Banks will have to hone their social skills in 2012
When the Reserve Bank of Australia lowered the official cash rate by 25 basis points on December 6 it was very interesting to watch how the major banks tried to handle the RBA’s decision on Twitter – which I believe was poorly handled. Here are their tweets.
December 6
@ANZ _AU: “Hi there, our rates are under review – we will keep you posted. Thanks ^LG.” This was posted a further seven times.
@nab: “rates are under review.” This was posted a further eight times.
@CommBank: “Our rates are under review and we’re carefully considering the impact of the RBA’s announcement on all our products.” This was posted a further 11 times.
@Westpac: No tweets
December 7
@ANZ –AU: “Hi there, rates are still being reviewed. We’ll let you know once a decision has been made.” This was posted a further seven times.
@nab: one update
@CommBank: 18 more updates
@Westpac: “Our rates remain under review, we know this has big implications for your home loan & savings, we’ll let you know as soon as we do.” One update
December 8
seven more updates then @anz_media: “ANZ cuts rates for mortgages and small business lending by 0.25%”
@nab: seven more updates then “We’ve just confirmed a 0.25% cut to the variable mortgage rate and business loan rates.
@CommBank: two more updates then “We are lowering our Standard Variable Home Interest Rates by 0.25% to 7.31% effective for new and existing customers from 19 Dec 2011.
@Westpac: “We’re happy to pass on the full RBA interest rate cut for home and business lending by 0.25%
The Treasurer Wayne Swan @SwannyDPM was busy tweeting to his followers.
“A great early Christmas present for ANZ customers today. Heat is now really on NAB, Westpac & CBA to do the right thing by their customers.” Then “NAB also doing the right thing by their customers with full 25 point rate cut. Heat just gone up another notch on Westpac and CBA.” Followed by “Good news for CBA home loan customers this evening too. Westpac customers deserve their bank to do the right thing as well.” Finally, “CBA has done the right thing for its home loan customers, that just leaves Westpac out there facing a massive backlash from its customers. “
ANZ then announced that it will now review its rates on the second Friday of every month, which prompted me to write on my final blog for 2012. “ANZ shifts to monthly rates review where it is now set to sever the long-standing link between official interest rates set by the RBA and the rates customers pay on their mortgages. This decision questions the relevance of the RBA, if banks are to decide independently, what their cash rate will be. This has the potential to become ugly, and I see ‘bank bashing’ alive and well in 2012. On the one hand we will have bank advertising campaigns of those warm and fuzzy happy family moments and on the other, journalists and social media beating the living daylights out of their reputations. The latter will win hands down.”
Social media is now a huge voice where one only has to look at the #VileKyle trending on Twitter last month where over 30,000 signed an online petition demanding he be dumped following his ugly spray at a journalist. Online polls went into meltdown. The result? Mazda, Telstra, Harvey Norman, Fantastic Furniture, Blackmores, Crazy John’s, Vodafone and Good Guys withdrew their sponsorship.
This was the very first social media online protest march Australia has ever seen before where it worked wonders and yes – I did sign the petition, too. Absolutely no doubt the major banks took notice too.
Twitter Statistics 2011 reveal 1 billion tweets posted per week, three years, two months and one day the time in between the first tweet and the billionth tweet, 177 million tweets sent on March 11, 2011, 456 tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 (a record at the time) and 6,939 current TPS record, set four seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day.
Our big four banks are not performing well on Twitter – @CBA has 2,284 followers with 234 tweets, @Westpac 8,658 followers with 2,944 tweets, @ANZ 1,746 followers with 1,000 tweets and @nab 8,279 followers with 4,444 tweets.
So I was interested to see this week when I received a direct message from ANZ_AU – “Hi, this is automated but we’re here to help 9 – 5.30 pm Mon – Fri (AEST) in accordance with our Twitter service terms.”
Now that is a first so watch the other three follow suit as they battle to attract followers given their ability to attract followers thus far can only be described as very ordinary.
In Twitter speak they may well be trending to be different – time and tweets will tell. Once upon a time we heard “the dogs are barking” today, it’s the customers are tweeting and reputations are on the line – just ask Kyle Sandilands.
Robert Simeon is a director of Richardson Wrench Mosman and Neutral Bay and has been selling residential real estate in Sydney since 1985. He has also been writing real-estate blog Virtual Realty News since 2000. The RWM real estate model has sold in excess of $1 billion in database sales globally.