← Building One with Tomer Cohen
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- [00:00]
Tomer Cohen
LinkedIn news.
- [00:06]
Rohan Amin
Innovation ultimately is solving problems.
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Tomer Cohen
It came back to my own personal pain point. It just takes a while to build that trust.
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Rohan Amin
The problem that I was trying to solve, it was all I was thinking about.
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Tomer Cohen
You have to be obsessed with the human condition. I'm Tomer Coyne, Chief product officer of LinkedIn and this is building one means.
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Rohan Amin
Your product wasn't designed right for from a self service standpoint, what we'd call it is you created exhaust into another channel into a higher cost channel.
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Tomer Cohen
That's Rohan Amin, the Chief Product Officer of Chase and he's talking about why he focuses on all the unhappy paths his customers might take. We're going to get into that and so much more. So stick around.
- [00:50]
Unknown
Forward thinkers know that when people thrive, organizations thrive. This is the future of work. This is workday, the AI platform that elevates humans.
- [01:03]
Tomer Cohen
Did you know that small and medium businesses make up 98% of the global economy? But most B2B marketers still treat them as a one size fits all? LinkedIn's Meet the SMB report reveals why that's a missed opportunity and how you can reach these fast moving decision makers effectively. Learn more@LinkedIn.com Meet the SMB.
- [01:35]
As we get older, finance weaves its way through so much of our lives. Loans, savings, investments, credit, and so on. Financial products are easily one of the most sensual products in our lives, but they can feel confusing and cumbersome to say the least. Doing your finances feels like a chore, something you prefer avoiding. But there's so much potential in building incredible experiences that not only remove friction from your daily life, but actually help you with financial literacy and empowerment. Done well, financial products can be your superpower. That's why I'm happy to have Rohan Amin on the show. Rohan is the Chief Product Officer at Chase, but he actually started his career in the defense industry working as a cybersecurity expert at Lockheed Martin. He eventually came over to Chase to serve as a Chief Information Officer before taking on the role of Chief Product Officer. Security plays a critical role at Chase, the largest bank in the US Handling a lot of sensitive information is central to Rohan's job. We'll cover that, including why Rohan obsesses over the unhappy paths, the power of incrementalism when rolled out across scale, and how Chase defines value at the intersection of physical and digital products. So let's get into it. I'd love to start with your journey for you. You had your PhD in electrical engineering, then you became a cybersecurity expert in Lockheed Martin, you spent 12 years there, you became the Chief Information Officer at Chase and then you became Chief Product Officer at Chase. And I'm curious if you can share more about your role today and then kind of your journey into building.
- [03:19]
Rohan Amin
Fundamentally, I've been in two different industries, right? I spent more than a decade in defense and intelligence, and then I spent the last decade plus in financial services. And I've had a variety of different roles throughout that journey. So in defense and intelligence, that's where I cut my teeth, that's where I got my engineering chops. And we built things there that really mattered and had to work. And in some cases, lives were on the line for the things that we were building. And so whether it was a launch, a national security mission, that's where I got my sense of purpose. And then a decade ago, more than 10 years ago, I got a call to join JP Morgan, fell in love with the sense of mission and purpose and scale of this place. And I started out on the cybersecurity team and was responsible for the bank's cybersecurity globally. Did that for a bit, several years, then moved over to Chase and ran tech for all the lines of business that face our customers and small businesses. And then a few years ago, I was tapped to be the Chief Product Officer. And that means I'm responsible for product development, our data and analytics design, digital, chase.com, the Chase mobile app, and effectively any of the customer employee facing experiences that we build and ship. That's my team's responsibility. And so it's been quite a journey. I never thought that from cybersecurity land I'd end up in this place. I love it and I'm thankful to be at a place that also gives me an opportunity, gives me a mobility opportunity, allows me to try different things. It's been fantastic.
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Tomer Cohen
Obviously, security plays a big role in those kind of two industries you spend a big part of your career in. But are there any specific principles you brought from Lockheed Martin, like as a product philosophy of how you build that you kind of brought into Chase?
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Rohan Amin
Yeah. So like security controls, resiliency, reliability, those are all things that were steeped into my thinking and how I thinking about building. And the way I think about it is that for us this is job one, right? You have to get it right. Trust is critical. The digital experience and the technology and all those things have to work right. In particular, people want to be able to access their money when they need to access their money. As an example, we have of course, a ton of data and very sensitive information. So all of that is really part of the mindset. So I think of that as job one. And then the other thing we talk about with our product teams when we build, and this also was instilled from my days in the defense community, was that reliability and resiliency is the first feature of the product. There's no point having fancy feature in your product if it just doesn't work when it needs to, when it counts the most. Got to get that right. And when you get the core components right, the right controls, the right security, privacy, all of that stuff, you earn the right to innovate on top of that and build a fantastic customer experience. But it's built on a solid foundation that you can feel great about and what people would expect when you're talking about something like financial services and your money. And that's the mindset that I got when I came out of defense.
- [06:40]
Tomer Cohen
You know, for me, well, I did not my career served in the army, but my career as an engineer started in semiconductors. It wasn't the kind of mission critical defense system or banking system reliability. But on the flip side, you had to make sure the chip was 100% design before you take it to production. Because if there's a bug in the chip and it goes to production, it can actually bankrupt the company. There was a golden model, there was the chip hardware, there's software that was mimicking the chip as a golden model. There was a silver model which was a plan B. There was a plan C. The amount of fallbacks or the amount of checks you have in the system, just make sure your product inherently works the way you intended is something that I think in consumer Internet, nobody even thinks about.
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Rohan Amin
I think you're spot on and I'm chuckling only because I spend a lot of time thinking about unhappy paths. Right. And so sometimes when you're building a product, you're so focused on like what's the happy path the customer is going to take? And all things work. I spend a lot of time thinking about the unhappy path. And unhappy paths can take various forms. Like, you know, I didn't accomplish the task I was trying to digitally and so I dropped out of the flow. And now I've called you in the contact center to go do the thing I was trying to do and I couldn't do it digitally. To me, unhappy path, right means your product wasn't designed right From a self service standpoint. What we'd call it is you created exhaust into another channel into a higher Cost channel as an example. Right. And so, like, that's an unhappy path. And then what are all the things that can go wrong? You know, whether it's a technical thing that can go wrong, whether it's the wrong copy that gets in front of a customer, whether it's the expectation that is not met. Like, how do you work through all these unhappy path things and make sure that you've thought it through?
- [08:31]
Tomer Cohen
I'm sure there's so many things you want to build, but on the flip side, that notion of 100% quality is hard. It's really, really hard to kind of bring this together. Curious. A little bit more about you. So, you know, great product builders, they index on a specific trait or skill. They're well rounded and so on. But there's something that almost becomes their superpower. When you look back a little bit, do you have a sense of what that is for you? Is it that system thinking? Is it that, like, you can see behind a corner when it comes to trust and security?
- [09:04]
Rohan Amin
So what I'd say is, first and foremost, I'm a strong collaborator and trust builder. I have to work across every line of business, and I have to bring together a customer experience that makes sense. And that's not easy to do at the scale that we're operating with, at this number of segments, with all the different offerings that we have. So strong collaboration, for sure. Truth telling. I do think my engineering background allows me to see what is realistic versus what's not and call out things that may or may not be possible. And so, like, in some ways, don't spend time on that path because that's just gonna be a whole lot of wasted calories. But down here, yeah, there's a. You know, there's something that makes sense. And so injecting that into the business conversation, I think is super helpful. And then I do look around corners a lot. There's a lot of people who obsess over what's happening in the next 12, 18 months on a product roadmap, and I obsess over that stuff too. But my lens is also about leaving the bank in a better place than I found it. How do I make sure that we've got the right architecture, the right discipline that we're building for the future? The decisions that we're making today ladder up to a better three, four years down the road, because none of these things happen overnight. It's building block on top of building blocks. And we like to say it's a game of inches. You got to grind it out. And that's sort of my mindset is looking downstream and this choice that we're making right now, what does that mean for future choices? Small incremental changes over time end up in aggregate being huge. From an impact standpoint, just moving the needle 1%, for example, at the scale that we're operating is massive. And so sometimes you don't need to have the next new whiz bang idea. Sometimes you just need to be able to make the small increment that improves an inch and then you do another inch and then before you know it, you've done two feet and you're killing it. And so it's that sort of like hustle, scrappy type mindset.
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Tomer Cohen
Inches to touchdowns.
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Rohan Amin
Exactly.
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Tomer Cohen
So if we play this through, when you kind of play those inches coming together, those feet coming together, and you think about your vision for the Chase product in a few years. Do you see it in banking? Do you see it in finance? Do you see it as your everyday companion? Because I could see Chase becoming embedded in so many parts of my life. I'm curious from your perspective how you think of that product over the long arc.
- [11:35]
Rohan Amin
You know, we have 80 million consumers and 6 million small businesses, right. So let's just start there in terms of who we're servicing every single day. And of course digital banking and adoption and all that are on the rise and really important. But I think first it's sort of like to appreciate the complexity of what we're trying to navigate. You know, we have more than 67 million people who are digitally active on our properties. Many, many, many of them are checking their app, as an example, every single day, multiple times per day. And whether that's for things like I just need to know my balance or, or engaging in other experiences, there's a lot of that that's happening. And it's for moments that really matter, right? You're buying your first home and you need to get a mortgage, you're buying a car or leasing a car, you want to do some investments, checking, savings, credit cards of all varieties, of course we have that. And then of course, if you're running a small business and you need a loan, we're going to be your destination for that too. And so that's the framing of the traditional banking product set that you might think of. The thing that people may not necessarily appreciate is that we have to do that for people who are just getting started all the way to ultra high net worth individuals. And so when you think about the spectrum of product offerings and the spectrum of consumers and small businesses. That's where all the complexity comes in.
- [12:56]
Tomer Cohen
And you're thinking about everybody. Like there aren't like primary audiences you start with. You're thinking about the spectrum of like I'm 16 year old, this is my first account to. I've built my wealth, what do I do with it?
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Rohan Amin
Yeah, our ambition is to be the bank for all, but we want to feel like the bank just for you. And so that whole thing happens because of AI and personalization. But going back to your point about the. Is it going to show up in other parts of your life? I don't know if you know about the infatuation. It's our restaurant review, Apple, you know, the Zagat, that's another one that's also a Chase property and asset and experience. I last week actually used my ultimate reward points and bought myself a new iPad and laptop. Mine were getting kind of old and I did that all through the Chase app.
- [13:48]
Tomer Cohen
So I thought of that as an acquisition strategy, as a way to acquire customers in. You're saying this is more, this is the long arc, like you'll be in travel and restaurants, which you do today. But I thought about it as an acquisition strategy. But how do you define this thing? Like what's the, what's the theme across.
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Rohan Amin
So travel, for example, has always been a value proposition of our credit cards as an example. Right. We've been opening new lounges throughout the country. So travel has always been a core value proposition, but now it's really about how to provide great travel experience to customers and time and again be the place that they come to when they're thinking of that next vacation, they're thinking of planning a big trip with the family. So actually a way for us to think about deepening with those existing customers over time. And so you know, the non banking stuff travel shopping offers, there's just other things that we're doing beyond the borders of traditional banking that I think are exciting.
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Tomer Cohen
Would it stay traditional? Like, would it stay banking? Like I take myself as an example and I do use a lot of those services, but the core is still obviously the banking. Right. This is kind of the trust point you made before. That's the kind of, I would say like the existential relationship I have with my, my bank three, five, ten years from now. How would I talk about Chase? Like how would you like me to talk about Chase?
- [15:09]
Rohan Amin
So look, of course the banking, investing card, all that stuff will continue to be the main thing, but there's lots of opportunities for us to add Additional value to consumers. And that's what we're trying to do. And so I would say in three to five years, don't think of us as a bank, think of us as Chase.
- [15:28]
Tomer Cohen
And talking about all the richness of the experiences that you have today, you want to build, I'm assuming, actually, I'm going to ask. I'm not going to assume you still might have one flagship app or you can start unbundling those based on experiences. That's not an easy decision because the cross sell upsell, which is really critical and it's one of the best practices of banking in general, kind of diminished a little bit. Right. Within the flagship app you can kind of do a lot of experiences across, but at the same time, if you just keep it between an app, it could be very complex to kind of satisfy all those use cases and then you run the risk of actually I want to do something very simple, but I have to kind of try and find my way into that. How do you resolve that complexity? How do you think about masking that complexity from the member?
- [16:13]
Rohan Amin
It's something that we wrestle with often. Right. So the restaurant reviews and all that, the infatuation as an example, that's all a separate app, Lightweight, separate app. You log in, pick your city, get the reviews, all that stuff. You can link your Chase account, get additional insight into other experiences and things that you can take advantage of. But for the most part, everything else is in the core app. And trust me when I say that that is a conversation we continue to have around what's the right way to strike the balance. Because as you know, creating another app and then convincing customers to download said app is a lot of friction versus how do you take advantage of the fact that they're in their core app very often and bring them to the right place. And so discoverability is something that we have to work hard at and is an opportunity for us to continue to improve on. And so we're working very hard on navigation and discoverability and then personalizing and making sure that the right content is showing up for customers at the right time. We can talk about how we think about data and machine learning and AI and how that applies to the customer experience, but it is a balance. And I wouldn't say we've sort of finalize the debate on one app or multiple apps. It is something that we're going to continue to pressure test.
- [17:23]
Tomer Cohen
Let's say I'm a PM on your team and I want to pitch you on taking the travel part out of the Flagship app. This is partly my pain point today. I wanted to travel because the moment I click back, the whole thing resets on me. So let's say I want to pitch you on taking this out. What kind of principles you want me to come with? Because ultimately the pathway from my credit card to the points to travel is very seamless in the flagship app. But going deep on travel is hard a little bit.
- [17:51]
Rohan Amin
So to me, that type of decision we should tie to what objective we're trying to achieve. Right? And so if I'm trying to establish a brand new customer acquisition path as an example, and let's say travel is something that we want to be able to support, even for people who aren't a Chase customer, then I'd say yeah, that might be a factor in terms of how we think about that being a separate app. But we also score pretty well. Like if you look at how we rate on our customer experiences, we rate really well. When we have some of these core experiences together versus separating them. Banking and investing, great example. Some people might separate those as others competitors of ours who keep those separate, we actually put them in the same app and we rate well on that because customers like to see those things together. So it depends on the use case, depends if what objective we're trying to achieve, whether it's a new channel, a new distribution mechanism, a new way to acquire customers. Travel today, for the most part is something for existing customers. Maybe that changes in the future, but those are all the things that go into the debate over one app, multiple apps and that sort of thing.
- [18:59]
Tomer Cohen
We're going to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. When we come back, Rohan is going to explain why Chase is doubling down on branches. When we are in a digital world.
- [19:08]
Rohan Amin
Today, people come for transactional things they have to get done. But increasingly over time, a lot of it has to be about advice and things that people are looking to do. Really important life decisions.
- [19:22]
Tomer Cohen
Forward.
- [19:23]
Unknown
Thinkers know that when people thrive, organizations thrive. That's why you need a platform that paves the way for people to be at their best. Workday is your partner to unleash the full potential of your human and digital workforce. This is the future of work. This is workday, the AI platform that elevates humans.
- [19:46]
Tomer Cohen
Small and medium businesses don't have time to waste and neither do marketers trying to reach them on LinkedIn. More SMB decision makers are actively looking for new solutions to help them grow, whether it's software or financial services. Our Meet the SMB report breaks down how These businesses buy and what really influences their choices. Learn more@LinkedIn.com meet the SMB that's LinkedIn.com meet the SMB.
- [20:23]
Okay, we're back and I'm speaking with Rohan Amin, Chief product officer of Chase. I'm super curious about the physical and digital. Like, one could say, hey, why even have physical, right? You think about it, there's so much I can do digitally and you want to talk to somebody on the phone, I can, you know, I can get you somebody on the phone. Why have physical branches? I think just as Chase has been like, no, no, this is part of our strategy. It's not like a. It's not an evolution. We believe in physical branches. What's the thinking behind that? Like, what's the principle? Is it like, you deeply believe that for some parts you have to have that human, in person connection physically?
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Rohan Amin
Absolutely. And so just a little bit of context about the branch branches. About roughly a million people every single day are in our branches.
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Tomer Cohen
What's the top use cases? Consulting.
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Rohan Amin
It's a lot of advice. So of course, people come for transactional things that they have to get done. But increasingly over time, a lot of it has to be about advice and things that people are looking to do. Really important life decisions. I'm looking to buy that first home. I'm looking to buy a car. I want to make sure I'm armed with the right loan information so I can go shopping, you know, at the dealers. I need to know how to save for college. I want to understand how do I invest. I'm a small business and I'm trying to get established.
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Tomer Cohen
So, like, big, big decision advice.
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Rohan Amin
Big decision advice. Important life moments. People want to talk to somebody. And so a million people per day come into the branches and we're opening them. To your point, we have not shied away from this strategy, and the data is very clear. We open branches in certain cities and regions and all that, and we immediately see greater digital adoption and digital growth as well. And I think for something as personal as finances, it's deeply personal and important to people. I think they have a sense of comfort that there's somebody they can go talk to. And of course, you can call and do that as well. But I think for a lot of people, they want to go face to face and interact with somebody, especially on these big decisions, things that matter, in addition to the everyday banking needs that they have. Of course, there are some customers who choose to only bank digitally. We support that as well. But the branches are really important to the strategy. And to your earlier question about, you know, how do we integrate with the community? The branches aren't just a place for transactions and advice. We have community centers like one local. To me in Harlem, those community centers are a place for us to do financial education. We do classes, we teach people, help them understand the basics of finances. We will help small businesses and help people get started. And so a lot of that interaction, that relationship, all of that connection to the community, you can't replace the branch interaction. When you're inside and you see the magic of the community coming together in one of our community centers, you can't replicate that fully online. And, you know, one other thing I'll tell you at Tomer is that when you look at the data, it's not just a certain generation. People might think like, oh, it's only a certain type of person who uses the branches. We see everybody using branches. Gen Z people are in the branches.
- [23:26]
Tomer Cohen
So data is really easy when it comes to digital products. But when it comes to physical branches, I'm assuming you can, you know, look at, like, foot traffic. But in terms of getting to that kind of nuances of what people come for, is this kind of a. An intentional data strategy to kind of map the physical branch so you can understand. Exactly. Almost like you had a digital product of what's going on there.
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Rohan Amin
Yeah, we look at interaction data from every channel that we have. So whether you're calling us and what you're calling for, whether you're on digital, what you're clicking and doing when you're in a branch, what are you there for? So all of that sort of interaction data, that's the stuff that we're looking at to understand are we meeting the needs of customers and small businesses that we have, what's the trends that we're seeing? All of that comes from that mindset. So, yeah, so we definitely have a way to look at the physical experience as well.
- [24:17]
Tomer Cohen
Curious. So for folks listening, when you think about kind of the omnichannel, by the way, omnichannel versus multichannel. For omnichannel, they're all integrated multichannel. They kind of separate. When you think about the omnichannel, like, what's your rule of thumb for what each serves the best process? I'm assuming digital is really easy for transaction. Right. I got a check, I scan it. Boom. It used to take me 25 minutes to drive to the branch. Now it's 25 seconds. Wonderful. Big life decision. I want to talk to somebody, even if they're going to tell me what I think they're going to tell me. Just having that reassurance that the human being is there with me is a big one. Calling, I'm assuming customer support, something is not going well. Is that the right way to think about it? Are you thinking about those channels differently?
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Rohan Amin
Some of that, what you said is accurate, but we see crossover effects all the time. And the whole multichannel omnichannel thing, I think is really important. Right. And for us, the mindset is definitely about omnichannel and how do we make sure that sort of the state that you're in as a customer is known to all of the channels. And so something as simple as let's say you had a fraud event and unfortunately you had to replace your credit card as a result. Well, the next time you call, we know that you're calling probably to find out where your card is at. Is it in the mail, did it get shipped, whatever. Right. That is a very simple example. But things like that, when you call, you know, the ivr. The thing that picks up, the automated phone thing that picks up, is going to know he's probably calling because he wants to know where his card is. We're going to serve that up right away. So you don't have to like, navigate the thing and find out or even talk to somebody, because we already knew that you're probably calling for that. We'll just give that information right away. Or you log into the app, you'll see that right at the top of the screen. So that's like the whole how to be proactive with the omnichannel bit. And that way customers come to us in the channel that they choose, and it matters in problem situations. Right. You are at a restaurant and you swipe your card and it's declined. Tough situation to be in. Well, you might be agitated. The more and more that we make that awareness and state known, that's how we think about it.
- [26:22]
Tomer Cohen
This makes a lot of sense. I'm sure folks listening saying, wow, like, obviously if you have omnichannel execution, correct, you have a phenomenal customer experience. But I think it would be amiss for folks to understand that if, at least for established companies that existed before we had the divergence of channels, this was not just a quick change in strategy. I know for us, for example, once we had multiple businesses and there was like phone call and chat and systems and integration and customers are across multiple business lines, undertaking that transformation in infrastructure and platform was not an overnight success. But once you do, you see massive Dividends from them. I'm assuming this was a multi year strategy for Chase at one point.
- [27:06]
Rohan Amin
Totally. And what I would say is that we still have a lot more work to do on it and we have goals and ambitions in this space to continue to focus on Omni Channel.
- [27:15]
Tomer Cohen
There could be a lot of work without LLMs to try and figure out all the flows. But if you had an LLM that can reason over. Wait, Rohan stumbled over there and then he went there. I think I know what's going on. That could feel really magical right now with this new wave of AI, what can you do that you before thought will take many, many years or even impossible to do? And from a customer experience, what should they expect next?
- [27:40]
Rohan Amin
So first we have a ton of data, right? And it's not just, you know, the financial data, it's all this interaction data that I was talking about earlier, the channel interaction data, but also all the lifestyle stuff, you know, what hotels you're booking, airlines and flights and destinations and where are you going. And like there's a lot of data.
- [27:57]
Tomer Cohen
The metadata behind the transactions, basically a.
- [28:00]
Rohan Amin
Lot of that, right? A lot of data. So first is that, you know, making sure that we use that, you know, to power the experience in the right way. Because again, I go back to the point I made in the very beginning around trust, security, privacy, that being job one. Right. But of course I was chuckling when you gave the example of the LLM being able to help you understand the journey. That's exactly the type of thing that we're doing. And it's as simple as you put in a comment in the app store within seconds that comment is known to us and in the hands of the right product team, that's a simple example. But when you start to actually structure the data in a normalized way around all these interactions and things that we've been talking about, that's where the LLM stuff becomes magic, is that you're able to apply an LLM to help you start to reason through these problems and understand where the customer is in the journey and help identify drop off points. It's one thing when you're looking at your product data and your product conversion funnel to understand like where the friction points are. It's another thing when the LLM tells you, based on the analysis of traffic that I'm seeing, this is where the two points that I think are problem areas for you to go look at. Hey, product team, go look at that stuff. That's exactly the type of mindset that we have around this problem, looking at tools and capabilities to do exactly that. We have some green shoots in this area which are really exciting. And so that's kind of like the internal thing, but externally, because you asked about what a customer might see, and obviously this is an area we want to get exactly right. Being first with a LLM AI thing facing customers isn't necessarily our focus. Being right about it is probably more of our focus. Right. Because, you know, there's been some missteps with these things that have been out there, some of these LLM things, saying things that they shouldn't have been saying. And for something like finances and money, you'd have no room for that kind of mistake. And so of course, we're experimenting, we're thinking about that, and you're likely to see that type of thing take form in the Chase Digital system.
- [29:57]
Tomer Cohen
What does that mean from an eval perspective for you? Like, how do you do evaluations for those? For example? We play in different industries. For us, the bar is really high if you're seeking a job or if you're looking for career advice or so on. We would optimize for being right and accurate than the incomprehensive and fast or kind of in many ways performant. Sometimes we'll make sure we're indexing more on the accuracy side, and that means that we'll take a more conservative approach to what we produce. Our evaluations are kind of ranked on a conservatism almost like standpoint. I'm assuming something is very similar for you.
- [30:32]
Rohan Amin
Yes. So similar mindset. Right. For us, it's going to be about that accuracy for sure, and making sure that we know the bounds of what an LLM would say in response to a particular question. And it's not just about LLM. Right. Because, you know, you have everything from questions that people have. I want to understand more about this product or that capability or whatever it is to I'm trying to complete a task, I'm trying to get a job done. So it's a broad range of things that we have to think about when we think about applying AI to that problem space. But that isn't the only place where AI gets applied. You know, I go back to the home screen. Something as simple as you log into the mobile app and what is all the stuff that you see on the homepage? Of course you're going to see your accounts, of course you're going to see the things that really matter. But then what about the rest of that, you know, on the homepage, given the spectrum of customers we're talking about. Given all the different product offerings, what's the next right thing for a customer to engage in? It wasn't too long ago where people just came in, checked our balances and took off. Now we're finding more and more customers are actually deepening their engagement with us because there's more relevancy that they're seeing more opportunities for them to take advantage of stuff they didn't necessarily know of.
- [31:39]
Tomer Cohen
One wonderful aspect we've seen is once you start opening the prompt box for people is you start seeing what they would like you to do for them.
- [31:48]
Rohan Amin
Right.
- [31:49]
Tomer Cohen
So I can imagine for me going to the Chase app, yes, you give me the balance and some kind of basic trends and so on, and those are good. But sometimes I have very specific questions like, hey, who am I paying to like what happened like this month versus, you know, December last year? Or how am I trending on my debt or my balance? You can actually go more specifically which actually you always have those questions in mind. You just assume you can't ask them or you know, this will take a big Excel spreadsheets to do them or you have to go to the branch and figure this out. But those are actually transactional questions. Yes, in many times.
- [32:23]
Rohan Amin
Yeah. And I'm not here to make product announcements, but I can tell you that's exactly the type of thing that we're thinking about and working on every single day. How to make your financial data more accessible to you, how to make it easy to understand, help you make decisions, all of that.
- [32:38]
Tomer Cohen
Last question for you, Rohan. If you were to start off your career, what would you advise people to study or for your kids to study?
- [32:47]
Rohan Amin
Of course I have a little bias here. Being an engineering person where I think really being grounded I think in a core discipline I think is super important. So my bias of course is I think great product people also have enough deep technical appreciation curiosity as well because the how you build is equally if not more important sometimes than what you're building. Because going back to the earlier point that I was making around making sure that you leave the place better than you found it, that how aspect I think is critical. And these days, as far as my kids, I'll tell you exactly, my older son has been playing around a lot with data and AI. I can't even believe the type of stuff that he's able to do today compared to what I was doing when I was in high school. It's the future for sure. And so them getting closer to all things data Science, machine learning, AI. They're on their own. I'm actually not even pushing it. They're on their own sort of taking interest in this and I think that's the future for them. So we'll see where it goes.
- [33:54]
Tomer Cohen
So financial literacy and AI literacy coming together.
- [33:57]
Rohan Amin
I love that. Yes.
- [34:00]
Tomer Cohen
Thank you to Rohan for coming on the show today. As always, let's get into my takeaways. First, privacy and security are important in every product, but in banking, they are the product. Rohan emphasizes that trust is not just a feature, it's where they start. Drawing from his experience in the defense industry, he is clearly aware that reliability, privacy and security must come first for Chase. Earning customer trust by protecting sensitive information and delivering rock solid reliability unlocks the permission to innovate and build great experiences on top. Second, think about the unhappy paths. We're all trying to build an ideal experience, but to do so, we have to anticipate how things can go wrong. Rohan obsesses over what might send people down an unhappy path. For instance, if a customer struggles to accomplish what they want in the app, not only are they frustrated right now, but they'll end up in a higher cost channel like a call center. Now nobody's happy. It's not just about anticipating needs. It's about stress testing your product to make sure it shows up for your customers exactly when they need it. Third, don't underestimate the power of a physical product. It might be surprising that Chase, a banking behemoth, is vigorously expanding its branch access. But Chase is not confused. It knows that for many people, money is a deeply personal issue. People want to talk to a person. They want a personal touch. Conventional wisdom will tell you to move quickly into a digital and virtual world, but in this case, what matters most is human interaction. I'm Tomer Coyne. Thank you for listening. I learned a lot from this conversation, and I hope you did as well.
- [35:49]
Unknown
We'll be back in two weeks with Mark Papermaster, AMD's chief technology officer. Building one is a production of LinkedIn news. Our host is Tomer Cohen, LinkedIn's chief product officer. This episode was produced by Max Miller. Our associate producer is Rachel Karp. This episode was mixed by John Partham and engineered by Assaf Gadrome. And we get additional production support from Alicia Mann at LinkedIn News. Sarah Storm is senior producer. Dave Pond is head of productions and creative operations. Maya Pope Chapelle is director of content and audience development. Courtney Koop is head of original programming. Dan Roth is the editor in chief of LinkedIn. If you know, a product leader we can all learn from. Send us a line@pitchesinkedin.com.