Capital One is a diversified financial services company offering a broad array of credit, savings and loan products to customers in the United States, UK, and Canada. It ranks #115 on the S&P 500 and #4 in Diversified Financials (BusinessWeek, 2005). Its stock has outperformed the S&P index since 1999. Founded by Richard Fairbank in 1988 based on his belief that the power of information, technology, testing and great people could be combined to bring highly customized financial products directly to consumers, Capital One has emerged as one of the America's largest consumer franchises with almost 50 million customer accounts and one of the nation's most recognized brands.
In an interview for Fast Company Magazine Nigel Morris, Cap One’s president thus defined the reason behind their success: “Very few companies have the ability to test and learn.” Testing and learning form the foundation on which Capital One is built. The company tests every product offering, every procedural change, every job applicant. It keeps records on every customer interaction and on every card purchase. It runs experiment after experiment.
Capital One has conducted hundreds of thousands of experiments of new products, new advertising approaches, new markets, new business models. It tests to determine who reacts most favorably to slight adjustments in interest rates, maximum balances, or fees; who prefers to sign up via the Internet; and who responds to telephone solicitations. When it figures out how to sell to the small group of targeted test customers, it looks for similar customers throughout the United States. "We're creating a massive scientific lab where everything can be tested," Fairbank told U.S. Banker.
At Capital One, the essence of innovation is experimentation. Every idea for a new product starts with a test, or a series of tests. If a test succeeds, the company ramps up fast. But testing doesn’t apply only to products. For instance Capital One doesn’t conduct routine job interviews for hiring. Applicants take tests, sit through guided interviews, and do role-playing exercises. In many cases supervisors never even meet candidates; they meet only the people who get hired. That's because the HR function discovered through experimentation that interviews by line managers didn’t predict job performance at all. That discovery was made, of course, through follow-up testing — through comparing actual performance of employees with what their supervisors had predicted when they were first hired.
In an interview for Fast Company Magazine Nigel Morris, Cap One’s president thus defined the reason behind their success: “Very few companies have the ability to test and learn.” Testing and learning form the foundation on which Capital One is built. The company tests every product offering, every procedural change, every job applicant. It keeps records on every customer interaction and on every card purchase. It runs experiment after experiment.
Capital One has conducted hundreds of thousands of experiments of new products, new advertising approaches, new markets, new business models. It tests to determine who reacts most favorably to slight adjustments in interest rates, maximum balances, or fees; who prefers to sign up via the Internet; and who responds to telephone solicitations. When it figures out how to sell to the small group of targeted test customers, it looks for similar customers throughout the United States. "We're creating a massive scientific lab where everything can be tested," Fairbank told U.S. Banker.
At Capital One, the essence of innovation is experimentation. Every idea for a new product starts with a test, or a series of tests. If a test succeeds, the company ramps up fast. But testing doesn’t apply only to products. For instance Capital One doesn’t conduct routine job interviews for hiring. Applicants take tests, sit through guided interviews, and do role-playing exercises. In many cases supervisors never even meet candidates; they meet only the people who get hired. That's because the HR function discovered through experimentation that interviews by line managers didn’t predict job performance at all. That discovery was made, of course, through follow-up testing — through comparing actual performance of employees with what their supervisors had predicted when they were first hired.