How Finance Uses Social Media to Improve Customer Service and Outreach

Unmetric analyzed interactions from 27.6 million users on 304,818 pieces of content posted by 23 American Banks on social media. We present the key findings from their research.

Financial institutions are adapting their approach. They are not publishing as much social media content in general, but instead are pivoting toward a much more targeted approach for more effective outreach.

However, the decrease in the number of posts seems to have had no negative effect on engagement. Instead, posts engagement continue to soar. According to a trend report by unmetric, engagement per post has gone up 80% since 2013.

Financial Institutions are Using Video for Targeted Outreach

Videos are huge on social media now. It appears the financial institutions have caught up with this trend as well. In general, videos get more reach now on social media than other forms of content and banks are using this to their advantage.

According to Unmetric’s report, videos accounted for 16% of total posts made by financial institutions on social media in the first half of 2017.

For some banks, videos constituted as much as 59% of their overall content posted on social media.

“59% of TD Bank US’ posts on Facebook were videos in 2017. BMO Harris Bank was a close second with 56% of posts being videos.

Capital One generated the most interactions on its videos published on Twitter, but its animated GIFs saw almost four times more interactions per tweet.”

Banks Respond Faster on Social Media

Not many will interact through social media, but for those who do, quick responses to queries posed through social media are fundamental. The benefit: high user engagement, creating a touch point, increased visibility to strengthen your reputation as a brand who cares.

It appears banks taken a cue from this. The report found that customers who receive responses from their banks on Twitter have gone up by 55% since 2013 with response time improving steadily as well.

“In 2017, banks replied to a third of user tweets within fifteen minutes and two-thirds of user tweets within 60 minutes. Just 5% of user tweets took longer than one day to reply to.”

What are your thoughts on these emerging trends in the banking industry and the overall usage of social media as a customer service tool? Do you believe that with time, social media will become a primary point of contact between brands and customers?