Role: Head of Design for LinkedIn Premium / Director
Duration: 2018 – 2020
LinkedIn Premium, the consumer subscription product, is a key contributor to LinkedIn’s overall portfolio. It also serves another key function for the company as a whole, to incubate the next big offering for LinkedIn. At this time, LinkedIn Premium serves primarily two customer segments, job seekers and business leaders. I took on the leadership role to infused consumer-mindset in reinvigorating the Premium product experience. During my tenure, Premium reached new business heights in breaking $1B revenue with a subscriber base of 4M. Also under my leadership I took the team through a transformation in our customer experience and improved our NPS by +8 points.
My leadership revolved around a three-pillar design strategy:
Pillar One: Evolving our brand
LinkedIn as a product and company was moving toward building a more inclusive professional community. The Premium brand and especially the visual system was meant to communicate exclusivity. I worked with our Marketing and branding partners in compiling previous research and driving a new product brand exploration. Internally within the team, I led the team to think more broadly about the selling and purchasing experience as a broader system to create cohesion, consistency, and productivity benefits. This eventually led to the first ever Upsell framework within the company and was leveraged internally within design critiques and helping onboard partner teams in using our team’s tools.
Pillar Two: Strengthening customer value exchange
Part of the previous ways LinkedIn Premium operated was investing in fragmented features that gave the team quick wins. Given the price of our subscription is expensive, the value exchange gradually through time was weakened. This coupled with challenges in working through organizational alignment make it challenging for LinkedIn Premium to ship net new value. I led the team through alignment with the consumer teams so we invest in new bottoms-up functionalities, such as an AI-powered Interview preparation tool and launched a new venture named Open for Business, that we aim to transform to a full new knowledge marketplace for freelancers and small businesses.
Pillar Three: Closing the trust gap
Overtime, the Premium selling and purchasing experience on LinkedIn was growing more and more inconsistent. As a result, this resulted in stagnant business performance and poor customer experience. When I joined the team, the team had accepted this as a matter-of-fact and lacked energy to challenge the status quo. I championed the importance of trust and that we must aim to remove all dark patterns on our platform. This was a challenging feat given there has been business revenue that has been dependent on these patterns. I spearheaded a project that eventually led to +8 improvement to our NPS score. This was a huge monumental win for the team given these numbers hardly moved in the positive direction in the time past, and by this magnitude. With renewed focus and energy the team is setting more aggressive goals to further improve the customer experience.