Banking with Social Media

Dear readers, here we are presenting an article on Role of Social Media in Banking Sector. Hope you like the post.

Indian Banking Industry has shown a tremendous growth on Social Media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube etc.

The Banking sector in India has proven that it�s not just about opening saving bank accounts, credit cards, investments, wealth management, mutual funds, insurance and so on. With the increasing growth in Social Media in India, banks have understood that likes, tweets, shares do matter to engage with the young generation.

Social media is one of the fastest growing channels in banking sector.Social networking has become so common and broad-based in its use � there are now more than 500 million Twitter users and more than 1 billion Facebook users � that banks have no choice but to incorporate social networking into their marketing efforts.

With a more globalized approach and increasing competition, banks have increased their marketing budgets and Social Media is one of the major portion of it. There are banks that we have seen, using social platforms as another customer care, using them to showcase their thought leadership, using them to launch new products, endorsing celebrities and many more.

Today, customers are able to quickly raise their issues through social media, and it has become an important method for banks to build relationships with their customers and to reach a younger audience.

As is true for success in any business, it is important to be where your customers are, and future banking customers are online.

Indian Banks have started using social media in their regular operations in various capacities and are at different stages of maturity. Now a day�s some private banks provide regular updates on the latest offers and allow basic customer operations through popular social media sites.

A large private bank in India hosted Facebook application on its secure servers allowing balance amount check, cheque book request, stop payment, etc. Some of the private banks are using their Facebook page to provide customers, exclusive offers, product details and customer care services.

With a few banks taking the lead, the direction is set for other banks to offer online financial services through such platforms sooner rather than later. ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank are among the top 10 Banks with Social Media presence as per a survey by Financial Brand in July 2013.

Banks in India cannot any longer live in denial. There could still be a tendency to not use Social Media. Banks thinking on these lines may have to remember that their competition is already active on Social Media, thus threatening their own business.

Presence on social media:

Banks social media strategy is based on a simple principle to engage and interact; and its presence is spread over various platforms.

Now a day�s various  Bank has established its presence on Twitter by creating a robust infrastructure to �listen� to its customers. This has helped it to effectively and efficiently address queries/concerns of its end customers.

We can see every  Banks (Public or Prvt.) have Facebook page not a medium to connect with the audience but also provide value-added services on the platform.

Indians Bank engages with its fans not only by providing them information on convenience of banking but also by educating and increasing financial literacy among its young fan base.

The Bank encourages feedback from its fans and makes the conversation two-way. The Bank�s YouTube channel is a library to view its advertisements, watch interviews of its senior management, view product videos and share them among each other.

Engagement with customers using social media:

The social media platform also offers Banks a great opportunity to manage customer expectations and experience. All customer grievances are integrated at the back-end in a CRM module built especially for Twitter and Facebook.

Banks have created a separate form to capture queries from the social media platform. A real-time online dashboard helps it keep a track of all the comments about the Bank.

If Bank notices that there are unhappy customers, it reaches out to them and tries to resolve their issues. This has been endorsed by many customers whose problems have been resolved.

Bank have also gone beyond just disseminating information and limiting its conversation to banking. It has also created games, fun applications and contests for its fans to enhance interaction.

Using social media as listening posts:

By using social media for listening posts, the Bank is building better relationships with its end customers. One of the important reasons why Banks  have decided to be on the social media space is to create conversations and be high on engagement with its customers and fans in their day-to-day life.

Product Promotion:

With such a vast user base, social media can be used to launch new products to the market, promote existing products and services at very less cost when compared with other marketing channels. 

For e.g. ICICI bank promotes online gold purchases on social media with attractive offers. This offer is visible to their 800k odd followers on facebook. It is not possible to reach these many people using other channels without spending a big fortune.

Useful Insights:

Social media is a two way collaboration mechanism. People on the web share their views, provide feedbacks and write their experiences.

Not only the banks can promote their brand and products, they can also gain useful insights from the user generated content. The user inquiries, preferences and feedback's can be analyzed through a social analytics tool to check popularity of existing products, identify �unbanked segments� and create personalized campaigns.

For e.g. if people are talking about fixed rate v/s floating rate loans, processing charges; a bank can relate these views to identify the market sentiments like what�s the preferred processing fee range for floating or fixed rate loans? Which one is more preferred: fixed rate or floating rate loan? Are people feeling the heat paying the processing charges?

Through social networks customers can be reached to a more personal level. Gaining additional information from social networks can help identifying the hidden segments which can be used for personalized campaigns.

The usefulness and growing importance of digital platforms have been widely acknowledged, banks are now faced with the challenge of how to best execute social media strategies.

Social media empowers banks in a new, exciting way, to reach their customers. This brings great benefits to customers and makes easier for banks to interact with their existing and new customers in an effective and easy manner.