Adoption Is a Game of Odds — Stack Them for Your Customer

At a school fair growing up, I was running a booth with a game: sort random objects by color and shape under a tight timer. The catch? It was really hard. No one was winning. People stopped showing up.

So I changed the rules.

Younger kids got extra time. Older ones got fewer objects. I even added a pay-less-play-easier mode. Suddenly, people were lining up. And winning. And telling their friends.

I don’t sell anyone anything that doesn’t make them want to come back — and bring a few friends too.

Fast Forward to Vectorflow + LendingTree

Years later, I saw the same pattern at work. LendingTree was a smaller client using our employee onboarding module. Their request? Auto-generate a Slack invite and company email as soon as a new hire was created in the portal.

We didn’t have that exact feature, but we had the flexibility. So I worked with a frontend developer and our PaaS admin to connect the dots. Using Zapier, we wired up notifications to trigger IT provisioning steps — including Slack access and email creation.

Zero new licensing. Barely any dev lift. Fully adopted by the client within days.

Why It Worked

🧠 I met them where they were — not where our product roadmap was.
🔁 Reused existing tools (AI logic + Zapier) instead of waiting for new features.
🎯 Delivered value fast, without feature bloat or extra costs.

“Understanding your client’s friction is what lets you adjust the odds — and build trust fast.”

When the solution sticks, people return. When it delights, they bring others.

Whether you’re designing a carnival game or an onboarding flow, the principle holds: if the odds feel fair — and the reward feels real — people will show up. Again and again.