I recently had cause to appeal to NAB via Twitter for assistance in resolving a business banking issue. This was an exercise in futility – I could argue they simply transferred their lack of action from the branch, to the call centre, to Twitter – same bank, same outcome different channel. What was even more interesting was the NAB social media team sending me a request to complete a survey as to my level of satisfaction of our Twitter chat – this blog post contains my text responses to this survey.
The survey asked 3 basic questions around satisfaction:
Overall: How satisfied were you with the service we gave through Twitter: Not very, in fact calling it service is a stretch – you DM’d me but there it stopped
Speed: How satisfied were you with the speed of our response? This was OK. I’m not a great believer in the I tweet you must respond in nano-seconds model that some experts proclaim. Your response was timely
Phone Call: How satisfied were you with the phone call follow up to your query? Extremely Dissatisfied; there was no phone call. There was no follow up; there was no service.
Improvement: How could we make our Twitter service better? OK. So here’s the thing. Two attempts to get assistance via Twitter and on both occasions the bank failed to act, follow through, or execute properly – in fact, just listing the product I was interested in burned up 55 precious characters…
The way NAB is approaching Twitter is very 1.0. It’s barely scalable and (as I experienced) prone to questions or requests falling between the cracks – here’s a critical question for the NAB twitter team to address – why did I have to make two very pointed comments on Twitter that you responded to, yet I didn’t even get a phone call or any form of follow up?
It’s very evident from how they approach Twitter that its staffed by a team of comms people vs people with a service background or ethic. Just because you ask someone to DM you contact details doesn’t mean your job is done.
NAB would do well to have a close look at how Qantas is now using Twitter. Firstly, Qantas continues to grow their Twitter footprint as they learn about what they need to do to effectively engage. The primary Qantas account now directs most service related queries to a dedicated Qantas customer care Twitter account – take the time to read how @QFcustomercare approaches Twitter engagement – it’s very different, very personal when compared to NAB.
Secondly, and here’s the really critical bit – in most cases, @QFcustomercare directs the Twitter user asking for assistance to a landing page so as to provide more details for Qantas to action – see here. This is best practice.
The one thing I hate about DM’s is the 140 char limit. Qantas has realised this and has instituted a custom form so as to get users to provide more relevant useful information. If we take this further, and whilst I’m not aware of what they do with the submissions, I’d hazard a guess that Qantas is integrating this into their CRM so they can create a more robust record of problems, users who are predisposed to use Twitter, plus how problems are resolved and information disseminated. This is very social CRM in action.
NAB could learn a lot from Qantas, not least about the difference between communications and customer care.
