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| Banks should make strategic use of social media to resolve customers complaints | | Customer engagement inevitable | | Jammu, May 14: While bringing various aspects of banking and financial world into light for a common man, endlessly lot of queries regarding day to day banking practices continually pour into my inbox. It has now become almost impossible to respond to these varied complaints and queries. However, whatever their nature, I can safely vouch that growing flow of customers complaints would not be less than a tsunami for banks in future.
Last few decades have seen a remarkable increase in size, spread and scope of the banks. Their business profile has transformed dramatically as their operations have gone beyond traditional activities. Today the banks offer facilities like merchant banking, mutual funds and new financial services & products. However, during this tremendous transformation, what banks have lost is the loyalty of customers. They owe it to their poor customer service.
Do banks continue to be customer friendly? This is at the moment a million dollar question. Rarely, we find a customer-friendly bank today despite the fact integration of technology has revolutionised the banking landscape. Amid all this falling standard of customer service in banks, it's the small customers' segment who are experiencing the unbecoming behaviour of banks. We have a plethora of cases involving banks fighting its small customers that has brought the inept attitude of banks to the fore. Frankly speaking, those wealthy and well-connected customers do not have to bother; banks are always at their doorsteps. Gone are the days when generations of customers were loyal to the banks. What has disappeared is the trust. In this kind of situation, keeping existing customers happy is any day more important than retaining the old-ones.
A lot has been said about the integration of technology into banking revolutionizing banker-customer relationship. Of course, it has. Today customers are able to operate their accounts even in their bedrooms, anywhere and anytime. The kind of technology we have in banking system has made the customer not to visit physically to a bank branch for availing services like transfer of money from his account to any place in the world in a jiffy. The customer may be having an account in a particularbank, but the technology solutions available has made him customer of all banks globally.
Amid all this technology driven convenience, a whole lot of issues have simultaneously cropped up for customers. It's here the banks have been showing callous attitude to attend to the queries of their customers. Banks have failed to open an electronic window to handle customer queries/ complaints. At the moment, handling of customer complaints is done in a traditional mode where physical appearance of the customer at the bank is required even for a minor issue.
Let me share interesting data available on the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) website. The central bankhas received 76,573 complaints from individual customers about various bank services in 2013-14, up 8.55% from 70,541 complaints received in 2012-13. The complaints were linked to deposit accounts, levy of charges, credit and debt cards, loans, pension accounts and non-adherence to the rules for recovery agents. In 2013-14, complaints on failure to meet commitments and non-observance of fair practices code together constituted largest category of complaints (26.6%), followed by card related complaints (24.1%).
So, what's the solution? There may be many. But current scenario demands banks to capitalize on the growing use of social media. Reportedly, approximately two billion people are globally using social media. It can serve twin purposes for the banks.
First, banks not only can market their products and services, but can also conduct analysis in areas like risk management, product and service design, business forecasting etc. Secondly, most importantly, they can extensively use social media for interacting with the customers. Though some banks have presence on social media, but what's needed is to engage with customers. Here banks need to build their social media strategies around the customer to drive loyalty. The social channel should be used to deliver quick and effective service where customers can experience almost instant response to their queries from the bank. Providing the right information to customers is likely to increase customer satisfaction and elevate the bank to trusted financial advisor status. Once banks take route to social media to engage customers, this, according to social media experts, will definitely transform the customer relationship management system into social customer relationship management.
Precisely, embarking upon this social journey may be a double edged sword, but banks have to tread on it to secure their place in the future. So, being more responsive to customer needs is inevitable and strategic use of social media will assuredly add enormous value in the banker-customer relationship.
(The views are of the author & not the institution he works for) |
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