Changing how Cleo talks to you

Cleo is a money management app driven by a chatbot with an actual personality.

In 2021, our team decided to embark on a massive task: creating a service notification experience that helps users engage with their money, without getting in the way of Cleo's chat interface. 

Why chat and service notifications are different

Chatting with Cleo is a personable experience, written to feel like talking to a friend who's not afraid to tell you she thinks you're spending too much on Amazon this week. With an opinionated yet friendly tone of voice, Cleo pushes you to take responsibility for your own spending decisions — all while supporting your financial health through empathetic messages and strong financial products.

Service notifications concern the minutiae of using a money management app, such as bank connections, automatic transfers, and bill payments.

Because of technical challenges that meant Cleo could only send one message per day as herself, the bulk of users would only receive messages about their app, and not the health of their money. 

The UX writing challenge

Because she's a chatbot, messages from Cleo are defined by personality and tone. Service notifications would be removed from the chat UI entirely — so Cleo the character could no longer speak through them. 

Users respond well to Cleo's tone of voice, so we had to find a way to retain Cleo's personality within highly functional notifications.

The results so far

In the initial project, we proved that migrating messages over to a service notification format did not disrupt users' experience. In fact, engagement rates did not decline. Users can now receive service notifications to keep their app running well, alongside messages from Cleo that help them on their path to financial health.

Our team is now working to onboard other teams to the new service notification format, in an effort to have a unified experience across the app.