Designing the Credit Card Customer Value Proposition

About client

The customer is the leading bank in the region, boasting an extensive network of branches and ATMs that cater to both B2C and B2B clients, and a multi-million strong cardholder base.

Challenge

The consumer market is saturated with various debit and credit products that offer similar standard features, such as cashback programs, point collections, comparable overdraft fees, and grace periods. The team set a goal to develop a card product that stands out in terms of customer experience, has the potential to achieve a dominant market share, and encourages customers to switch from competitor banks to our client.

Project goal

Craft Innovations SOW was to help create unique CVP, naming of the card, card design, customer welcome pack and ATL promo materials.

Process explained

1. As true adherents of a human-centered design approach, we began the project with an in-depth customer research phase. This involved conducting detailed interviews to understand customers’ needs, current experiences with similar products, life contexts, decision-making criteria, pain points, and barriers to using card and credit products. Recognizing that a card is merely a tool in the customer journey to accomplish specific tasks, we focused on building empathy and understanding how a new product could assist them. By combining available transactional data with our research findings, we identified five customer personas. These personas were prioritized based on their transactional activity potential, likelihood of adopting the new product, and segment size.
2. After the research stage, we conducted a series of product design workshops in collaboration with the Mastercard team and our client’s team. Participants included members from retail banking, risk and compliance, digital banking, IT, card business, and marketing departments. As a result of these workshops, we developed several concepts for the card product that align with our business goals and address the needs of our target user personas.
3. The next step was to validate our product hypotheses, define the winning product concept, and determine the optimal combination of unique features to maximize market penetration while meeting profitability targets. We returned to real users and conducted a series of quantitative tests using a complex methodology. This approach helped us identify the ideal feature combination and quantify the product’s market penetration potential. Based on the tests decision was made.
4. Card Naming and Design, welcome pack: After finalizing the winning concept, our creative team began work on branding and visual design, aiming to highlight the card’s uniqueness and make ownership prestigious and trendy. Through several iterations, we developed over 10 naming concepts and more than 30 initial design concepts. Ultimately, we refined these to a minimalistic and clean card design that stands out in the market without requiring significant investments in the embossing process. We tested the designs and naming perceptions with focus groups, receiving positive feedback. Final design concept and product name is under NDA.