Last week, after a long day of research and writing my customer experience audit on Mint.com, an independent site for managing all your personal financial “stuff,” I sat back to enjoy a bit of television. A commercial for Lowes was on, and it was talking about the new MyLowes program being offered by the Home Improvement superstore chain. Although pretty tuckered out, I guess I’ve become addicted to researching sites that claim to “manage my stuff,” so it was back to the computer to check it out. According to Lowes.com:
“MyLowe’s is a collection of tools designed to revolutionize, customize and simplify home improvement.
- Track purchase history with a MyLowe’s card.
- Get organized with Folders & Lists.
- Stay on top of seasonal needs with Reminders.
- Make managing your home easier with Home Profile”
All of this is terrific, with one caveat. It only works for things that you buy at Lowes and tag with your MyLowes card! I know that what the company wants is to encourage loyalty to its brand, but the way to really do that well is to allow the customer to register any purchases from any source (even archrival Home Depot), so that when it comes time to repurchase or to make complementary purchases, Lowes is your go-to source—and MyLowes makes it the path of least resistance.
My hope is that MyLowes expands to manage and maintain all of a customer’s home-related products and services. Home Depot doesn’t currently offer anything in this area. If Lowes can open its arms to all that customers want, it will do a preemptive strike that its competition will find hard to match.
All of our work with customers back this up. Customers want to be able to pick and choose providers based on their needs, but they want the providers to (at least appear to) work together to provide complete solutions and a seamless experience. This means that, even though I buy “stuff” from many different companies, I want a single place to manage that stuff. And I really value any addition insight and recommendations I can get from the provider who, by seeing the complete picture of my needs as a customer, can recognize patterns and lead me to greater success, be it touching up fading walls or combining financial assets to gain better returns.
My article on Mint.com highlights the advantages of managing everything financial in one place—but also points out that just connecting everything on one site isn’t enough. It also needs to be easy to navigate, sufficiently granular to adapt to any individual customer’s needs, and offer advice on what to do next.
How Well Does Mint.com Help Me Keep Track of My Finances?
Customer Experience Audit of Mint.com’s Free Online Application that Helps Customers Analyze and Manage Their Personal Finances
By Ronni T. Marshak, Executive VP and Senior Consultant, November 17, 2011
