Customer Service: Which Retail Banks are Most Responsive on Twitter – Brandwatch study

| May 17, 2012 | 18 comments

Curious Eye_JS.jpg

This was a guest post that I did for Brandwatch, the social media and monitoring tools business, and originally appeared on their blog here. I have been collaborating with them on a piece of research around customer service and social media.

Our industry focus starts with the financial sector and, in particular, the high street banks.

As a result, we started a social media monitoring exercise from December 16th 2011 to March 16th 2012. Our objective was to investigate:

  • Who in the UK retail banking sector is using Twitter as a customer service channel?
  • How responsive are banks on Twitter for customer service and customer related issues?
  • Are banks listening and responding and to what degree?

Through our listening exercise, we found out a number of things. Firstly, we discovered that customer service plays the dominant role in Twitter activity across all banks, validating its importance as emerging customer service and contact channel. (see chart below).

Conversation banks subjects twitter

Note: this chart shows the distribution of Twitter mentions and the issues/areas that they related to across the banks surveyed. As we can see, the customer service element plays a leading role in the use of the platform.

Secondly, that Twitter is not unlike any other customer service channel and that responding and responsiveness to the customer are key to building engagement.

Lastly, our data capture and analysis has allowed us to construct a Response Index and league table for the main UK Retail Banks showing the level of responsiveness of the bank to a query regarding customer service and customer related issues.

Response-Index

It is a broad index and one that we aim to expand to include more banks, then repeat and refine on an ongoing basis to include, where possible, issues like time to respond and sentiment etc.

Both first in the rankings and direct with their responses, our initial findings suggest that First Direct is the most responsive bank on Twitter closely followed by Barclays and Lloyds TSB.

Surprisingly however, given its stated focus on customer service, Metro Bank is the least responsive bank on Twitter to queries regarding customer service and other customer related issues. Furthermore – rather aptly, regarding their performance in the Responsiveness League Table – Metro Bank failed to respond when asked if they would like to comment on our findings.

Let us know if your experience fits with our League Table findings and how you think we should be refining our analytics, or what else you think we should be measuring.

If you are interested in seeing the full results you can get a copy by clicking here.

Producing this report was, in part, a collaborative (or crowd-sourced) effort. Thank you to the following for contributing, commenting and offering constructive feedback on our data gathering and analysis:

Connecting the dots of word of mouth, customer loyalty and customer service

| May 14, 2012 | 11 comments

connect-the-dots

A recent piece of research from Clickfox got me to thinking about word of mouth, customer loyalty and customer service and if we should be thinking about ‘connecting the dots’ between them. In many cases and in many companies these three things can exist in isolation of each other.

However, the Clickfox research found that the best places to earn loyalty were at the point of purchase/service (49%) and at the point where a customer has an issue that customer service has to deal with (40%). The research goes on to say that 78% of happy customers reward companies that have earned their loyalty by talking about them – word of mouth.

Clickfox Customer Loyalty

This got me to thinking about loyalty and word of mouth and if the customer experiences that we deliver do not offer up opportunities for surprising and rewarding our customers at the ‘loyalty’ moments identified in the research and thus, potentially, generating extra word of mouth?

What I’m talking about is generating more of the Little Talk opportunities that I mentioned in one of my previous posts: The Big Talk and Little Talk of Word of Mouth Marketing Strategy.

For example, imagine you have a customer that you have spent some time with and they’ve just completed a purchase. Now, in the process you’ve probably got to know them a little better. Or, if they are an existing customer you probably know quite a bit about them already. So, how about once they have completed their purchase you give them something (the Little Talk thing) that you know they will like and enjoy just as a way of saying thank you for their purchase?

Or, imagine that you have a customer that needs a problem resolved. You solve their problem efficiently, effectively and with the minimum of fuss. And then, just as they are about to hang up the phone or leave you give them something (again the Little Talk thing) that you know they will like and enjoy just as a way of saying thank you for letting you solve their problem and to apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you do that for every customer but don’t you think it’s worth considering? It could have a significant effect on both your customer loyalty and word of mouth.

So, how about coming up with a few ideas, your the Little Talk things, and then giving your people some discretion in terms of who to mention it to to see what happens. Alternatively, just give them the freedom to mention it to anyone they think would appreciate it and then measure what happens.

Once you’ve got your people comfortable with this whole approach and you’re getting great feedback then start thinking about growing and expanding your initiative.

What do you think?

Thanks to whitney waller for the image.

Focusing on customer loyalty has allowed us to fundamentally change our business model

| May 8, 2012 | 22 comments

Focus

This is the fifth of a series of interviews with CEOs that were included in a book I wrote in late 2010 called RARE Business. It was a collection of thoughts, ideas and strategies to help businesses ‘build better relationships with their customers and their people’. You can pick up an electronic copy of the book for free by clicking on the THIRD button down in the left hand column or by clicking here.

The interviews were included to supplement my own thoughts and experience and add richness, depth and context. In the interviews, I asked them what they have done to drive their business’ success, customer focus and how they have built their employee and customer engagement.

The last interview in the series was with Justin Cooke, CEO of Fortune Cookie and is featured in Client relations – A phone call is worth 10 emails. A meeting is worth 100 calls.

This time round it is the turn of Jim Prior, CEO of The Partners to share his insights.

Over the last 25 years, The Partners has been the most creatively awarded agency in the UK (Design Week League Table November 2009). Part of the global WPP Group since 2000, with studios in London and New York, The Partners offers brand consultancy and design services to national and international clients, including Vodafone, Deloitte, Aviva, Astra Zeneca and The National Gallery.

In November 2009, The Partners was named the world’s most creative company by Design Week, beating Apple (it’s Design Group) into 2nd place.

Jim Prior, The Partners’ CEO, agreed to talk to us and share some insights about what has made his business so successful in retaining customers, building a great team and driving repeat business and growth. Here are some of his insights:

  1. Consistently over-deliver against expectations. Client relationships are strengthened by surpassing expectation in terms of the nature (or quality) of the deliverable against the stated brief, and in terms of delivering more than specified in the brief.
  2. Every relationship is different. We manage client relationships through our most senior people, adopting a bespoke approach towards the structure and programme of work for each situation.
  3. We aim to lead our industry. Promote our reputation in the industry and amongst existing and prospective clients through a concerted effort to win creative awards and as thought leaders on relevant topics.
  4. Get the initial part right. Occasionally a relationship may not work out as desired. When this occurs it is often because the brief was not properly clarified and agreed by both parties up front. We have learned that a clear, agreed brief is essential to our work.
  5. Clear positioning in the marketplace. In general I would say that our business is very clearly positioned in the marketplace. Where a client chooses to work with us they do so with a clear expectation of what they will get from us and also of the nature of the relationship that we will form with them. This generally means that our relationship remains strong throughout the work. We have learned that it always pays to stay true to our positioning when pitching for work, even if that means losing the pitch.
  6. Everyone is hands on. This is a relatively small organisation, 50 people, so our senior team involve themselves with our people in a very hands on manner. The ethos of The Partners is passed on through practical experience of collaboration in the firm.
  7. Don’t talk about culture, do culture. There is s a strong social culture to the business here too. Every Friday at 5.30pm all our people gather for drinks and we share news from the week, talk about inspirational books, films or suchlike. The culture of the firm is evident in its purest form here. Various other ad hoc events also draw this out over the year.
  8. Being the best means the best people. We are meticulous and unrelenting in our pursuit of the best talent to hire. We only select people who demonstrate technical talent and cultural fit with our agency. It can take us a long time to make key hires whilst we search for the right person, but that is a necessary investment towards the long-term health of our business.
  9. Loyalty has allowed us to fundamentally change our business model. Better customer retention and loyalty has shifted our business model from one dominated by short-term projects one dominated by long-term retained relationships with major clients. This provides us with the ability to plan ahead on a longer term horizon; gives more stability to the business; more sense of security to our people; and, ultimately, means we deliver better value to clients.

This is another great example of an established business that is leading its industry, empowering its team and delivering value for its customers.

Can you learn anything from their approach?

Thanks to ihtatho for the image.