It seems like an oxymoron to talk about banks and social media, given the former’s often authoritarian grip over their employees’ access to the web. However, all that looks set to change. Banks (or any other organization for that matter) are finding that the same level of control can’t be exercised over their consumers.

The Financial Times has published an excellent article about business and social technology (or social media). It postulates that organizations need more listening, watching, engaging with interested parties or being responsive to communities.

Banks surely recognize that they need to be where their consumers are. That was probably the premise of the introduction of Internet banking.

It used to be that organizations might be able to “own” the conversational platforms where netizens might find their comments (or complaints) censored on sites hosted by the organizations themselves. The point is, people are talking about you/your brand/organization/product/service whether you like it or not.


FB’s Lexicon gives some interesting data over the content of Facebook Walls over time. Looking at the period of January 2009 to current, it seems the total amount of mentions of DBS and HSBC are going in opposite directions.

Mentions of DBS are going up…

Recent events include:

• DBS, Singapore banks’ rating outlooks cut by Moody’s
• DBS “disappointed” with Josie Lau’s disregard for staff Code of Conduct
• DBS expresses disapproval of their Vice President of Credit Cards, Josie Lau, taking up the presidency of women’s group AWARE
• DBS Group Holdings independent director and his 152 directorships
• DBS High Notes 5 case
• Investors sue DBS over Lehman linked Notes
  

Whereas, mentions of HSBC peaked around March 2009 and has dipped since, over the same period.

Events that happened in March 2009 that might have contributed to the increase in conversations.

• HSBC requested that trading of its shares be suspended in Hong Kong ahead of an “announcement of a corporate action.”
• HSBC announced the closure of its HSBC Finance arm in America, leading to nearly 6,000 job losses
• HSBC shares tumbled
• HSBC China has been named China’s Best Foreign Retail Bank in the annual Asian Banker Excellence in Retail Financial Services Awards Programme.

Google Trends gives a much more nuanced analysis because it allows us to narrow down to geographical data.
Some comparisons from Google Trends, of search traffic from Singapore ( I am biased of course, August is the month of National Day ) on the various trends.

Between the Lexicon and Google Trends data, it shows people are not only talking about banks, they are actively searching for information on them. And this number has increased from year 2004, regardless of which bank we are looking at (DBS, HSBC, Citibank, in this case). I did try looking for a couple of other local banks, but there wasn’t quite enough data for Lexicon to pull any charts out. No conversations in itself, is possibly an indicator of other things.

Trust (me)
One would be hard pressed to find someone without an inherent skepticism about the banking industry after the global financial meltdown. Keeping silent is simply not acceptable to most consumers anymore, especially in this age where the internet affords so much transparency.

Your consumers are moving their conversations about you online. They are looking for information about you online. If you are not managing what the active netizens are saying, will the first thing that people find while keying in a search term be a negative post, or a positive one? If, a bank, you are not listening, how are you going to respond to something you’re not even aware of?

What is your take on this?
….More thoughts in the next post!