Mixed feelings on Standard Banks online reputation management

On a weekly basis Standard Bank (to whom regrettably I am currently a customer of) phones me to sell me products that I am already a customer of, or that are irrelevant to my profile. Every time I ask them to exclude me from their spam marketing list, but they continue to phone me (read spam). In one week I even received three calls selling the exact same product.

Last week I had enough and tweeted on my negative feelings towards them. Samantha Perry (@samanthaperry) sent me a tweet suggesting I contact @standardbankgrp. Within about two minutes Brandsh contacted me via email to resolve my problem.

It’s a #Win that it took them two minutes from me tweeting to them having found my details and contacted me. However not all was kosher, Brandsh contacted me on behalf of Standard Bank on their own email addresses. My compliant is with Standard Bank, I want them to respond not some 3rd party. Also the issue should have been resolved the first time I asked a consultant to mark me as do not contact on the system.

This is where it starts to get dodgy

Brandsh asked me to give them my banking account number via email. Huh? Consistently my bank is warning me about phishing scams and reminding me to never give out details and now some other (random?) person not working for the bank is asking for my account details over email? Wanting to see what the bank was up to I willingly passed over my details .

About 30 minutes later I got a call from Standard Bank (did I just not complain about you always calling me?) asking me to explain what my issue was (I just did that via twitter and email, but I take it that the bank themselves never got that, sigh).

The next day

Standard Bank has recently been taken to task on the social media front with the start of the Standard Blank community

I got sms spam from Standard Bank, and took the same compliant route. The response from Bransh was that they didn’t know of any SMS campaigns that day (great). Got another call from the Bank, again they had little idea why they were calling me, so decided they would call back after I explain my problem. Later they called (again) back and said it would take up to a month for their system to update (you’ve got to be kidding me right?).

Key take outs

• Fix your traditional query resolution channels, customers will spam your online ones if it’s the only channel they get addressed on. This will quickly ruin your online reputation.

• The company should contact the customers, not a 3rd party. Not to say that a 3rd party like an agency should be advising the company the whole time.

• 3rd parties should follow the company they represents practices (in this case asking for  account details over email is surely not in the banks policies).

• I love the investment in social media, but brands should first looking at fixing their internal processes before spreading spend even thinner across more platforms.

• Make sure to pass all the facts along down the resolution chain, its highly frustrating consistently repeating the same stories

• Lastly set rules for the number of times a single customer can be contacted with marketing materials and communicate all brand touch points to all your agencies

Post purchase social media dissonance

Meeting up with any old friend quickly leads me to telling them about my awesome new Totoya Auris 1.8 RS , I continue with how great the car is often leaving out the fact that my first choice was actually the VW Polo.

I have moved on past the shocking delivery service and the even worse dishonest and horrific vehicle financing saga. I’ve even blinded myself from the awful local social media engagement #FAIL.

I am delighted to subscribe to my models blog filled with nothing relevant to a buyer, ecstatic to register for Toyota’s post purchase non-functioning customer site, overjoyed in following their twitter feed (even if they flatly ignore my tweets and questions) and delighted with the brands priceless accessories list.

Once I pulled together how ridiculous my appreciation of the useless attempt by Toyota’s at social media engagement I came to realise how powerful brand loyalty and post purchase dissonance really is.

Maybe this is the same force Apple has applied over its customers?

What the F**K is Social Media

There are a lot of great presentations on social media out there. This one stands by Brand Infiltration out for me, perhaps I just enjoy its controversial style.

Caveman in the legal department

I’ve always thought that the company I work for is very progressive, after all we self title ourselves as being “Switched on”. Unfortunately I feel this has been undermined by the recent introduction of a new  policy that “prohibits employees from providing references of any kind (personal, professional, or otherwise) no matter how the request is received, and also prohibits voluntary references of any kind. This includes a prohibition on employees providing references on social networking sites (e.g., LinkedIn, Spoke, etc.) that allow recommendations or referrals for individuals.”

Does this mean I can’t congratulate an employee on a job well done on Facebook for example?

I think this policy is backward, I understand it’s to protect current employees and reduce the risk of litigation but I feel it lacks an understanding of social media. Are there benefits of internal references, or do they lack credibility?

Legal department?