You noticed that Brex Credit Card activation rate went down by a lot. How would you find out why?

Let me clarify the issue once à Out of the total customers who were applying for credit cards and receiving them, the percentage of folks who end up activating the received credit cards have declined.

Customers of Brex are mainly startups, mid-size companies and enterprises.

Is the decline for any specific credit card type?

Is the decline sudden or gradual? à Gradual

What’s the time-period for comparing the earlier and current activation rates? à Lets say a month

Okay, so I will try to figure out the issue by looking at the situation from multiple lenses – metric measurement, technical, user preference/activity and competition/market. I will also suggest a few solutions.

Analysis from metric measurement perspective:

1. Is there a change in the way the Brex Credit Card activation rate is calculated?
2. Has there been any update to the tool used to capture and calculate the activation rate?
3. Is the decline specific to some channel through which customers apply for credit cards?
4. Is there a proportionate change in the number of customers applying for the credit card?
5. Is there a proportionate change in the successful receival of credit cards by the customers?

Analysis from user preference/activity perspective:

1. Is the decline specific to startups, mid-size companies or enterprises?
2. Is the decline specific to any region?
3. Is the decline specific to any vertical or sector?
4. Is there any feedback from the customer support team whom the customers might have been reaching with activation issues?

Analysis from technical perspective:

1. Assuming, the activation can be done through mobile and web, is the decline specific to platform?
2. Is the decline specific to any OS (iOS, Android) (when activation is tried through mobile)?
3. During the time-window of decreasing credit card activation rate, has there been any backend change to the activation process or any change to the UI?
4. During the time-window of decreasing credit card activation rate, has there been any change to the notification emails/messages sent for activating credit cards?
5. During the time-window of decreasing credit card activation rate, were any other feature released (which might indirectly impact the credit card activation process)?
6. Are there any news of datacenters outage or server outage or network issues?
7. Are there any bug reports on the activation of credit cards or the activation process just hanging up/crashing?

Analysis from market/competition perspective:

1. Is there any government regulation asking businesses to stop/reduce credit card usage and activations?
2. Is there a trend in the market for businesses to sign up for multiple cards and then activate only some of them?
3. Is there any market/environment condition which is requiring the immediate attention of the businesses, missing out on credit card activations?
4. Around the time-window of decreasing credit card activation rate, has there been any new competitor providing credit cards to businesses at better rates?

Now, lets see some of the possible solutions:

• If the decline is due to a metric capturing or calculation issue à The bug should be immediately fixed and the metric should be tracked closed for the next 2-3 months
• If the decline is due to a bug à Customers should be informed of the issue and the time-window of fixing of the bug (express apology for the inconvenience), the bug should be immediately fixed and made available to all the customers. Customers should be notified of the fix.
• If the decline is due to a release feature à The above solution can be followed, or the feature may be completely rolled back depending upon the severity of the issue.
• If the drop is due to some competitors à Devise short-term and long-term strategies to counter and enhance the credit card features and the associated services being provided by competitors to retain and bring in existing/new users respectively.
• If the drop is due to some environmental situation or government regulation à Get in touch with other companies being impacted and try to come up with solutions that can mend the situation quickly
• If there is negative sentiment floating around à Devise some strategies to increase trust and brand value by engaging with the PR team.