avenues and their expectations for service are only going to keep rising," Jake explains. "Social media is increasingly considered to be faster than a phone call and offers other benefits, such as providing a record of the interaction and the ability to stop and start contact when members want. We have to consider how our members want to interact with us and meet them there."
It shows the world who we are: "Many folks who aren't yet Chime members but are considering Chime will look us up and visit review platforms or our social media profiles to learn more about us, gather other peoples' opinions, and figure out if our brand resonates with them," Jake says. "If we're not showing up or we're ignoring questions, we'd be going against our commitment to member-obsession and could negatively impact how people view our brand."
Adapting to emerging platforms to stay connected with members.
Over time, the Social Experience team has continued to evolve as quickly as new trends emerge—all in an effort to stay close to our members and meet them where they are. The team works constantly to keep a pulse on an understanding of where our members are. For example, when the number of comments on Chime's TikTok started to increase, they took it as a sign to provide better support on the platform. At the time, Chime had nearly 200,000 followers on the platform, but Jake and the team saw it as a space for expansion to launch social media support.
To support a new platform, the team looks at the various workflows and functionalities associated with it, gathering a complete understanding of the platform. "There are nuances across platforms, whether they're review platforms or social platforms, and there are generally unique limitations in how we can interact with our communities from one platform to another," Jake explains. "We always start by thinking about how our members engage and what our members expect from brands on each platform, building our strategy and training materials from there."
They don't just focus on the hard facts about a platform, though—they always consider how people are showing up, too. "We make sure we're building standard operating procedures in a way that reinforces soft skills to talk to members in the way they expect on the platforms they're using," Jake explains. "This involves working to match a member's tone and the type of content shared. It's all about gathering information and understanding context to better meet our members (or prospective members) where they are."
Building deeper member connections and trust.
For Jake, member support is about so much more than just supporting members. "It's so much more than support—it's about the amazing ways in which our members show up for their communities and how we support that too," he says.
One particular member moment on social stands out to Jake: Earlier this year a member posted on Chime's subreddit saying they wanted to give back to folks in the community by offering them money to buy dinner. "We mobilized our social team and wanted to match our member's goodwill," Jake says. "The member wasn't able to give to everyone on the thread, so we worked to surprise a few additional folks. I love this as an example of how our team is actively listening and works to build connections with our communities in a unique way that ultimately highlights our member's generosity."
Following that member's generosity, the team gave them a special user flair—the title of "Wholesome Human" on their subreddit profile—as a way to recognize them and give back to the community.
This trend of being human on social media is showing up more and more, as increasing numbers of members move to community-oriented platforms. "As more people make this shift, we want to make sure we're an active participant in the conversation and that the information they're getting is accurate and reflective of our brand," Jake says.
Unfortunately, however, it's not warm and fuzzy on social all the time. "Scams are evolving, and our team works hard with our Threat and Protective Intelligence team to stay ahead of them and take down predatory accounts," Jake explains. "We're all about staying one step ahead of trends, whether they're good or bad, to protect our members."
The member obsession runs deep.
As the Social Experience team continues to evolve, they're moving towards a service approach on social. "We want to actually solve member issues directly over social channels—it's a powerful experience to get your issue fixed in the same place you raised the issue in. Nobody wants to be bounced around across different channels—they want to get their issue fixed in one place," Jake explains. "We recognize that where our members show up will continue to change, so we'll keep working to stay close to them, making it as frictionless as possible, wherever that is."
To stay member-obsessed and aware of where our members are, Jake likes to read member verbatims and look through threads and social interactions (DMs and public interactions) daily. "I also try to interact with members directly over social from time-to-time too, because I believe it's important to stay connected beyond just reading posts. Talking to members helps me better empathize with my own team as well as with members—it helps us all better understand what our members need and expect."