In the past month, both NAB and Telstra have been bashed by sections of the online community for their attempts to engage with customers via social media. Is online engagement just too risky to mess with for some brands? Celia Johnson investigates.
Participation, participation, participation is the new location, location, location”, says Ian Farmer, senior brand strategist at digital agency Bullseye, who equates the impact of brands that participate in social media to the advantage the best shopfront might give you in a shopping mall.
And yet participation in interactive websites does not necessarily mean your brand is going to be embraced with open arms, much like the best shopfronts don’t guarantee strong sales. In fact, it can often have the opposite effect.
In the past month both NAB and Telstra have been subjected to online maulings, bringing into question the risks involved and challenges brands face in the blogosphere.
On October 1 the National Australia Bank’s online self-service offering UBank launched a website inviting people to tell them what frustrates them about banks, called My Future Bank. Two weeks later it was taken down, causing the blogosphere to run amok with damning reports about what had happened. Before the site was removed a prolific blogger, Cheryl Gledhill, alleged on her blog at Molt:n that a UBank employee had masqueraded as a customer and posted positive comments, while using his anonymity to criticise other’s negative comments.
Unfavourable posts were also claimed to have been pulled down. Blogger Laurel Papworth added to the conversation on her blog Silkcharm: “There’s the faux community on UBank saying how great UBank is. Pulling negative comments, promoting their own fake positive ones”, she wrote.
When the site was shut down, more criticisms surfaced. These were not only due to UBank’s so-called “dishonest” behaviour, but the fact it turned its back on the community it was supposed to be engaging with.
However Luisa Ford, NAB’s head of corporate affairs for retail banking, has dismissed blog reports as “speculation” and says the removal of the site had been planned from the start.
“It was only a pilot, so it was always intended to come down,” she says. “When it was launched it said it was up there to get customer feedback. It was up there for a few weeks, which was always the intention, and then came down when we thought we’d had quite a lot of attention.”
So is social media too risky for brands?
Farmer says many brands steer clear of online forums because they encourage an openness and frankness that can be potentially damaging.
And yet a study by Universal McCann published in March points to the effectiveness of online conversations, with 34% of the 17,000 internet users surveyed globally saying they post opinions about products and brands on their blogs, and 36% saying they think more positively about companies that have blogs.Gavin Heaton, author of the blog Servant of Chaos, says that interactive sites are not a risky investment for brands if managed properly and moderated to “limit the risk of flame-type conversations.”
Some brands, such as banks and telcos, could be more susceptible to negative commentary because of their reputations in the real world. Though Ian Lyons, communications director at online market research company Pure Profile, says a company’s approach will always triumph over the brand’s reputation. “If you’re a cigarette company you’re going to have a hard time no matter what,” he says. “But generally, if they’re willing to listen and then participate, engage and influence, any brand can succeed in this space.”
He adds that companies’ need to take negative comments on the chin and as a starting point for engagement. “A brand manager has to have the courage to take heat from their executives because there will be criticism and it will be public,” he says.
Telstra BigPond took this approach after receiving a beating from the blogosphere when it launched its Twitter site last month. The telco, which was the first to launch a customer service site on Twitter in Australia, was criticised for its “robotic” and “anonymous” interactions and for redirecting consumers with problems to an online request form. However, Telstra took the negative feedback on board and changed tack, becoming more “human” and even asking consumers what they want Telstra to Twitter about.
“People have asked us what our workplace looks like and want to hear about the goings on within our contact centre in Adelaide, so we’re sharing some of those things,” says Brady Jacobsen, director of the Telstra contact centres.
He adds that to be successful, brands need to remain committed in this space. “You cannot afford to not remain vigilant around monitoring your presence in these areas.
“Once you’re in, you’re really in boots and all and you must remain committed to the level of service and engagement.”
