Sticker Shock: Customer Experience Customization Gone Wrong

 In their quest to deliver a warm, personalized customer experience, some companies cut corners and end up tarnishing their brand instead of enhancing it.

Take, for example, this information folder from a division of the world’s fourth largest bank.  It’s given to customers who open a new account, and contains all the associated paperwork.

Looks OK from a distance – but what’s the white sticky note that’s slapped onto the folder, a bit askew?  Let’s take a closer peek:

How sweet…  It’s a note telling me that this information packet was “Prepared especially for you, our valued customer(s).”

What a remarkable example of customer experience customization!  It must have taken years of R&D (and hundreds of laser printer adhesive labels) to develop this.

The message is so precise, so insightful – it almost felt like they were looking through my soul(except for the fact they couldn’t tell if I was singular or plural).

Here’s the lesson:  When it comes to personalizing the customer experience, it’s better to be generic than clumsy.

By defacing an otherwise elegant communications piece, and conveying a message of personalization in the most inauthentic manner, this little sticker contradicts pretty much everything the bank is trying to promote about its brand. 

In a word, it makes this global financial behemoth look amateurish, which is probably the last thing they were hoping for.