Since March 2009, my team have been tracking and benchmarking how the global financial services industry is using social media to engage with their customers and their markets. We now track over 1,700 twitter accounts in 78 countries.
In Q4 2011, we started tracking over 200 twitter accounts dedicated to customer support, over and beyond financial services, all across industries, wordwlide.
I invite you to check our Top 10 most active customer care accounts as of 1st March 2012.
Just like Apple, PayPal isn't exactly well-known for its brilliant social media strategy. They are both brilliantly successful brands which haven't started to fully leverage the power of channels like facebook or twitter.
Yes, they both have a number of profiles on the most popular social networks globally, profiles with one might say sizable 'communities'. But success in social media doesn't lie in the size of your asset, right? ;)
Last week, I received an 'exclusive' invitation to join PayPal's new Merchant Panel. So in a world of crowdsourcing and innovation platforms, how inviting and engaging is this new initiative? How appealing is the reward?
Last week, Citbank Singapore proudly announced the launch of its new 'social' credit card, 'Clear 24/7'. Basically, the bank aims to urge its card holders to spread the word around them about the card and its perks, and reward them for doing so.
This new long term social strategy involves monthly contests on facebook and to support the launch, an initial contest to become a 'Social A Lister'.
I shared my initial thoughts in a short video where I mentioned two other recent social media innovations from American Express and Barclaycard US.
This is my latest video update on our popular Visible Banking Twitter Watch series, the most comprehensive benchmark of the worldwide financial services industry on twitter.
My team are now tracking over 1,680 accounts in 75 countries.
I've been following Interbank Peru's social media activities pretty much from the launch of their first facebook page 'mitiempo.pe' back in November 2009. Interbank's pages are all in the Top 50 of our Visible Banking Facebook Watch series (1,088 pages and apps in 75 countries).
A couple of weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised to get some coverage on their main corporate facebook page 'Interbank Peru'. Based on my experience, it is extremely rare to receive any kind of acknoledgement, even a simple 'thank you' via email, despite the hours spent producing an insightful article or video, and the word of mouth generated. Kudos to the Interbank team for their excellent influencer management strategy.
Earlier this week, I received a tweet from one of my key contacts in the Digital team of the leading peruvian bank. Basically, he sent me a link to this youtube video, introducing the new social customer care strategy launched by Interbank on 4th October 2011...
A few years ago, I used to work as Senior Innovation Manager at Lloyds TSB.
Working in innovation in the banking industry is challenging to say the least. Last week I met a group of innovators from a couple of large UK banks and I could feel their frustration: day after day you experience the inertia, the unwillingness (or the unability) to partner with small and young, but highly innovative, companies. But if working in innovation is tough, it is also tremendously exciting and rewarding. Indeed, the innovation team has a unique opportunity to change the way the bank is organized, the way the bank works, and the way the bank interacts with its customers.
But in reality most innovations are incremental, very few are disruptive. By experience, few innovation teams have a sizable budget or enough influence to pilot disruptive services in a live environment. And too often they sit in Group IT and focus too much on technology... whereas championing innovation presents very much an organizational challenge: after all, we all are (or should be) in innovation.
The real task of the 'Chief Innovation Officer' and his team is to change their colleagues' perception of innovation, convince them of the value of making time to share ideas and participate, and REWARD them for their contribution. At the same time, they have to win the support from the Senior Executives and convince the middle managers concerned with their own deadlines.
Your budget is limited, so you might as well make sure to find some creative, inexpensive, ways to communicate and promote your initiatives both internally and externally.
Involve your colleagues and your market as much as possible at the idea generation and idea validation phases. And what's the best way to do that? Embracing social media of course! I've always been an advocate for leveraging the wisdom of the crowd and blogging about innovation in banking and insurance.
I invite you to watch my youtube video on innovation labs in financial services with a focus on Citi's 'Innovation Loop'.
Companies mentioned * US: Citi - 'Innovation Loop', American Express - 'Innovation Lab', Fidelity - 'Innovation Labs', Wells Fargo - 'Labs' & 'Retirement Labs' * Denmark: Danske Bank - 'Idebank' * Italy: Webank - 'the Wepad project' * Spain: BBVA - 'Planta 29' and 'Open Talent', Bankinter - 'Bankinter Labs' * Sweden: Avanza Bank - 'Innovation Labs'
I invite you to check my social media directory in financial services where you will find more links to innovation labs from the industry. As usual, feel free to flag any missing initiatives.
Working Together We at Visible Banking would be delighted to help you and your team better UNDERSTAND and LEVERAGE social media in a strategic yet pragmatic way. So please don't hesitate to call me, send me an email or DM me (@Visible_Banking) to book a meeting and talk about twitter, facebook, crowdsourcing, customer reviews, social media & social commerce in banking, financial services and insurance.
Last week, ASB Bank officially launched the very first virtual branch on facebook. This was a great announcement, and the bank genuinely aims to provide a second-to-none level of service on the 500 million member strong social network.
I was extremely keen to try the service to better understand what Anna Curzon, General Manager Internet Banking, and her team meant by "Virtual Branch". Last wednesday, at about 9pm GMT, I spent half an hour chatting with one of their agents on facebook. Amit was very pleasant, knowledgeable and responsive. He provided me with an excellent level of customer support.
So, just like me you may have a few questions: * How comprehensive is the range of services delivered by the bank via their application? * How innovative is the application, and how intuitive is its interface? * Did the bank manage to take the web chat experience to the next level? * How much does the bank leverage the power for facebook and make it easy for users to spread the word?
You will find most of the answers in my video. You will also better understand what I mean by "Virtual Branch 1.0".
As you know, I am interested in the bigger picture. In my posts, I always make sure to put some perspective on the social media initiatives I review, and compare them with similar initiatives in our industry.
My goal is to add as much value as possible and to convince you we should start working together soon. ;)
My Video Review I shot this video on 19 September. I spent close to 20 minutes talking about ASB Bank's social media strategy (twitter, blogs, and of course facebook) and sharing my initial comments on this innovative initiative.
Q&As Please find below the most interesting parts of my conversation with Amit, one of ASB Bank's eight agents dedicated to their Virtual Branch on facebook.
Once more, let me praise Amit for doing a brilliant job. I offered to give him more visibility in this post, but Amit doesn't have a linkedin profile or a twitter account yet.
Q: I believe you are 8 agents in the Virtual Branch team, am I correct? A: Yes, we are a team of 8 consultants working in the Virtual Branch.
Q: I assume you are not 100% focused on the facebook chat, am I correct? A: The 8 of us are a fully dedicated team working in the virtual branch, running shifts from 8am to 9pm everyday. We also have a presence on twitter.
Q: It makes sense, thanks. Do you have a dedicated twitter account in addition to @ASBBank and @ASBSecurities? A: Our team is currently focused on facebook only. We have another team that works on our twitter account.
Q: How secure is this chat? A: Data generated by the ASB Virtual Branch application is not stored by facebook or any third party. Only ASB have access, and it is protected by the same level of security monitoring and software that we use for ASB's FastNet Services. No one than the customer / the bank can read the conversation. It is not made public for anyone to comment.
Q: I appreciate that, and this is great. It is just a shame a happy customer can't use the native feature of facebook such as the share feat., comment or like to recommend your excellent customer service! A: Customers are able to post their comments / views on the ASB wall.
Q: How much dedicated training did you and your seven colleagues get? A: All of our consultants have over 2 years of banking experience. This Virtual Branch service have been set up to provide another innovative opportunity for ASB to chat with the online customers through a channel that suits them. We have received extensive training prior to the launch in relation to facebook and webchats.
Q: Any sales goals? A: At present, because this is a new initiative with the bank, sales goals have not been set.
Q: Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer my questions! Much appreciated. A: No worries Christophe, it has been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for popping in to chat, feel free to come back if you have any more questions.
"A web widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation. They are derived from the idea of code reuse. Other terms used to describe web widgets include: gadget, badge, module, webjit, capsule, snippet, mini and flake. Web widgets usually but not always use DHTML, JavaScript, or Adobe Flash. Widgets often take the form of on-screen tools (clocks, event countdowns, auction-tickers, stock market tickers, daily weather etc)." Source:WikipediA.org
This is one the slides I use in my presentations on social media in banking and financial services.
Just a few statistics from Facebook on that matter: 95% of the 175million active Facebook users have used at least one of the 52,000 applications built on Facebook platform.
A few banking / financial services institutions are already experimenting widgets such as Fidelity, MBNA, Amplify Credit Union or Standard Chartered. Of course, the leading startups in online finance have also launched their own facebook applications, iphone application or mac/vista widgets: check Wesabe or Mint.com.
Worklight helps its clients reach customers, channels, employees, and partners securely in the places they frequent online, such as iGoogle, Windows Live, desktop widgets, RSS readers, Facebook, the Apple iPhone and more.
A few days before leaving London to Bahrain to speak at MEFTEC, I met Shahar Kaminitz, Worklight's Founder & CEO. I invite you to watch my video interview and find out more about Shahar's vision for the banking/financial services industry.
I had a great time in Athens. the quality of the speakers and the attendees was again outstanding. Congratulations to Philippe and the rest of the EFMA team.
Tony de Bree, Senior Consultant at ABN Amro
Please note that Tony shared his own views and opinions during the event and my interview.
Tony (left on the picture) and I started to share our views on web 2.0 a few months back, via linkedin. I invite you to visit Tony's blog.
It was a pleasure to attend his entertaining presentation, "How web 2.0 can help large financial institutions through the current crisis" in Athens. I totally agree with Tony: "I like chaos: it is an opportunity to create something new".
Please find below 3 of the 7 killer apps for web 2.0, listed by Tony: * Using web 2.0 within organisations to “blow up” the company / split it * Merging internal apps and external collaborative environments in real time to become client-centric * Standardizing all user experiences (internal & external) and connecting everybody to everybody (when allowed)
But Tony reminded us that New Technology + Old Organisation = Expensive Old Organisation.
I invite you to watch my video interview with Tony:
I had a great time in Athens. the quality of the speakers and the attendees was again outstanding. Congratulations to Philippe and the rest of the EFMA team.
NyKredit's WebDesk, the Winner of the 2008 Online Award Again, congratulations to Thomas and Lene from NyKredit. Despit a fierce competition, the majority of the audience voted for their recently enhanced WebDesk service.
They launched the first version of WebDesk back in January 2007. The service wasn't that intuitive nor easy to use. The conversion rates never really took off.
NyKredit never lost hope in this interactive chat service, and they successfully launched WebDesk phase 2 in July 2008. As a result, they saw an increase of 500% in nb of leads and 400% in online sales. Well done.
NyKredit 2.0 I must admit I wasn't aware that NyKredit has been so active in the social media space in the last couple of years.
What a busy year 2007 for NyKredit: they launched an interactive video service, WebDesk phase 1, a blog, an idea generation plartform, and a few Rich Internet Apps (RIAs).
Video & Online TV: the next big thing in banking? Last month, NyKredit launched their own tv channel, NyKredit.tv.
Kindly, Thomas made me aware of Jyske Bank's impressive push in the video space with jyskebank.tv. They produce about 10 new videos everyday!
Thomas Kragh - Chef Internet & Lene Klausen - Project Consultant I invite you to watch my video interview with Thomas and Lene.
“Christophe's book is really the must-have synopsis of the current state-of-play in social media in banking. Christophe has taken a deep passion for the topic, and turned it into an account of the landscape valuable to anyone who has social media responsibilities in financial services” James Gardner, General Manager at Spigit
“Christophe is extremely well informed about the banking and financial services industries. He's at all the right conferences, and digs deep with his interviews of all the influencers and innovators. He's also a tremendously nice guy :-)” Aaron Patzer, Founder & CEO at Mint Software
“Christophe seems to have his finger on the pulse of the financial services industry. Visible Banking has become "the" source of information for innovations in the financial services industry.” Tim Collins, SVP-Experiential Marketing at Wells Fargo
It was a pleasure to participate to EFMA's 
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