Andy Golding, Chief Executive of Saffron Building Society shares his thoughts about Saffron’s recent AGM.
Saffron AGM Videocast
This videocast marks the start of a series from Saffron, bringing senior members of the building society onto camera sharing their thoughts on the financial services sector, savings and mortgage products and what Saffron can do for its members and customers.
Take a look at Saffron’s YouTube channel.
I was part of a recent panel at a Finextra social media event that included Aden Davies or @aden_76 as we know him on Twitter – we were discussing social media and how banks and building societies could get involved.
One aspect of the discussion was gamification. Aden urged the audience of bankers not to get involved with what should be the fun activity of playing games. (That’s what I remember of the conversation, however I’m sure Aden will put me right if I have misinterpreted his comments in any way.)
To be honest I can see his point of view, who wants their bank interfering with their social time or trying to make saving or getting a mortgage a game activity? Surely, the idea of fun ‘n’ games and financial services go together like David Cameron and John Reid. Errrrr……. well, after some more thought about this concept I started to think it might just be possible to make the ‘f’ of financial services stand for fun.
For example, Empire Avenue and Foursquare use game strategies to engage customers with commercial brands. Empire Avenue does this through measuring influencers through a stock market system - key to a brand to understand who they need to be talking about them ( and having the most valued shares is the way of winning along with rewarding social activity with badges.) Foursquare offers customers the status (and game play) of becoming an organisation’s or branch’s mayor, plus this is boosted with real life discounts and rewards along with the virtual badges.
Sorting your finances is a serious topic, but does it need to be such hard work? Not everyone is motivated to really get the most from their money, so making it more socially interactive and game based could help more people to get involved with the decisions they make about their money. During the Finextra event so shouldn’t banks and building societies be doing their best to make it more engaging?
Here are my ideas for making saving a bit more interesting:
Would this style of saving be welcomed?
Online communities I have worked with in the past stated lack of motivation being the biggest barrier to saving and they requested more practical help and rewards during the saving process. Others will hate the idea of a bank trying to make savings fun – they can do this themselves without a magic wizard helping them along the way or sharing their experiences with others. But, customers are different and banks and building societies need to recognise that and embrace the new opportunities to make their brand, products and services relevant to a new wave of customers.
It’s still a minority of banks and building societies in the UK that are involved in social media. They’re behind the US brands of Citi Group and Bank of America that have embraced social media to handle customer enquiries and complaints, develop their brands and generate interest in job vacancies.
This blog post is a quick summary of some banks and building societies maybe hesitating about entering the world of social media.
Fear of a really old law.
The 1924 law (states financial services companies can’t publicly identify the customers that have accounts with them) has been cited by banks such as HSBC as a reason for delay in entering the world of social media to liaise with their customers. Meanwhile others such as LloydsTSB have chosen to ignore this and are talking to their customers on Twitter.
Fear of regulations they already comply with.
In financial services making sure the regulatory requirements are met is essential. Social media does not require banks and building societies to meet new requirements but it does require a degree of thinking through and boundary setting on agreeing who can post on behalf of the brand to social media sites, keeping posts within the boundaries agreed internally and ensuring these are delivered in a timely fashion.
“Customers don’t want it” or “Social media is only for kids”
Some financial services brands think their customers don’t want to engage with social media.
It’s really hard to make social media scalable
Creating a service through social media for many hundreds of thousands of customers is harder than for a smaller customer base.
All the issues above hold their own difficulties and it is for each brand to decide if they are worth overcoming or not.
Personally speaking and for the brand I work for; Saffron Building Society, we definitely think it’s worth making the effort to be involved in social media. Here are my thoughts on how we’ve worked to become a social building society http://www.finextra.com/fullfeature.asp?id=1438
Bank brands are in tatters. Part nationalisation, poor complaints handling, banker bonuses and accusations of mis-selling have ripped bank brands apart.
Lloyds TSB have announced their 2011 marketing strategy will focus on regaining customer trust. Their advertising through 2011 will show customers how LloydsTSB can help them with mobile banking, text alerts and Saturday opening. Whilst this is of merit, is this enough to build trust? Trust is highly complex and requires a number of factors to achieve a positive result.
So after a bit of thought I jotted down the components that could help build trust and how a bank may demonstrate these to customers/
Credibility
Basically do what you say you will do. Make a financial commitment to customer service standards. If you don’t meet a transfer deadline or process a mortgage in a set time frame, give the customer £50. It will show your serious about your customer service standards and should focus the mind if you have any service trouble spots.
Cooperation
Be flexible. Banks have too many rules. Most of them stupid. Give people a bit of flex – given a relationship between a bank and customer could be over 40 years, is it not worth allowing them some slack now and then. Let the overdraft fee go if it’s a one-off, let people out of the tied savings if they have an emergency they need to pay for. Let your staff use their own common sense to decide if a customer is genuine and should be given a helping hand.
Reliability
Offer consistent standards, systems and processes. Involve customers in helping you establish where these differ.
Reputation
Bring in your advocates. Ensure your staff and your customers hear from your advocates through online feedback and videos. Publish these to staff and customers. Go further and yu can collate real-time feedback across branches, contact centres and online and then publish these realtime in branches, on social networks and on your website. Make sure you respond in return, either to say thank you or to address any problems.
Information
Be useful to your customers. Offer them tailored information above and beyond the product sale alone. Allow them to create bespoke literature packs designed for them rather than generic heavy weight pieces of literature. You can allow customers to select from screens in branch the info they require and then print on demand in the branch and replicate this online. Offer mobile apps to help them track their money and calculate their financial future.
Benevolence
Show how your brand contributes outside of the banking world, how do you make life better for others? Try to involve your customers in this process. For example, every time you make a transaction online, the bank donates money to charity – this generates a tweet from the customer to their followers saying “Thanks to ANCBank I’ve given £10 today to xyzcharity”.
Communication
Remember this is a relationship with a customer not just a current account. To communicate effectively you really need to know your customer. Data and modelling techniques can help to establish the most appropriate communications methods, channels and products for your customers. However, don’t forget the power of face to face relationships – use feedback from staff to help develop these statistical models into something deeper and more colourful. Co-creation groups can help develop relevant propositions for your customers and demonstrate to your customers that their in control of developing the service rather than just being sold to!
Gratitude
Say “Thank you”. imagine the power of an online or TV campaign where a bank thanked individual customers. So, the CEO , the branch manager, the contact centre operator, saying “Thank you to Mrs Brown in Stockton for being a customer for over 15 years.” These selected customers could then follow-up with their stories and thanks.
This mixture of factors delivered across promotions, research, product design, staff empowerment, new technologies and customer service standards could prove very powerful in establishing trust and creating a highly differentiated bank brand.
But will any bank ever adopt these marketing policies?
This is an addition to my previous blog post Weak Advertising Claims
The recipient today is the Maybelline advert for Falsies Mascara. They don’t use any statistics, instead relying on post production enhancements (basically digitally altering images) to boost the appeal of their product.
There is a warning advising of this but I find it small and really hard to spot. Have a look and see if you can spot the warning, what do you think, is it clear and easy to spot?
Financial Services Marketing
