The digitalization of banking services brings a variety of benefits but can also amplify and accelerate the reputational and operational risks to banks. The security requires constant vigilance and routine upgrades to keep pace with various threats to infrastructure, fraud, hacking and other well known risks.
The same is true for information and, in particular, social media. Often viewed as either a platform for corporate messaging, customer service and branding campaigns, there’s a more complicated and insidious side of social media. The recent examples in the banking world – SVB and Credit Suisse – are doing more than turning heads. The EU is moving towards mandates, and there are whispers that other banking regulators around the world are doing the same.
The question, for communication leaders and teams that look after social media, is one of preparedness and tools. Social media tools aren’t designed to scan for risk and put significant pressure on internal teams to locate potential issues. Then those teams have to assess the potential threat being posed to them. Which takes more time than a team may have, and that’s before determining how to respond and with what message.
During a technical outage, customer complaints about technical issues appeared on Twitter and Reddit. Customers were unable to access important bank systems on their mobile devices and physical locations. Within an hour, social comments online discussing the topic increased by 85%, and were steadily climbing. As news channels picked up on the topic, commentary began to increase across social media. This was the crucial moment that required both rapid identification and alerting stakeholders. Reporting at this stage would allow communication and crisis teams to prepare a response and head off the worst of a social media wildfire.
But, no response came and nearly 12 hours later, social comments skyrocketed by 1993% to 4.5k comments. Internal teams were scrambling, trying to assess the issue, draft a response and act all at the same time. And there was still the technical issue to sort out. This is where monitoring tools fall short. This situation was not about the comment volumes per se, it was the ability to see, understand and act quickly. When the pressure is put on the internal teams to make sense of the social media maelstrom, that is critical hours when no action is taken.
Although the technical outage created a social media crisis, the solution is actually human analysts and AI can help to mitigate further reputational damage. Reputation Monitoring is designed to deliver the earliest possible warning signals to communication and social media teams, giving them time back to respond and react accurately.
Our alerting notifies teams of more than comments and includes image and video detection. Content, images and videos are all reviewed by trained human analysts that are briefed on your brand guidelines before sending alerts. Alerts are sent directly to inboxes and phones according to a tailored system of priority, which allows for improved coordination internally.
When teams don’t have the proper solutions, the consequences can be all too familiar. The media catches wind of the issues, and your bank’s name appears in headlines for the wrong reasons.
Get in touch with an expert to learn how Reputation Monitoring can help you today.