Fast Company article for May 1999 "This is a Marketing Revolution" By Charles Fishman May 1999 Issue, page 204 Prepared by Vince Crary

Big Brother is watching.

This article is about Capital One. Capital One is a credit card company that started in 1994 and has a market value today of $7.8 billion.

Capital One, like all large companies, offers toll -free 800 numbers for people to call in with questions and complaints. With 16.7 million customers, the company takes 2.5 million live calls a month. With that number of calls and the company being billed by the second for its 800 numbers, it was to the company's advantage to be as efficient as possible when a customer called.

To design an efficient system to route calls to the proper person, Capital One tried many options. Capital One has come up with a system that can route an incoming call by predicting why the person is calling. "Ninety percent of all calls fall into 1 of 10 categories."

Capital One's high speed computers in one tenth of a second can pick up the incoming call, identify the person by their phone number, look at data about the customer, analyze why they are calling, route the call, and recommend what the customer may want to buy once his question is answered.

Capital One knows a lot about their customers, and through testing can now predict which customers will buy and what they may be interested in buying. People call to get questions answered about their credit cards and wind up buying insurance, mutual funds, cell phones, phone services, or other products that Capital One sell for other companies.

Yes, it is impressive what Capital One has done to address a high phone bill. I also feel that it is using its information about peoples' habits and weaknesses to prey on their customers.

My mom uses AOL for her on-line service. I was helping Mom get her computer reconnected after she returned from being away for the winter. We had to call to get her password, and in so doing, AOL offered or wanted to be her long distance carrier. I must have told the guy four times we didn't want it, and I finally just hung up. We were automatically hooked up to this guy in the process of getting the password. Was AOL doing what Capital One does? I question if they wouldn't have successfully sold my mom on the idea. She may have misunderstood and said ,"yes", thinking AOL is my phone service for the internet.

I don't like this intrusion in my life. Yes, I feel Big Brother does know a lot about us, and the buyer had better be aware.

In talking to others about this article, I didn't find anyone who felt Capital One's approach was in the best interest of the customer.

-- Anonymous, May 16, 1999

Answers

Thanks for your comments on this article. Technology certainly does give organizations new ways to find out more about their customer or potential customer.

How can you use what you have read in this article to compare it to your job? What could Extension do to better anticipate the needs or their customers? How can you use technology to your advantage?

Please comment further on this.

Thanks

-- Anonymous, May 20, 1999