Apr 12
17
Zions Bank Creates Brand Advocates with Social Media
In preparation for this year’s Fiserv Forum client conference, I sat down with Nicole Fields, Social Media Manager for Fiserv, to discuss the growing trend of social media in the financial industry. Check out my interview below, and visit their blog for more.
Social media remains one of the hottest topics in financial services — and it’s not likely to go away anytime soon. Financial institutions of all sizes are grappling with why, how and where to get started in social media. At the Fiserv Forum client conference later this month, a panel of our clients will share their experiences integrating social media into their overall business strategy.
(You can follow all the conversations at conference by searching the #FiservForum hashtag on Twitter or like Fiserv on Facebook for regular updates.)
Matt Wilcox, Zions Bancorpation One of the featured panelists is Matt Wilcox, Director of eBusiness Strategy at Zions Bancorporation. Salt Lake City-based Zions Bank is well positioned to offer guidance on social media. The bank’s social platforms are a place to share content and initiate discussions around issues, products and services. Matt leads a team of employees who assist with strategic development, content creation, real-time monitoring as well as reporting on metrics and analytics.
In advance of the conference panel, I recently caught up with Matt and asked him a few questions about Zions Bank’s experiences in getting started and maintaining an active social media presence.
Zions Bank got started fairly early in social media. How did your activities evolve? Were there any major obstacles you had to overcome?
Our initial strategies were built around the question, “Why would you want to be friends with your bank?” We didn’t necessarily want our fans and followers to see us as simply their bank, but more of a go-to resource for some of the most important aspects in their daily lives. We provide content that’s relevant to our target audience—we encourage engagement by offering personality behind our brand. We don’t push product—instead we provide valuable financial info and tips, offer giveaways and promotions, and request regular feedback and insights from our clients.
One of the challenges we have faced is figuring out how to accurately measure the ROI of social media. We knew we wouldn’t see results overnight and although we can utilize metrics such as relationships saved, costs deflected from call centers, accounts opened, etc., these numbers aren’t immediately apparent. We learned to watch for increases in brand awareness and how our customers were engaging with us in the social media space. It’s a shift from ROI to ROE (Return on Engagement), which we had to explain to executive management, meanwhile determining how to adjust our reporting accordingly.
Social media is unique in that it allows customers the opportunity to provide feedback directly to you in an open forum for the entire world to see. Some customers resort to Facebook or Twitter to vent frustrations—how do you handle negative comments?
You can’t be afraid of losing control of your brand messaging. I’ve met so many executives and management teams that worry about potentially negative comments targeted at their brands. I can guarantee that you’ll have people tweet complaints about your products or services, or talk about the bad customer service they received at your store on your Facebook wall. But wouldn’t it be worse if they weren’t talking about you at all?
The key is to handle negative chatter in a timely, personable manner. Most of the time, customers just want to be heard, and social media allows them the opportunity. Reach out to frustrated customers and find out how you can help. Many times you can remedy the situation just by offering assistance and letting them know you’re listening.
Social media has a number of evangelists and almost as many skeptics. How would you make the case that social media is important to financial services and worth the time and effort for financial marketers?
I can’t really emphasize this enough: There’s no reason that a business or brand should not be using social media. It allows for a deeper engagement with current and prospective clients, much more so than a piece of direct mail or email blast. It offers alternate customer service portals, provides a sense of transparency for your brand—which is what consumers want—and allows businesses to leverage consumer insights for things like product development and testing. Bottom line, it’s allowing you to reach an exponentially larger audience for much less money.
What’s your advice to other financial institutions that are interested in social media but not sure how to get started?
It’s critical to your future success to get key management and stakeholders informed and engaged at an early stage—especially in a regulated industry such as banking and finance. You will need their sponsorship and support in order to develop long-term strategies. Once you have executive buy-in, you can work on developing a strategy to use as a sort of safety net. Such a strategy can provide the framework for logistical workflow, keeping you focused while helping you to achieve your objectives.
Don’t be hesitant to dive in head first. Just be sure you’re providing the type of content that caters to your specific audience. Develop initial acquisition campaigns to draw fans and followers in. But remember, once you’ve built your fan base, you have to give them a reason to stay: Become a valuable, relevant resource for them and they’ll, in turn, be your biggest brand advocates.
Zions Bank Gets Social
Twitter: @ZionsBank
Twitter: @AskZionsBank
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Apr 12
16
Twitter becomes most popular social media resource adopted by financial firms
Financial companies have increasingly turned to social media services as a way of promoting products, engaging with customers, recruiting new employees and responding to customer feedback. But when it comes to the different social media services banks and lenders rely on, which is the most popular?
A recent study conducted by research firm Corporate Insight, polled 90 financial services firms and evaluated their use of social media. According to the results, Twitter beat out Facebook in a number of categories, namely because it provides customers with brief, up-to-date information on various services.
For example, the results show that Twitter was not only embraced more by firms than Facebook, but is also quickly becoming banks’ most widely utilized customer service platform. However, both Twitter and Facebook were listed as effective recruitment tools for new workers.
Facebook, in contrast, was listed as having great “social value,” which measures the level and effectiveness of certain types of consumer engagement, the study explained. For example, Facebook shares were perceived to have more social value than comments about a company. However, comments were seen to carry more weight than Facebook “likes.”
“Engagement is truly what sets social media apart from more traditional business-to-consumer communications, and this direct interaction with current and prospective clients is a major benefit of a well-executed social media offering,” said Alan Maginn, Corporate Insight senior analyst and social media expert.
In addition, the study showed that financial firms that drew from a large amount of social media platforms had greater success communicating with customers, responding to feedback and creating and maintaining relationships with customers. For example, many of the top-ranked financial services report having multiple Facebook pages and frequently-updated Twitter feeds to give its customers constant access to its services.
#Accelerate shows why it is the must attend event for Web/Digital Analysts and Marketers:
A full day packed with content and speakers with no breaks other than lunch…exhausting, right? Not in the least. #Accelerate, the first conference I have attended with a hash tag in its name, delivered as promised. I was wowed by great presentations, which were packed into a top ten format (yes, Mr. Letterman you should be worried) and full of great tips I can take back to my team. My own top ten list included tips on how to grow your digital business such as setting specific goals and optimizing your sales funnel. See more information on this innovative day at http://john.webanalyticsdemystified.com/2012/04/06/accelerate-chicago-debrief/
Thanks again to the folks at Web Demystified for giving me the chance to attend and participate–@erictpeterson, @brianthawkins, @adamgreco, and @johnlovett
Oh, I almost forgot the best part…the conference was FREE!
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Mobile platforms, including banking, payments and purchases, are a growing industry, and the results of a new study show more Americans are trending toward this type of service.
A recent study conducted by the Consumer Electronics Association reveals 37 percent of individuals who own a mobile device – including tablets, smartphones and cellphones – conduct some level of mobile commerce, ranging from making online or in-store purchases to seeking out coupons and discounts from certain retailers. In addition, the study discovered that mobile transactions were spread out across a broad range of products, including clothing, music, books and electronics.
“The future of mobile commerce is very promising,” said CEA strategic research manager Jessica Boothe. “Consumers are open to new technologies as they continue to evolve and develop. With the growth of mobile devices, mobile commerce will play a more integral role in the everyday shopping habits of consumers, especially as they continue to seek bargains and comparison shop.”
However, there are still some concerns over the safety and security of mobile devices as a payment system that may be holding many consumers back, the study acknowledged. While 50 percent of survey participants said they do not use mobile devices to make purchases because they prefer other payment methods, 35 percent said they had security concerns.
“Consumers want assurances that their personal information is 100 percent safe and secure,” said Boothe. “They are not fully confident in technologies available.”
A separate report conducted by AlixPartners reveals that in addition to commerce, mobile banking is expected to increase significantly in the future, climbing to 50 percent of mobile users by 2016. As more consumers rely on this type of technology to manage their banking, credit and spending, retailers and financial institutions are scrambling to develop new systems and features to accommodate the growth.
Mar 12
16
Mobile alerts: rare instance of mutual benefit
In a rare instance of mutual benefit, the fast-growing popularity of mobile alerts promises to keep consumers happy while actually saving banks money. No wonder smart banks are jumping on providing quality, secure options for receiving information about accounts, balances and cleared items via text, email and RSS.
I should point out that fast growing popularity is another way of saying fast-growing consumer demand. For once, we bankers can be grateful for something the market is forcing upon us. If only it worked out that way more often.
According to a recent article in Newswire Today, 40 percent of customer calls to branches and information hotlines pertain to balance inquiries. Think of it. The average customer service employee spends 16 hours out of a normal 40-hour work week looking up balances and cleared transactions while customers wait on the phone or in the branch. Ready for some math? If you take those 16 hours and multiply them times 50 weeks, you get 800 work-hours in a year. Multiply those 800 work-hours by the number of people you employ in those positions, and multiply that times the average hourly wage you pay them. That’s what it costs your bank to tell customers what checks have cleared and what their balance is.
Doubtless you will agree that it would be a heck of a lot cheaper for a computer to automatically transmit the same information.
In part, you can thank PCs and laptops for creating a favorable environment that allowed to flourish such a fortuitous opportunity to cut costs and increase customer satisfaction. Credit for its recent snowballing, however, goes largely to the growth of mobile device use. The number of Americans today without a mobile device is so small as to render them statistically insignificant. By now you can pretty much assume that all of your clients pack a mobile device. Equally significant, a recent report from mobiThinking.com shows that 25 percent of your customers use only a mobile device to access the Internet. That means that if you’re not offering a suite of mobile options and alerts, you are letting down one in four of your customers.
We can only expect the number of mobile banking users to increase. That is precisely why a number of banks are increasing options for consumers to receive information via mobile devices.