Hi, I'm Matt Shannon
I’m a digital product and services lead with a user-centred design background.
I support companies with all aspects of product and service development, from creating customer-led visions and fundraising to growing teams and improving everyday rituals.
I put insight, collaboration, and healthy questioning at the heart of my approach, and when combined, believe they enable product teams, and those around them, to do their best work while being fun, rewarding, and sustainable long term.
Work
“What steps should we take to mature the product team?”
Starting in spring 2023 and reporting to the CEO, I joined Sensate to support the team in improving their product practice.
- Implemented a simple prioritisation method that aligned teams and increased focus and productivity.
- Refreshed the team rituals which improved issue resolution and understanding of how our decisions were impacting customers.
- Observed new customer onboarding and gathered insights that helped the team understand issues faced by first-time users. Using the insights, we reworked the onboarding carousel and ran A/B tests that showed a 10% uplift in the 7 and 30-day NPS.
- Improved communication of the premium service, resulting in fewer support queries and negative app store feedback.
- Designed and launched a customer referral programme.
“How do we provide the customer support our users need?”
I was hired by the Head of Internal Product to shape and validate a new, customer-focused approach to customer support, that would improve QOS, security and capacity, without increasing department size.
- Using a firmographic method, I segmented the user base and used 300k+ historic support queries to establish how customer needs, behaviours, and cost to serve, changed across the user base.
- Using the segmentation we developed several hypotheses which were validated and iterated through conversations with 25+ agents
- Mapped how data and information was being shared across several support teams, establishing where we needed to make improvements.
- Clarified how internal issues impacted the customer experience, costs and risks by building an end-to-end service view of customer support journeys.
- Designed tactical solutions which...
- Enabled team leads to more confidently adapt team size and skills in real-time and increase the quality of service through a new model for scoring task effort.
- Enabled us to view support issues from a customer rather than an engineering perspective through a new report structure.
- Gathered evidence to demonstrate the business case for further investment in self-service
- Presented a new customer service approach to leadership (COO/Head Of Product) which subsequently received approval and long-term investment.
“How can we improve our support for LSE’s entrepreneurs?”
After several years of organic growth, LSE Generate required a programme refresh and rethink of its startup accelerator and operations.
I joined as Chief of Staff, reporting to the Head of Department, leading the change programme over six months.
- Restructured the programme, enabling the department to better support alumni entrepreneurs at all stages of growth.
- Created a new departmental strategy and financial forecast showing how to increase alumni support and move the department towards financial independence.
- Gathered insights from interviews with founders at several London accelerators (inc FF, Antler, EF). Used insights to redesign and launch a new sprint-based 12-week accelerator that helped eight businesses build strong foundations and a clear plan for growth.
- Recruited a programme manager and team of coaches required to support the cohort through the accelerator.
- Implemented a new lightweight CRM to support the growth and management of a LSE founder network across Europe and Africa.
- Led a light brand identity and comms refresh (Youtube / newsletters / socials)
“How do we bring three different teams together to collaborate?”
A collaboration with the DfT Product Owner, I joined after a successful discovery phase to lead a cross-functional product team design and build Street Manager, a £10m transformation project that launched successfully in 2020.
- Built and grew a cross-functional team, implementing the standards and process across three partner consultancies covering research, design and engineering.
- Established partnerships with SME’s from across the industry that took them on the journey with us and enabled them to gather support from wider stakeholders.
- Championed user research that enabled us to interview over 200+ civil servants, and build an active beta community for feature testing and feedback in the months leading up to launch.
- Created and maintained a reliable long-term roadmap, enabling senior civil servants to manage industry expectations around rollout and budget.
- Successfully passed GDS Alpha assessment.
“What do creators need from a new social network?”
I was hired pre-launch, reporting to the CEO to lead early-stage product validation and development of a creator-centric backlog.
- Immersed myself in creator culture, interviewing and building relationships with 30+ automotive creators to understand their processes, from idea development and formatting to analytics and tools for increasing follower engagement.
- Using creator insights, I designed a backlog of creator-specific features, enabling engineering to improve their planning and creators to feedback on our direction.
- Validated feature concepts with creators and beta users, enabling us to proceed with build and establish a beta community.
“How can we help our customers improve how they think about cash flow?”
I was hired by the Head of Product to lead the research and development of two new products that help customers monitor their credit position and make informed borrowing decisions.
- Got out of the office to meet and interview customers, figuring out how they monitored and managed borrowing.
- Led the design, testing and iteration of both MVP’s
- Developed and managed the GTM for the MVP cashflow forecasting product, collaborating with marketing, support and engineering to successfully launch to a beta group.
“How do we create a marketplace that works for different brands and landlords?”
I joined as the first Head of Product to establish the product practice, grow the marketplace and support A-round fundraising.
- Identified a need for smaller, cheaper spaces and launched shop sharing, enabling us to bring on a new space category and increase opportunities for brands with smaller budgets
- Helped new brands collaborate and rent larger pop-up spaces through the design, build and launch of a brand collaboration platform
- Supported expansion in six new cities across Europe and US
- Led a lightweight brand refresh