dancingmango

Someone from the Barclaycard research centre rang me today doing some customer research.  It is great to know they take the customer experience seriously - many of the questions were around my experience with the brand.  But then they dropped this corker, not once, but twice.

To what extent do your other credit card providers offer innovative products

How important is it to you that your credit card provider offers innovative products

How on earth did those questions get through and on to the list?  What is an “innovative product” when talking about credit cards or financial services?   What is an “innovative product” to Joe Public?  Maybe I can relate to an iPhone as such, but my credit card?  Product innovation is hardly something that you or I consider when we pull a credit card out of the wallet.

“Innovative products” are something that marketeers talk about,  they are not in the credit card users lexicon.

Marketing may be a touchy-feely occupation, but the language that marketeers use is far from it.  Campaigns, strategy, tactics, targets…  all out of the military handbook.  That might be OK within the organisation, but it shouldn’t be exposed to your customers.  An email sent by BA inviting customers to register to a special deal results in a page informing the customer; “Thank You, [name] Your pre-registration for this campaign has been successful”.  Now what is that all about?  They’ve spent so much time creating the campaign, how it fits into their overall strategy that they’ve overlooked the details around what really matters - fullfillment, wording and how the customer feels about BA at the end of the process.  I feel a little cooler than when I clicked on the promotion.