A User-Focused Approach to Simplify Employment Data Access

It's natural to build products through the lens of your own experiences. If you’re a clothing designer, your designs mimic your outfits; chefs make meals they love to eat; architects design buildings they would live in themselves. But software applications are different. They were built by humans that typically don't relate to problems they’re trying to solve.

I do not have a problem getting a loan, mortgage, job, obtaining insurance, renting a house, needing a paycheck advance, or purchasing a car — but Argyle is building tools for people who do. Argyle’s success is contingent on our team looking at the world through the eyes of our end-users and not our own. That means rigorously testing our assumptions not through our own experiences or our clients, but through our client's customers.

Our client's leverage Argyle to access the employment records of their customers. An example is a cash advance client who uses real-time hours worked and pay rate information to calculate funds that should be advanced to a user. Because a user can work for numerous employers (Starbucks, CVS, Doordash, and more) the question becomes how a user can grant access to their own employment records.

Option 1: Have the user upload a document of their employment records. This is hard to mandate, easy to manipulate, and manual for all parties involved.

Option 2: Ask the user what system stores their employment records. This is simple to ask, but it's unlikely to be known. Take Starbucks as an example - they have employment records located at: https://mypartnerinfo-ext.starbucks.com/partnerportal/.

Option 3: Ask the user who pays them. This is simple to ask and always known.

Option 1 looks at the world through non-technical eyes. Option 2 looks at the world through the eyes of a professional - through the eyes of a person who’s an expert in employment records management. Option 3 looks at the world through the eyes of the user.

Argyle has taken the Option 3 approach. We’ve also taken on the complexity of linking users to their own employment records instead of asking them to manage that themselves. From an interface perspective, this is a subtle difference - a list of employers instead of a list of employment record storage providers. From a conversion perspective, it's a complete game-changer. This subtle interface choice produces an 81% conversion rate on users who land on our "who pays you" menu.

If your business is looking to gain access to your user's employment records, evaluate if the vendor you are working with is taking an option 2 or option 3 approach - your conversion rate will be dramatically affected by this choice.