<first>A<first> few years ago, millennials still considered TIM to be the “carrier that their parents use”. The company didn’t have a relevant product, designed specifically for young audiences. And when changes in the Brazilian telecom industry made it easier to switch carriers, it was even more difficult to stay relevant. For the average client, choosing a mobile plan meant picking the one with the lowest price.

The principle behind TIM beta was that it should work as a tool for experimentation – something that would be constantly changing. The concept of being in an ongoing “beta stage” was something that millennials connected with. No other telecom service in Brazil embraced a flexible, open-minded approach. After launching the platform, TIM watched its brand equity grow in the Brazilian market.

Features

Game

With TIM beta, clients can measure their social influence and compete with their friends. The more points they have, the better their chances in reaching the premium status of BETA lab. High scorers get better benefits: the chance to invite friends, access to exclusive events and lower rates for phone usage.

Activations

The game was designed with multiple incentives to keep participants engaged. Every few weeks, Betas could join a challenge to earn more points in the game, such as taking an amazing photograph based on a particular subject, trend or landscape.

Invites

Only friends are allowed to join TIM beta, which makes it a unique market proposition. The whole invitation process takes place on social channels, such as Facebook and Twitter. Our team designed a user-friendly process for finding contacts and sending the invitations.

Seamless online-offline experience

After sign-up, clients receive a SIM card as part of a kit. The package uses the same design language as the digital channels, making the experience consistent in every touchpoint with the brand – both online and offline.

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Designing the member-get-member system

Mobile carriers generally offer an uninteresting process for picking a plan. The process generally works like this: clients go to a store (offline or online), answer a few questions, fill out forms, sign a contract and make the payment. For TIM beta, we tried to think beyond that model. We used tools that are widely popular among young audiences – such as Facebook and Twitter – to turn that moment into something special.

We had three questions in mind during the kickoff meeting:

• How do we design a simple way for inviting friends and signing-up?
• How do we leverage the use of social tools?
• How do we build a consistent experience across multiple channels?

We started the project by mapping out the ecosystem in which the invitations would take place. The most influential users were allowed to ask friends to join the plan. Because the process occurred within social channels, the name TIM beta spread out quickly as guests, friends, and friends of friends could all see info about the plan. This bird’s-eye view of the ecosystem allowed us to prepare the path for every type of user, as they began receiving invites and signing up on the platform.

The next step was to identify the types of interaction for the invitation process. The act of becoming a member involves some back-and-forth conversations between friends – requesting an invite, sending it, signing up, asking questions about the process or even sending reminders to guests who never signed up. Along with that list of actions, we defined the most appropriate formats for interaction on each channel. Facebook, for instance, presented four alternatives to the process: like, share, direct messages and posts.

With a clear view of both the ecosystem and the interactions, we crafted the invitation messages. We worked together with the copywriting team to define the content for the invites. TIM beta wanted to be recognized as something unique from other mobile plans, so it was crucial that the brand’s personality could appear even through 140-character posts on Twitter. This exercise also allowed us to keep the tone of voice consistent throughout the entire user’s journey.

We also wanted to celebrate somehow the feeling of “I’m inviting you to be a part of something cool”. For the invitation flow, we used an icon of a SIM card instead of traditional patterns – such as dropdowns and radio buttons. Plus, the platform automatically recommends friends with whom the user has more interactions. To invite a friend, users can simply drag the friend’s photo and then leave a message. That was a great way to remind Betas of their influence.

Over time, we gathered feedback from users regarding the acquisition process. Betas seemed satisfied with the experience on digital channels. However, they pointed out some limitations regarding the offline experience. They reported delays on the shipment of SIM cards after sign-up. We realized that the whole experience would be better if guests could simply go to a TIM store to get the chip (after being invited). Change and flexibility have always been important principles on this project.

TIM was able to keep an ongoing conversation with its clients through the gamified experience. By participating on challenges, Betas became closer to the brand.

Creating the game

Most people don’t remember the details of their mobile plans. Overall, the relationship between clients and their mobile carriers is limited to paying bills at the end of the month. For TIM beta, we had to figure out a way to stay closer. The main challenge was how to accomplish that in a natural, relevant way. And because we were trying to reach millennials – the target of other countless brands – that challenge was twice as hard.

Millennials love to share and post stories on social media. So we asked ourselves: Why not reward those who are more relevant? We worked on that insight for a while, trying to figure out a way to promote people who have more to say. During the early workshops, we came up with the concept of a game. Ideally, it would track the influence and social capital of each participant.

We considered the following questions while designing the game:

• How do we promote actions that build social capital?
• How do we use social media in a useful way?
• How do we keep the game interesting and dynamic?

Our first task was an exercise of brainstorm and concepting. We divided our team into small groups to explore ideas for the game. We asked people from different departments to join the discussion, including developers, strategists and product managers. During the exercise, we conceived multiple alternatives to measure social capital. The best ones balanced quantity (e.g., number of tweets) with quality (e.g., best use of a photograph).

After the brainstorm, we analyzed the policies of each platform to understand their rules and recommendations. Some social networks use a competitive approach by incentivizing activity and volume – such as the number of check-ins and leaderboards. While reviewing our initial list of ideas, we had to consider those particular rules. The policies worked as filters by putting constraints in our process.

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A retweet is more valuable than a tweet. A photograph in a nice perspective should be highlighted in the timeline. While conceiving the game, we created an internal prototype to assign points to online social activity. It allowed us to quickly test different formulas. The goal was to promote relevance across the community. With the prototype, we defined thresholds to keep ill-intentioned users from abusing the system. But most importantly, we were able to reward users who had more to say.

The next step was to design the interface for the game. We used sketches and paper prototypes to represent screens and flows for the mobile app. It was a quick way to demonstrate how it would work. Important issues were raised early in the process. For example, we realized that it was necessary to map out notifications and other messages with a clear framework. That way the conversations between the brand and the clients would occur more naturally.

Finally, we also had a close relationship with the technical teams at TIM. Many interface decisions would impact the infrastructure and backend systems. On each round of the game, Betas could change their status and pay lower rates. We had to understand the effect of those rules on the whole system. So we used key UX deliverables to detail the ideal experience; and then we reviewed the material with technical teams on a regular basis.

<heading-light>Visit the website of<heading-light> TIM beta.

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