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Standard Banks Approach to Social Media (Interview)

I have the opportunity to interview a few key business people inside South Africa top businesses. A few weeks ago I released the Deloitte interview which was very insightful. Today I am proud to present my interview with Bellinda Carriera, the Interactive Marketing Head at Standard Bank Group. I have been very impressed with Bellinda’s keen insight into social media and how it should be brought into the marketing function. I hope you enjoy the interview.

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1) How has Standard Bank dealt with the communication shift presented by social media? Have there been any organizational or structural changes?

We have integrated social media into various aspects of our marketing and communications. We understand that social media is multifaceted and that you can’t just use it for marketing purposes, you have to deal the full spectrum e.g. create and manage your own platforms as well as listen and monitor your brand everywhere. We have therefore incorporated social media marketing into our Digital Marketing team, it is an integrated part of their digital marketing strategies for all campaigns that they are involved in. We have then also created a specific unit to deal with Social Media strategy, platform creation and management as well as our Online Reputation Management Programme. This unit uses our Social Media agency as well as a large network of contacts internally to manage the content on our social media platforms as well as deal with any reputational and/or servicing issues in the social media space. So, in summary, yes, there have been significant organisational and structural changes in order to properly handle social media in our organisation.

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2) I have heard that you can contact Standard Bank on any social media channel and they will respond from their call centre which is equipped to answer questions on any media channel. Is this true?

This is true, but I will clarify… You can contact us on any of our Social Media channels. If we can answer you in the public domain, we will do so. If your query/complaint requires any reference to your personal or banking details, we will request these details and any background privately and forward the information to nominated people in various departments who are best equipped to handle your query properly and quickly. This could be our Call centre, Customer Relations Centre, your private or business banker, one of our product house call centres etc etc. The job of our Social Media team is to connect you with the right person who can help you and to ensure that any correspondence is tracked properly on our systems and that you are answered properly and promptly.

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3) You said in your presentation at #smwf that social media communication needs to be authentic, and honest. How do you deal with situations where as a corporate entity you cannot always be as honest with the public as they would like? (I.E. In a case where you are legally bound, or simply that the decision made does not benefit the client)

This is a challenge. Every situation is different and needs to be assessed individually, so there is not one answer to this question.

If there is, for example, a systems problem, we try to give as much information as we can as soon as we know what the issue is eg “it was a POS outage affecting Western Cape”, or “it is a problem that only affects Internet banking and will hopefully be fixed in x hours” etc. etc. We always acknowledge the issue, take responsibility and apologise, often individually to each person, where we can, which hopefully helps us demonstrate authenticity… after all, they have taken the time to inform us/complain so it’s only fair that we take the time to respond to their specific comment. In these situations, security protocols don’t allow us to be too technical, so we can’t divulge exactly what the issue is, which can sometimes frustrate the community, but we cannot be more ‘open’ than we are allowed to be.

In situations where a customer has a specific issue, for example a fraud complaint, and challenges us on social media, we will take the conversation offline onto more private channels to ensure confidentiality of the customer’s details and to investigate the issue fully via official channels (we have to do this by law). Sometimes the customer is using social media as a last resort on a very frustrating issue where they have had no other joy following other processes, in which case the team get as much info on the case as possible and escalate the issue immediately.

Depending on the situation (each has to be investigated), we may mention to the community that we are investigating or that we are already aware of the issue, but we do not update the whole community on the details of what’s going on, as this would be unethical. In these cases, we are pretty much ‘sitting ducks’ :-). If the issue cannot be resolved to the customers’ satisfaction (which is often due to a multitude of reasons, sometimes it is our fault and sometimes it is the customer’s, often it’s both) we have to close the case on our side and will officially correspond with the customer privately that there is nothing more we can do. We have had instances where the customer is not happy with the outcome and continue ‘flaming’ us, but there it nothing much we can do about this. We do sometimes write blog post (with no specific details) about the learnings from a particular issue that may help other customers avoid similar problems, or to provide more information on how we can help handle similar situations more efficiently, and we may tweet the blog post so that customers can see that we’re trying to take some learnings out of an experience… but most of the time, once we’ve done all we can, we have to allow the customer their right to freedom of speech and wait it out.

In some instances where the issue is really significant, it will kick off a crisis communications process internally where a broader team than the social media team will get involved to manage the issue in social media and traditional media channels.

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4) In your #smwf presentation you stated that each social media site seems to have it’s own culture. You Facebook community love brand engagement and the twitter community seems to prefer more of a support based communication. Can you expand on your learnings here?

Each of our communities has evolved in its own way over time. It’s as much a factor of the functionality of the platform as it is the type of demographic that use the platform. Facebook users are more diverse in age and interests and and because of the flexible navigation, tab functionality and fan page functionality, we are able to have slightly richer content on our Facebook profiles and are able to leverage them more for our campaigns.

The functionality of the platform itself affects the community’s expectations of the experience, which is a critical influence in how we use Facebook (eg users expect not to have to leave Facebook in order to participate in a conversation or promotion). This means that you have to think about what you do on Facebook differently to other platforms, eg Twitter. Twitter users tend to use the platform more for information sharing and Twitter users do expect to link out of Twitter to get more information so your content strategy needs to be different on this platform.  Also Twitter communities are often centred around a specific industry or interest group and the conversations tend to be less ‘frivoulous’ than FaceBook. But the most important difference between the two, is that Twitter users are used to immediacy, so they want to get an immediate response to a question. Hence Twitter has evolved into a more service centred channel.

Our blog is also a different channel and is core to our content strategy for all our platforms.. It is a dynamic space where users expect to find out about our opinion on a topic, and they do expect us to respond, generally in a conversation around a particular post but the expectation of immediacy is probably not as profound as on Twitter. The biggest learning, however, is that your community will guide you on what they want, but either engaging or not, and quite often, by ‘telling you straight’ whether they like something or not, so listening is fundamental to success.

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5) In your experience, what is the single, most fundamental shift that social media has bought into business?

The most fundamental shift that social media has brought into business, in my opinion, can be summed up in one word ‘vulnerability‘. Business are no longer in control, of their messages, of their reputation and, even in some cases, their products and processes. Their customers have a more powerful voice and can find eachother, they have rights and they are more discerning… this power shift has created a much more vulnerable state for businesses who need to work harder to be relevant and whose shortcomings are being exposed every day. But vulnerablity, although often perceived as a weak condition, doesn’t have to be… Vulnerability is one of the most important catalysts for true change, to face it requires bravery, honesty and maturity… all of these factors are core components of a successful social media strategy. If a business can embrace this change, learn from others’ mistakes, hire the right social media experts and be brave, honest and mature, then social media will be the most important fundamental shift it will make this decade.

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[box type=”note” border=”full”]If you would like to meet with me to discuss how to use social media in your marketing campaigns please feel free to contact me. DigitLab is a social media and online marketing agency that specialises in building online communities and improving their connection with your business/brand. [/box]

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