Social Media and Retail Banking, are they compatible?

What do you mean by retail banking? The banking services which you and me use, that is depositing money, withdrawing money, using ATM, fixed deposits, credit/ debit cards, etc.

I initially through what would a bank do on social media?!, Bank can not use broadcast media like social media to do any of the above mentioned jobs, right?

But there is more to retail banking then just above mentioned tasks, here are some of the things which retail banks like HSBC, Barclays, Citi Bank are doing on Social Media

1. Level 0 Customer Service : Banks have established country specific accounts / pages on social media and are providing first level of customer service on these, this level of service does not include any personal or financial information, some very good examples are @BarclaysOnline, @citibankau
2. Recruitment / HR tasks : Since Social Media is one of the best ways to connect to individuals, banks are using social media to connect and recruit work force., some of the best examples are @BarclaysRoles, @BofA_Careers
3. Marketing and Sales : Banks are also using social media as every other industry to do the ususal sales/ marketing online

So basically apart from three pillars of CRM, i.e. Marketing , Sales, and Service, Banks are also using social media as a platform for finding talent. And why not? after all "Social" in Social Media is nothing bit the human element and that's what is required here. :)

CRM, Social Media and Social CRM L0

What is CRM?

In three words : Marketing,Sales and Support

All the big names involved in developing CRM software, implementing CRM systems and using CRM systems play around these three words. Each activity, task, functionality in a CRM system touches one or more of these three aspects i.e. Marketing,Sales and Support

What is Social Media?

If your are reading this then probably you know this, so I am not wasting time on this one.

What is social CRM?

The integration pf a traditional CRM system with social media platforms is called Social CRM (Duhh.....)

So why do we need it? again the three magical words(Marketing,Sales and Support)  Brands can integrate CRM and Social Media to ensure better sales, marketing and support opportunities. How?

Customers are active on social media, companies can gain knowledge about them using social media sites and thus can offer them related products, offers, etc : Say a 19 year old would be interested in knowing venues for parties where as a 30 year old would be interested in knowing more about how can he reduce is car insurance cost. Targeted action can be taken using social media to focus marketing and sales efforts towards these individuals or demographics.

All brands need to provide customer support, no matter is you are a technology giant or a small coffee shop. Social CRM provides one of the quickest and engaging channels for customer support.

So again going back to the basics, social CRM stands on same three pillars : Marketing, Sales and Support

Social Media Market Overview

As per Forrester’s report on “US Interactive Marketing Forecast 2009 to 2014” the spend on Social Media Marketing to grow at an annual rate of 34 percent – faster than any other form of online marketing and double the average growth rate of 17 percent for all online mediums. Forrester estimates that online advertising will grow from 12 percent of total marketing spend this year to 21 percent by 2014.

Number of people on social media platforms is increasing by the minute, if we have a look at the most popular social media platform i.e. Facebook®, it had 350 million users in January 2010 out of which 102 million were from USA and only 5.6 million users were from India where as if you compare the population of these two countries the trend is exactly opposite i.e. In 2010 India’s population has reached 1.18 billion and that of China has reached 1.34 billion where that of USA is 0.31 billion people.

Giants like IBM, SAS, Google and Accenture have jumped into the game with both feet and offer solution offerings ranging from SPSS Modeler data mining and text analytics workbench, Social Media Analytics to Social CRM. There are huge numbers of smaller player which offer more customized solution and number of such players is increasing exponentially.