Wow. I am truly stunned. Whilst sitting here and trying to figure out what to blog about, I was thinking about my bank. It then dawned on me that perhaps this would be a great topic to cover in a blog. I thought ‘I will write about the banking industry and their trends in social media’.
My intentions were good but I got side tracked. And no, not in the way that a twenty-something year old male would usually be distracted by the Internet but by the fact that, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how many tweets I sifted through, I could not find one person, not ONE who had anything positive to say about Barclays. That has to be some kind of record!!
“How do I get hold of Barclays UK CEO am being ripped off and fobbed offâ€
“Getting seriously peed off with Barclays. A DD went out yesterday, there was plenty of money in for it & all was fine. Now they are saying..â€
“This is because it took Barclays 6 months to give me access to the account and then they forgot to give me all info I needed to quote!â€
“Tried ringing Barclays Local Business Manager mobile for York and am now talking to Darlington! Second lot of millions of security checksâ€
“Dear Barclays, when I ring the local business manager in York please could you put the call through to York and not via India,â€
This is just a few of the posts that I looked at and they all fall within a half hour window. Now, I can understand that banks are not the most popular institutions at the moment but this is a worrying trend. How is it that in every other industry, if people feel that companies are not listening or reacting to them, they go elsewhere but with banks, this doesn’t seem to be happening? There doesn’t seem to be an upsurge of people keeping their money under their mattresses or going to ‘Dave the happy smiley money lenderer guy.
I also decided to check the Barclays website to see if they advertise any of their social media strategies (do they have a Twitter account, Facebook etc..) and there is nothing. I also did a search for Barclays on Facebook and could only find one group, which is private.
Don’t believe me? Try it yourselves. Go to http://search.twitter.com/ and type in any bank name. You will get similar results for NatWest and Lloyds to name but a couple.
Why is there such a divide between banks and their customers? Why are customers accepting it? Why are most banks ignoring it?
Whilst pondering this, I will phone my local bank manager and ask…. Oh, wait!
* In my next post, I will try and uncover what banks are actually doing about it if anything. In the meantime, if you have any news regarding this, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.
