A few days ago I activated my new Bank of America credit card over the phone like I’ve done numerous times before. However, something was different this time around. As the card was being activated, I had to listen to the most ominous-sounding sales pitches I’ve ever heard. It sounded like a standard credit protection service, but it was geared for people like me, who were the personal guarantor of a business credit card. Instead of selling success and assurance, the pitch almost made it sound like the business was doomed from the get-go.
What I found most interesting was that after the first time the sales pitch played, instead of the usual prompt of “press ‘1’ to hear more, press ‘2’ to continue” the recording just gave the first option. What I found even more interesting was that after I didn’t press any key, the recording played again. Luckily after hearing the same pitch twice and two long, uncomfortable silences later, the an upbeat voice told me my card was ready to use.
The recording left me feeling like Bank of America is exploiting people’s fear of uncomfortable silences (and debt, of course) to trick them to sign up for something they most likely don’t need. Also because there were no other options, people must feel like they have to choose the only one given. It was clear that were employing the funnel tactic to get people to take the most profitable action for them. In this case I’m not sure if that’s really the most ethical thing to do. It would be different I had called about these kinds of services but I didn’t.
For Bank of America’s sake, I hope I happened to belong to a sample group for this recording and when the conversion rate aren’t good enough, they retire it and selling fear doesn’t become the norm in BoA’s marketing message.