![]() After the kick-off, the strategists serve as design-thinking coaches, checking in with each project team once a week to suggest human-centered design tools and methods. Bankers-many of whom are “lifers” at Capital One-are sent to interview customers in branches, run feedback sessions with customers in the office, and then create personas based on customer needs. ![]() Led by a team of former Stanford d.school teachers and former design consultants from firms like Jump Associates and Continuum, the Labs’ design strategists act as teachers and coaches for internal teams of bank analysts.Įvery project begins the same way: they invite the project team to an off-site workshop, during which the strategists spend two weeks coaching the team about how to become customer-centered. Lab members have opened a series of “Capital One 360 Cafes,” a hybrid coffee shop/bank branch where Labs employees interview cafe customers to get feedback on new prototypes and ideas. But the cafes are just one part of a larger commitment to innovation. Introducing a New Mindset to TeamsĬapital One Labs describes itself as the “rogue innovation arm” of the bank, slowly but steadily building a practice of human-centered design thinking throughout the company. The group leading this innovative push calls themselves Capital One Labs, and their secret weapon is free coffee. If the one product you’re known for is ubiquitous, how can you stop your customers from leaving for other banks?įor Capital One, the answer was a small laboratory within the larger bank. ![]() By the early 2000’s, though, other banks had caught on and offered consumer credit cards, leaving Capital One without a strong brand, identity, or value proposition for new customers. Fairbank had seen firsthand consumers’ desire for credit cards, which at the time were offered mainly to businesses. When CEO Richard Fairbank founded Capital One in the 1990s, he pioneered the practice of selling credit cards directly to consumers.
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