Vanguard Market Research Fail
Jul 29
I got an email from Vanguard asking me to log into my IRA account and check out their new user interface. It is in beta and they were looking for feedback, it would only take 5 minutes, etc. When I logged in I got a pop up asking me if I or a member of my family had worked in financial services or web design in last 10 years. I checked web design and submitted the form.
Then I was informed that they didn’t want the opinion of people with a web design background, and I wasn’t allowed into the beta. That makes perfect sense, given that they are beta testing a fracking web site! Not to mention that utter cluelessness of emailing a customer and asking for their opinion, and after said customer committing to helping out an organization that he generally admires, telling said customer his opinion isn’t important.
Well played Vanguard, well played.
Dear Chris:
I’d like to apologize for the frustrating experience you had regarding our beta testing. Based on your feedback, we’re making some changes to future testing with your suggestions in mind.
A bit of background: We certainly don’t discount the expertise that someone like you, with a web design background, could bring to our site. In fact, we consult with external web designers in addition to our internal team of designers during the development process. However, our goal for this specific beta testing was to capture the experience of our average user — someone who does not have web design experience and who would be looking at the screens and functionality in a slightly different way. However, it’s very likely that for future beta tests we will not put such a restriction in place.
Thanks again for the feedback, and for your continued business.
Rebecca Katz
Seems to me Becky should have built in some way to accept your input, keep it separate from the rest of the answers and then she could have contacted you with a letter like the one above to ask you to help in future tests. If they wanted some free work done by an expert.
As opposed to the free work these folks get from the rest of us during these feedback sessions.
No, I am not a fan. Like being held up at the grocery store checkout because the scanner doesn’t work. Your inventory isn’t my problem. I don’t work for you. I am the paying customer. Figure it out after I am gone.
Nance
Comparing the answers from their techie customers and their “normal” customers would probably produce some really interesting information.