Golden opportunity around social media for financial institutions Highly visible channel of choice for customers that can’t be ignored – I’m boldly taking that as an argument that is unassailable. But happy to debate anyone who doesn’t believe it – after the presentation. Show some examples of how some companies are having success and others failure – in some cases epic failure. My contention is that financial institutions have followed our customers to social media – they got there first and a lot of us are still playing catch up. And that the current model is unsustainable because it’s reactive and few organisations are showing thought leadership in this space. I want to focus on how social media is such a noisy place, driven by a new type of consumer – and that filtering this noise and working out who we should be engaging with and when and where should be consuming business inforamation and knowledge management teams for the next 3 years. I want to persuade you our focus on customer management is the wrong strategy. We’ve already lost control of the conversation and we have to deal with that. The opportunity in social media is not around managing customer complaints. It’s about using the big data generated by the social web to develop a new type of relationship with customers online Finally I want to discuss with you the impact of mobile at a time when the web is delivering global social interaction on a scale unseen before.
But before that – I have three questions for you:Can everyone raise their hands who uses some form of social media? Okay, and who’s business has a social media strategy that’s being delivered (however badly). Who’s on Google+?
And it’s clear that we’re all very involved in social media from a business point of view too.Kiwibank twitter - Kiwibank Facebook - Kiwibank You Tube - Green Ops video game linking in with Facebook and Twitter - Online Relationship Manager
Kiwibank twitter - Kiwibank Facebook - Kiwibank You Tube - Green Ops video game linking in with Facebook and Twitter - Online Relationship Manager
and most of the big banks have dived into this channel
By follower numbers alone the ASB are Kings (should I say Queens) of NZ banking tweets.
Virtual branch – world first; clever marketing. I think it should be open more than a regular branch
Notice the Meet the Team feature. Social media is about connecting with real human experiences – faces and personalities are important. But notice I didn’t say real human beings – sometimes the experience doesn’t have to have a real person.
Google+ has Twitter-like "following," rather than Facebook-like "friending." That means you can follow anyone without his or her permission. Google+ has a Twitter-like "feed" or "stream" that presents the posts of the people you follow the moment they're posted.Threat to Twitter – while twitter has 175m registered accounts on 21 million are active users – that’s 12%.
Google is the most famous company in the world and didn’t have to start from scratch. However it’s now reached more than 25 million users and still climbing. It’s perfectly integrated with key things we use on the internet – search and video.
Currently it’s a personal experience though. It’s business pages are still being developed and are promised later this year. Some companies like Ford are helping them with testing
Customers are there
Risk mitigation. - And we have to be there because if we’re not engaging in this channel we risk a very nasty surprise. Customers know how to leverage the power of social media – as I’ll be showing you in some examples shortly.
data opportunity This fascinating map tracking Facebook relationships.white lights represent cities, towns, and hamlets, with the blue streaks being the relationships linking them.
- Here’s what our focus is in a graph form. It’s my contention we need to move from this model.
Anyone remember the fast food product this lady is cramming down?
KFC launched this extraordinary looking bun-less battered chicken sandwich (it can’t be a sandwich without bread can it?) in US in April last year by targeting influential bloggers and using viral campaigns to excite media. 5 week campaign it smashed all records.
They used the same approach in NZ and it fairly exploded on twitter, facebook and traditional media.
Queues, column inches, Close Up and
Greenpeace put out viral You Tube video challenging Nestle’s policy of using palm oil from Indonesia which was depleting rainforests and having a terrible impact on Orangutans living in those rainforests. To get their message across, Greenpeace created a bizarre video spoof of a Kit Kat commercial.
Squeamish – please turn away now.
It portrayed a man at work eating the finger of an orangutan out of a Kit Kat wrapper. Greenpeacelawyered up and pretty quickly had the video removed from you tube
The attack then moved to the Nestle Facebook page, where posts from fans got angry retorts from the company’s moderator.
Over a period of 11 hours the Facebook moderator managed to turn a reasonably grumpy group into a raging mob that went global and was picked up by traditional media
Those responses could’ve come from David Brent couldn’t they? I’d love to know what the Nestle moderator is now doing for a job. Advising London’s mayor on PR? Working for Telecom’s PR agency? Sorry I’ll abstain from any further remarks like that.
After what must’ve been the Friday from hell for Nestle’s marketing team they eventually realised the approach wasn’t working
The blogosphere and Twitter were next, with Tweets followed by almost 18,000 people by March 20th. After this, messages were posted using Google AdWords, and the issue was picked up gradually by traditional media as well. This caused significant damage to the brand image of Nestle. An analysis on Twitter from 13th March to 22nd March 2010 showed us that there were over 215,000 tweets. In fact, Nestle’s policies and customer service were driven in huge numbers due to Nestle becoming a “trending topic” on Twitter.Eventually, Nestle responded to the campaign and announced that it was cutting its contract with Sinar Mars. Nestle also promised to use only certified sustainable palm oil by 2015.
Eventually, Nestle responded to the campaign and announced that it was cutting its contract with Sinar Mars. Nestle also promised to use only certified sustainable palm oil by 2015.
8 February, 2010 - 11:02'Oh so very over it today' tweets WestpacWith many banks still wary of social media, Australia's Westpac provided an example of the potential pitfalls today when an employee accidentally posted a self-pitying tweet using the firm's official account, prompting scorn from followers.Westpac, which recently posted first quarter profits of A$1.6 billion, told the world via its Twitter account that it was "Oh so very over it today".
The tweet was removed, with another posted explaining: "Yes, a case of the multiple account slip, here's hoping you have a better day tomorrow CT! ..Ean"Sentiment within the Twitterverse soon switched, with many expressing sympathy and concern for "CT".
I thought it only fair to air some of our dirty laundry following that example just to show that we’re all in this together. Popular Geekzone blogger Natt spent 45 minutes waiting in line at NZ Post Sylvia Park. Being a resourceful, geek-type he used his time profitably to update his blog on the long wait he had to post a parcel.It prompted a number of comments from people who had experience similar and then, just as everyone seemed to be running out of cathartic PostShop queue stories ...
...one rather out of the blue comment arrived from Bren pretty much going against the trend of other comments.
Which might have been fine if Geekzone hadn’t spotted from Bren’s message that he was sending it from the NZ Post internal network. This prompted a new string of comments that also spread to Twitter about honesty, being up front, corporate values etc. Classic example of the road to hell being paved with good intentions.
And finally the example that I think shows the best use of social media in NZ right now – the NZ airpoints fairy. She was created out of an idea tweeted by an Airpoints customer that wouldn’t it be great if there was an airpoints fairy who could grant my wishes. Air NZ engaged Aim Proximity to devise a persona and avatar who could do just that and some local Twitter magic began. The Airpoints fairy is followed by 11000 people and is just pure positive, brand enhancing energy for Air New Zealand. She’s also totally scaleable, not centred around one personality and performs one much loved function once a day that brings delight. Her mission is best expressed in her own words “I can help grant one Airpoints wish a day for Airpoints Members. Sometimes smaller, sometimes bigger. Follow me to see what happens”. Perfect. Totally spot on in all respects.To me these examples show clearly why we as businesses have to take on social media as a customer service channel - but, heres’ the rub, all of them, bar the Airpoints Fairy are totally unsustainable going forward. So why do I see social media as a golden opportunity then? Let me work through the main issue I see with the way we’re all dealing with social media right now.
Argument – from complaint resolution to engagement enhancinga) The opportunity is to scale the complaints channel from being resource heavy and reactive to low cost and proactive.Gauging sentimentSupporting the brandMarketing b) We need to understand how unsustainable the current model is (Esteban)
Social is all aobut data. Amount of data in social is 100x than traditional. 80 % noise. That noise needs to be filtered, you need analytics to fastly and accurately understand it and what to do. And it’s caused by a new super consumer - the prosumer. The hybrid being that produces as much as it consumes.You can only marvel at what the prosumer is accomplishing
Human beings created 5 Exabytes of unique information
...that’s 50 with 18 zeros.....
The term for something with that many zeroes is QUINTILLION.So 50 Quinillion bytes of data were created in this year.That’s more than was collectively generated by humans in the preceding 5,000 years.
We’re now doubling this every two years.This is the new reality and it’s Moores Law on anabolic steroidsAnd it’s caused by a new super consumer - the prosumer. The hybrid being that produces as much as it consumes.You can only marvel at what the prosumer is accomplishing
Twitter’s definition of a casual user turns into an “active user.” That moment happens when users follow 30 accounts, and when one-third of the people they follow also follow them back.Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-has-less-than-21-million-active-users-2011-4#ixzz1MbaaNdfS
it’s total user base is equal to the 3rd biggest country in the world after China and India
it’s total user base is equal to the 3rd biggest country in the world after China and India
The challenge for business is to be able to take advantage of all this activity – and we currently don’t have the tools to do this. And so we come back to what social media means to most businesses at the moment
Esteban Kolsky – Google ThinkJar.. You find customers who want to complain, they would do it anyway, they just get better escalation by doing it in TwitterI never met a customer in my life that could explain the situation in 140 characters, let alone have the problem resolved in 140 characters.
That’s a problem for businesses. That’s why ROI for social media is the elephant in the room.
That’s a problem for businesses. That’s why ROI for social media is the elephant in the room.
So what are we going to do about this ?It’s not enough to just be there. Seth Godinwrote 4.5 years ago wrote that you don’t get to manage your customers, CRM is dead. The customer now manages you. The mindset of manipulating what customers want to do is over. You need to read their minds instead of responding. How do we do that?
IB and the great divideDesign around teh customer
It’s now clear mobile devices will become the dominant method of accessing services on the internet within the next two yearsThe fact that so much of our life will sit on the phone, not just financially, but, for example, the way you start your car,
This is the Mbrace app developed for top of the range Mercedes Benz cars. It means you don’t need keys anymore to operate your Mercedes.
Through a book sized piece of hardware installed in the car your car interacts with you via your personal device. It gives you weather and traffice information. It can even call the garage and arrange a call out if it detects engine or other problems. It’s kinda standard kit for Mercedes owners who like the latest gadgets.Check Engine light on? Push the wrench-shaped Mbrace button in the console, and you're automatically connected to a service specialist who can remotely diagnose your problem and tell you if you need to call a tow truck or if you should be able to drive to the dealer in the morning. They will even make the appointment for you--and the dealer will already have the information gleaned from the onboard computer
Mobile will dominate the way you get around, communciate on the internet, the way you order your TV programmes, manage utilities, pay for content, etc. It won’t be magical or amazing, it will be just like switching a light on – all pervasive.” (Steve Townend, CEO of MoBank).
So where does all this leave us? How do we move from an unsustainable, reactive strategy to move towards the goal of reading our customers minds?