It’s already happening

Only a few days after this post where Social Media adoption by the Banking industry is analyzed, it is already happened. A Bank has taken the step forward to truly start providing banking services to their customers on Facebook.

ICICI Facebook Banking application

Digital Life

Whether we like it or not, our customers’ digital life happens in the Social Media. They live and interact there, not in our online banking platform. Therefore it was only a matter of time that someone overcame the resistance and found a way of blurring the boundaries and integrating with their customers’ digital life.

As anticipated, security was -and still is- the main concern both for Financial Institutions as well as Customers when approaching Banking services on the Social Media. Other industries and online services are clearly adopting Social Media profiles as a universal form of authentication, in which your Facebook ID or your Google+ profile become your Digital identity. If Facebook and Google+ are a representation of your real life as an individual, your identities in such platforms should be sufficient proof of identity of your Digital existence.

ICICI’s approach is to make the customer go through a registration process which creates a personalized password. Usage of the application also implies a second factor of authentication, so the customer experience will look quite similar to that of the existing online banking, but at least within your Facebook environment. It will be interesting to see how new approaches to securing Banking services on Social Media will help blur the boundary even more, to a point where there will be virtually no separation between your friends’ posts and your account statements, maybe just a step-up with a strong two factor authentication to protect sensitive data, but avoiding registration processes that somehow impact the illusion of full integration. This would have an interesting consequence: If many sites allow you to log on using your Facebook ID, why should your bank be different?. Why not simplify the process and just use your Facebook ID with a second factor of authentication?.

Anyhow, a very interesting and innovative movement by ICICI which will surely be followed by competitors very soon, and will help gauge the appetite of customers for Banking Services integrated in their very own Digital space.

Born Social vs Learnt Social

Citi rewards facebook app

Following the previous post on Scoot, and how they are a truly born social company, it is interesting to compare how their evolution is in Social Media as compared to more established companies that are learning how to become social and adopting it on their way.

It is becoming more and more clear that Social Media is not only going to be the way to gain a more close and personal relationship with your customers, but also a full service channel that will probably start moving business out of your current electronic platforms. Some industries will be earlier adopters than others, and some examples of this can be found on the airline industry, where Malaysia Airlines is already offering flight search, booking and check-in can be done in a facebook app.

Security and privacy concerns will slow down the adoption for certain industries, namely the Financial Services, but yet there is already space for certain features to be offered in Social Media. Citibank recently launched a new facebook app that allows their customers group their reward points they obtain for purchases and use them for charity or a group gift. Rewards seems to be quite the right transaction for Banks to start servicing customers over Social Media, as its level of risk is far lower than traditional financial transactions.

It will be interesting to see and compare the adoption curve for established companies, specially on highly risk aware industries like Banking as compared to companies born social like Scoot, who have adopted Social Media in a very natural manner for literally every single internal process they are facing in the journey of setting up the airline: Recruiting, selecting their slogan and offering promotions. It will not be surprising to see that Facebook -their Google+ page is yet to be seen- will become their main sales and servicing channel when they start operating.

Will this be the trend followed by other industries and therefore, will Social Media replace -at least partially- online banking? I make my bet!

Born Social

Scoot on Facebook

Just like new generations are growing with an iPhone in their hands, and therefore have a much more natural adoption of technology in their lives, some newly established companies are having a completely natural approach to using Social Media. This is the case of Scoot, a recently launched low cost airline by Singapore Airlines, who is making extensive use of Social Media to engage their future customers. Barely three weeks after their formal launch, and months before they actually start operating, they already have a blog as well as a facebook page with over 5400 fans. The number itself might not be too high, but it is surely an achievement for a firm just a few weeks old that has yet to start operating.

While more established, traditional firms struggle to adopt and embed Social Media in their relationship with customers, it is an intrinsic part of the culture of these newly born businesses which take huge advantage of it. I was very pleased to see that Scoot is fully adopting these channels as THE natural way of engaging their future customers, not only by promoting their future business, but also by giving an insight into the thrilling process of building an airline from scratch. Last post on Facebook is presenting the CFO of the company to the public, similarly to what they did with their Chief Pilot. This is truly creating a whole new dimension in the relationship with customers, letting them know the human side of your business.

Good luck Scoot!

This is not an app review

Technology packed

This is not an app review. It is rather some thoughts and reflections on how much technology and features are packed in any of the SmartPhones you can buy today. We have taken it for granted, but it is truly amazing to see that you can carry in your pocket a device that contains a GPS, a compass, a high definition photo and video camera, plays music, browses the internet and is capable of doing all at the same time through powerful multitasking. But does anyone need so many features?. I thought not.

But then I started running. I am not a big fan of it, so I just started to reduce a bit of extra weight gained during the holidays. However, I found an application that motivated me to start, and to continue doing it on a regular basis. It is called Runmeter. Probably there are a lot of applications similar to this one, but this is the one I chose, and with which I truly realized how wonderful applications and features you can build when you make use of all the powerful technology Smart Phones pack today.

GPS

You define a route, press the start button and there you go. It tracks your run by GPS pretty accurately. Not only it tracks where you go, but also how fast you go, so you get instant pace, average pace, pace per km, even altitude deviations, although these are not really accurate. The GPS bit in action. Good?. Wait and see…

Internet

Do you need Internet connection while running?. Not for web browsing, definitely, but one fantastic feature of this application is that it integrates with facebook and other social networks, so you can choose what the app publishes for you when you start, stop and finish running. Social Media is all about sharing and interacting, so now you can share your progress while you train. Nothing revolutionary here, but this becomes really fancy when you go to the next step, and you not only share but you also interact. How can you interact while you are running?. Easy, the application will monitor any comments your friends might do on your “Started run” post on facebook and guess what? It will read them out loud to you on your headset. This is my favorite feature, it is really motivating, and when your friends know that they are being read out loud while you run, they really become imaginative and encouraging. Really good.

And music!

What is running without music?. All of the above while you keep your pace listening to your music. Either with the standard iPod included in your iPhone or with my favorite Spotify, that allows you to find those disco hits from the early 90’s you used to dance to and remember the time while on the run. Superb.

Probably none of these are truly revolutionary aspects from a technology perspective, not even from the fact of being packed into a tiny little device. It is the combination of all of them working in harmony that makes really good applications possible.

Sensorconomy

We started by integrating data into applications, now we are integrating sensors like GPS or compass. Some analysts predict Sensorconomy would be the next big thing in Smart Phones by introducing temperature, humidity,light and other sensors into Smart Phones to extend the boundaries of your device and allow it to interact more. I really think the hardware is going further ahead than the applications in the mobile space, which is really thrilling. We have just started to take off in making use of the current possibilities so the future of mobile applications looks promising, at the very least.

Social Media and Customer Relations

Social Media

This wonderful article made me think about how some industries are making use of Social Media whilst other are still very hesitant about it. It also does a very interesting insight on how the relationship between these companies and their customers are changing, and even more interesting, how the perception the customers get are also changing accordingly.

Air travel is being one of the industries which most benefit is getting from Social Media. Nearly 200 airlines are already actively present in Social Media, and the nature of this industry is clearly benefiting from having a direct and real time communication channel with their customers. Air travel operations are subject to innumerable and unpredictable situations that cause disruptions and delays. So from a purely operational point of view, it is clear that Social Media, specially facebook and twitter are key elements in this new way of addressing customer communications. Delays and cancellations for any of the classical reasons -weather, plane maintenance, crew rotation, etc.- can now be made known to the wide audience.

Not that this will solve any of the issues and eliminate the delays or cancellations, but it is definitely helping customers be aware of the situation and plan accordingly. Knowing is better than not definitely.

This is probably the most obvious usage of Social Media, but probably not the most powerful. Three different usages can be identified:

• Communication with customers (operational)
• Feedback
• Marketing and sales

The power of feedback

Think about feedback. This is a double edged weapon. Feedback is good, and making things easier for customers to give feedback right where and when the issue or the good experience is happening clearly encourages more than filling a feedback form. People just tweet their last good or bad experience, or post a comment on your wall about it. This is really powerful, but demands a managed presence in Social Media to be able to listen to this feedback effectively.

But this has a downside too, which I tend to see as a big opportunity. You can no longer hide failure. If you cause a problem to a customer, not only you will know, your whole set of followers will do. This obviously can be seen as a downside, but I clearly see this as an opportunity for companies to improve customer service and attention, and really treat customers as they deserve. Furthermore, most of the failures in customer service will remain undetected behind the fact that customers rarely complained, and even more, complains never reached the media. Now this has completely changed, but also for good, now you know where your weakest points are, so your customers become your best allies.

The true revolution

Customer Satisfaction

The more I look at Social Media adoption in the large Enterprise, the more I see it as a movement towards customer centricity. No longer we make the customer come to our online systems, we go to where the customer spends his or her time

online. We do not ask for feedback or claims to be given in a particular manner and a particular place, we listen to the customer wherever and whenever the customer is.

This is for me the authentic revolution of Social Media in the Enterprise. Not only being able to communicate, but reinventing all our customer interactions to be where and when the customer is, on every occasion where the customer needs to interact with us. For good and for bad.

For me, this is why Social Media is already revolutionary. Now I am really keen to see how other industries adopt are able to open themselves to this new world of possibilities. Challenging but really thrilling and full of potential.

Are you in my Facebook?

There are two aspects I find interesting about social networks, specially those ones oriented to our leisure time, and are precisely two impacts they have on our other life, the professional one.

Are you in my Facebook?

The blurred boundary

Not so much time ago, before Facebook came into our lives, there used to be a more or less clear boundary between our life at work and our life out of it. Yes, post work drinks have existed for very long, but there was still a boundary which allowed us to have two separate compartments that had little communication or interaction between them. But suddenly things changed, Facebook (and more recently Google+) came into our lives, allowing us to establish a link with our colleagues, friends, family and other relatives in which the boundaries between our professional and personal lives are blurred.

Some would argue that this could bring a number of issues in terms of our privacy, and I tend to agree that there is always a risk that someone might regret a post, a comment or a picture, but these sites normally give the -advanced- user a way of controlling their privacy and exposure. However, I still find this possibility very interesting as it has a very positive impact in the human relations within the enterprise, providing a space that allows for a more personal, human interaction between colleagues that creates stronger bonds between team members.

It is only a few years since these networks are widely adopted, but a positive impact can already be seen in teams that are already blurring the boundary. As always, there will probably be some downsides, but so far, I would say so good.

Breaking the siloes

There is another interesting thing, which more than a real impact is some sort of potential application of these social networks. Internal communication in big organizations is an issue. It is probably one of the biggest challenges organizations face. Information, expertise and knowledge sharing are a common problem which, lets admit it, we have still not manage to resolve. What about adopting a social networking strategy?. Is there anything we can learn from Facebook and similars?. I think there is.

You and I are now connected to hundreds of people all over the world, from which we receive regular updates about what they are doing, where they just checked-in or what they are eating. Real time. Anywhere.

Think about applying this to your organization and the power of such a tool. You choose who to follow, whose updates you are interested in receiving, you post information of your activity at work and share it with whom might find it interesting. You find your colleagues by expertise, location… Interesting? I really think so.

 

Moving into the Social Network

Malaysia Airlines MHBuddy

Malaysia airlines has recently announced their MHBuddy application, which basically introduces all the flight search, booking and check-in features IN facebook. This is not a link to the Malaysia Airlines site, it is really a booking engine within facebook.

Where are your customers?

This idea, not specifically around flight booking but more on banking and financial services has been flying through my mind for the last months. There is one fundamental question I ask myself: How much time do our customers spend in our websites or online applications? The answer is simple, very little. We spend millions in improving our look and feel, making channel based pricing to make the Internet channel more attractive, but still it can not be even compared with the time our customers spend in facebook or other social networks.

People do not log into a social network, they are IN the social network all the time. Through their smartphone, tablet, netbook and desktop, through notifications, email or browsing. No matter where and when, you are connected, like it or not, part of your life happens there. And moreover, it does not happen in our corporate websites or online offerings, we are outside the life of our customers.

So it does not seem too wild to think that a possible way to go is to stop trying to pull our customers to our sites but, put our sites and online offering where our customers are.

The implications

I know this opens very serious security concerns, specially in some industries that deal with sensitive information and are prone to attacks, phishing and fraud in general, but if you think about it, this is probably one of the trends we will see in the next few years, with more and more moves into the social network, name it facebook or others, but ultimately, I bet it will happen, and ways to make this secure enough will be found to make the risk acceptable when compared to the benefits.

The most powerful CRM

Now think about the power behind this. Not only you are now part of your customers life, also your customer will be sharing with you lots of precious information that you would have never imagined, this is the most powerful CRM system you can imagine. Habits, friends, likes and dislikes, it is all there for you to be exploited and to adapt your offering to your customer, individually, and in the place where his/her life is taking place. Interesting?. I think so.

Adoption curve

We will probably see companies drifting some of their low risk customer interaction points to social networks, possibly things like customer complaints, surveys and service requests. Maybe even online stores will start selling their goods in facebook. Buying tickets for events is also a very possible application leveraging the existing event management facilities in facebook. I see a lot of constraints before we see high risk customer interactions in these places, but after we are able to understand the security implications and overcome the existing issues, what stops us from offering financial services to our customers in their preferred social network?. Do you want to apply for a credit card or loan, while you tag your last trip pictures?.