Private label card: using customers opinion of their future offers
- Last October, the Forrester Groundswell Award rewarded the InterContinental Hotels Group and Chase Card Services for their privative label cards offers renewal initiative, with the collaboration of 300 customers through a dedicated collaborative platform (they gathered 30,000 contributions within one year).
- Their study made it possible to list surveyed customers’ expectations as well as the reasons why they would choose a given credit card rather than another. IHG and Chase were then able to launch the new "Priority Club Select" card in June 2010 (its annual cost was set at 49 dollars) by integrating their customers’ comments and requests (one free hotel night per year, free of charge abroad transactions, etc.). This successful initiative allowed them to expand their range of offers and attract new customers (80% more accounts openings compared to their former marketing campaign for the previous card).
- This initiative partakes to a co-creation trend consisting in setting customers at the heart of the relationship to ensure their satisfaction.
- It should be reminded that the British bank Barclays used its Premier customers dedicated community Website, Premier Cercle, to elaborate m-banking services. Barclays surveyed its Premier customers upstream of product conception, and focused on different aspects of these new services: functionality, ergonomics, desired range of products, etc. Once their needs listed, the English bank opened access to the pilot Website to all its Premier Cercle members and allowed them to add comments and suggestions. This collaborative approach enabled them to elaborate specific customers' expectations-based requirement specifications.
- Banks can then use co-creation to work on low cost and reliable market studies (through the use of targeted collaborative tools notably), and make sure that their new offers respond to their customers' real need and revive customer relation.