Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

How to drive word of mouth | Nilan Peiris (CPO of Wise)

Sep 24, 2023

Nilan Peiris, Chief Product Officer at Wise, shares his expertise in word-of-mouth marketing and product-led growth strategies. He provides tactical advice on boosting referrals and discusses how NPS surveys shaped Wise's growth. Nilan reveals a small change that tripled referrals and explains how Wise's innovative pricing strategies build customer loyalty. He emphasizes fostering a culture of experimentation and balancing data with intuition in product development, offering insights on enhancing user experiences to stimulate organic growth.

01:16:34

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Episode guests

Nilan Peiris

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Quick takeaways

Delivering an exceptional customer experience that exceeds expectations and focuses on price, speed, and ease of use is key to driving word-of-mouth growth.

Focusing on customer feedback, using NPS surveys, and constantly improving the product based on customer needs drives word-of-mouth growth.

Building trust and authenticity through a clear mission, genuine care for solving customer problems, and delivering on promises fosters customer advocacy and drives word-of-mouth growth.

Deep dives

Building a Word of Mouth Growth Machine

In this podcast episode, Nalann Piras, Chief Product Officer at WISE, shares insights on how they have successfully driven word-of-mouth growth for their international money transfer product. Nalann discusses the importance of delivering an exceptional customer experience that exceeds expectations and gives users an experience they didn't know was previously possible. He highlights the significance of focusing on three key pillars: price, speed, and ease of use. By continuously reducing costs, optimizing operations, and investing in building a significantly better product than their competitors, WISE has been able to attract a large portion of their customers through word of mouth.

Using Net Promoter Score to Drive Word of Mouth Growth

02:13

Moving Beyond Functionality: Creating Mind-Blowing User Experiences

00:44

What frustrates you the most about your current workplace?

00:49

Two Lists: Making Customers Happy and Making Money

00:35

Intro

4min

Exploring WISE: Transforming Cross-Border Money Transfers

2min

Catalyzing Growth Through Word-of-Mouth

20min

Driving Word of Mouth through Pricing Strategy

15min

Cultivating an Experimentation Culture

2min

Balancing Data and Intuition in Product Development

21min

Transforming Referral Marketing

6min

Literature, Hiring, and Personal Growth

7min

Brought to you by Pendo—The all-in-one platform for product-led companies building breakthrough digital experiences | Wix Studio—The web creation platform built for agencies | Masterworks—Invest in blue-chip art

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Nilan Peiris is Chief Product Officer at Wise, one of the fastest-growing (and profitable) tech companies in the world. Wise allows anyone to send money in more than 60 currencies to over 160 countries at low cost, and throughout its history has grown primarily through word of mouth. In today’s episode, we discuss:

• Tactical advice on driving word of mouth (WOM)

• Strategies for measuring WOM

• How NPS surveys helped Wise determine their growth and product strategy

• How Wise incentivizes teams to do the hard things

• The small change that generated a 3x increase in referrals

• How Wise structures its product and growth teams

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Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-drive-word-of-mouth-nilan

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Where to find Nilan Peiris:

• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/nilanp

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nilanpeiris/