Twitter study revels extent of big four distain
(10 September 2010 – Australia) Social networking sites have given consumers a louder voice than ever, and now a study of twitter has revealed the extent of discontent consumers feel.
The five month study revealed that while all banks were disliked to the same extent, the reasons behind the dissatisfaction varied.
The study was conducted by Christine Walker of Alliance Strategic Research and found that people were more likely to tweet about ANZ, Westpac and CBA that they were about NAB, who only collected nine percent of the share.
Researchers analysed more than 5000 tweets between January and May this year and found the most common issue to be service.
After service, the most commented-on aspect of banks was social media followed by brand image, location of branches and bank personnel.
Internet banking and bank websites were the subject of a lot of negative comments with typical complaints including running slow, login not working, site down and balances not shown.
Ms Walker said there was a clear benefit in banks being on Twitter, in terms of managing the word-of-mouth about their brand and ensuring that comments were less negative.
Not surprisingly, tweets about banks were most often negative, but researchers found important differences around what kind of messages people put on Twitter depending who they were addressing the tweets to.
People were more strongly negative if the tweet was not addressed to anyone specific.
The breakdown of negative, positive and neutral comments was similar for each bank.
In response to the tweets Westpac was the only bank, at the time of the study, replying to concerned customers.
Ms Walker said that it was important that the banks were in the conversation.
If consumers know the bank is out there and listening they are going to be a little less negative and that's an important thing for the brand, Ms Walker added.
The study was conducted by Christine Walker of Alliance Strategic Research and found that people were more likely to tweet about ANZ, Westpac and CBA that they were about NAB, who only collected nine percent of the share.
Researchers analysed more than 5000 tweets between January and May this year and found the most common issue to be service.
After service, the most commented-on aspect of banks was social media followed by brand image, location of branches and bank personnel.
Internet banking and bank websites were the subject of a lot of negative comments with typical complaints including running slow, login not working, site down and balances not shown.
Ms Walker said there was a clear benefit in banks being on Twitter, in terms of managing the word-of-mouth about their brand and ensuring that comments were less negative.
Not surprisingly, tweets about banks were most often negative, but researchers found important differences around what kind of messages people put on Twitter depending who they were addressing the tweets to.
People were more strongly negative if the tweet was not addressed to anyone specific.
The breakdown of negative, positive and neutral comments was similar for each bank.
In response to the tweets Westpac was the only bank, at the time of the study, replying to concerned customers.
Ms Walker said that it was important that the banks were in the conversation.
If consumers know the bank is out there and listening they are going to be a little less negative and that's an important thing for the brand, Ms Walker added.
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