Providing Insights on How Chargebee Needs to Capitalise on the AI Boom
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The Brief
Data Gathering
Impact
Validation
Wrap Up
Overview
Segmentation
Personas
Customer Journey
Tech analysis
Workshopping
Interviewing
Concept testing
Impact
#1 The brief
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Background
Over 70% of the companies that Chargebee serves are software / SaaS businesses. With the ongoing boom in AI, this was labelled as a high priority segment for us to investigate in order to understand what requirements they have from a revenue management platform. We wanted to know how the create invoices and what is important to them as they scale and grow. If we are unable to serve these customers, this may severely impact our growth potential, and open up the space for competitors.
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The ask
Research was asked to figure out a few key topics:​​
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How they are different
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How they invoice
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How they sell
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How they collect
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What are their current challenges​
I was to team up with the 'usage based billing' product managers. As we served several AI companies who sold on a 'usage' basis, this would be a starting point to investigate.
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#2 Research
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Research carried out two rounds of interviewing companies for a total of 39 interviews. To stay connected with the team and facilitate learnings, we held regular workshops outlining what are the key burning questions from the design, product and engineering teams.
#3 Impact
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The work was instrumental to the product teams in developing their understanding of AI companies. Key insights were relayed to the product leadership which helped them define differentiators in our product offering. We now understood how AI companies consider pricing and what their current challenges were.
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Before this work, the product team was stuck in how a UBB offering is relevant to AI companies. We answered key questions such as:
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How are tokens relevant to pricing considerations
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Where is the usage data stored and what information needs to be apparent to their customers and the finance team
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How are the users of the AI tools different from the buyer of AI tools (the user and person who pays the bill are different)
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Why are non-technical teams, such as finance, dependent on engineers and PMs when it comes to adjusting pricing
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How are limits, overages and usage tracking done, and how are they relevant to generating invoices
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What is a typical tech stack and what role does it play in the process
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#4 Validation
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The design team utilised this information when creating their prototypes. I was in charge of gain customer feedback on the concept, conducting seven concept tests. This discovered several key considerations for what is important in our offering, helping to further shape the end product. There were seven medium issues that require immediate attention, and 17 minor issues that should be addressed before launch, or added to the backlog.
#5 Wrap up
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Research accelerated the overall understanding of the AI space, and guided the Chargebee product vision to better capturing this market. Based on the qualitative research, we better understood what was important to these companies, and knew exactly how we needed to build out the product. This was further confirmed during the product validation phase.
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The outputs of this research helped shape our product offering, educate GTM teams, especially marketing, about how to position our offering and standout from competitors, and outline the future of the tool.