6 ways financial marketers can improve their online reputation
When people get ticked off at banks and credit unions, instant and voluminous feedback via social media and ratings pages follows. While reputational damage control and containment is critical, institutions must also actively solicit reviews from happy consumers, because the shelf life of positive comments is agonizingly short.
The banking industry’s reputation got clobbered during the Great Recession. While financial services’ image rebounded somewhat, surveys now show that it is sliding again.
Causes include data breaches, systems failures, and poor customer experiences. Indeed, social media makes it easy for unhappy consumers to share unfortunate in-branch and other experiences through online reviews and attacks that bring out more anger from fellow posters, with potentially massive reach.
Star ratings have been dropping significantly among some well-known banking brands, according to industry data. Given such indications as Adweek’s finding that 93% of Millennials say they rely on blogs and customer reviews before making a purchase, low star ratings and poor online reviews about wait times, branch personnel competence, and parking and account-related fees clearly harm reputations of individual brands as well as the industry.
How can financial marketers reverse this trend? And potentially get ahead?
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