We were hiring for this role around the time we got our Series C extension funding and obtained our unicorn status, so we moved from a startup to a scale up. This reflected the processes we had in place as well: for our communications, we wanted to move from a tactical to a more strategic, holistic approach.

We saw a variety of approaches among the candidates. The more senior candidates focused on strategy while recognizing that it may take time to set up and some tactical-first approach may be needed in the interim.

A great draft: (1) was clear and transparent - the message clearly explained what was happening and what information we had vs didn't; (2) was short and concise; (3) apologized to the customers; (4) offered a different Spendesk product (virtual cards) as an interim solution.

We feel very strongly about this philosophy! We saw a lot of great case studies. What separated the great ones from the less good ones was the quality of the thinking behind it, not the time spent on the case study. It was evident that one or two of our favourite candidates didn't spend a lot of time on the format of the output, but the approach and frameworks presented were spot on.

Jana Frejova

I used this take-home exercise to better learn the approaches and frameworks used by each candidate.

Imagine that there is no clear customer communication strategy in place at Spendesk

, and your mission is to drive product adoption.

How would you go about developing the customer communication strategy?

How would you decide the timeline of when to communicate what to customers?

Imagine that due to the global paper shortage, Spendesk is late in sending out physical payment cards to new customers (we don’t have the paper packages for the cards). This is unfortunate as it negatively affects customer experience early on. We are not sure when the issue will be resolved. Can you:

 (in English) that would be sent to customers?

Which users would you target with this message?

What steps would you take before sending this message?

Imagine that we have a user community. It is very basic in terms of features (it just includes learning videos, guides, help centre articles and discussion forums) but the community already has a couple of thousands of members. However, the members are not very active. They don’t watch learning videos, they don’t ask many questions, and they don’t participate in discussions.

How would you drive user engagement? Take us through your thinking process, what actions you would take, what recommendations you would make, how you would measure success.

Please submit a Google doc, Powerpoint presentation, notion note, or 

We recognize that this take-home is likely on top of another full-time job that you have, and want to be respectful of your time. Our goal is not to have you do additional work for us but instead to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself and your work to your potential team.

PMM Take-home Exercise (Community and Lifecycle) at Spendesk

Case study: PMM, Community and Lifecycle

Task 1: Customer communications strategy

Task 2: Negative communication

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