You need to upgrade your bank system. You can’t avoid it. You can’t do it in “phases” and you need to shut down your banking services for 2.5 days. Keeping people from their money…this can’t go well. And this is exactly the situation Coast Capital Savings find themselves in as they look to move to a new banking system. What’s a financial institution to do?
HOW WE GOT HERE:
We’re upgrading our banking system Feb 8-12 and most of our services will be unavailable that weekend. Find out more:
— Julie from Coast (@Coast_Capital) January 24, 2013
On January 24th, the face of Coast Capital’s customer service, Julie, let the Twitterverse know that work to improve their banking services would impact their customers over a period of 4 days. This Twitter is used almost strictly to respond to customer queries, doesn’t tweet on the weekends and, during the work week, isn’t overly active either (some days, a single tweet. Average, I’d say 3 tweets). Were they up to the challenge?
Over on Facebook, on the same day, the news was shared as well. As of this writing (Jan. 29th evening), the post has been shared 85 times 47 people LIKE it and 48 comments. The good news is half of those comments were from the bank responding to the the other comments, including a quarter of which were either negative or critical. As an organization, you have to take the good with the bad, and see it as an opportunity rather than something to shy away from. Did Coast Capital respond to all comments? Nope. But for those sharing their thoughts, sometimes there wasn’t anything to respond to. Instead, they just let them speak and left it on their Facebook wall. Nice.
And back on Twitter, the account has been a lot more active since the news of next weekend’s service disruption. Could they be more active? Sure, but they seem to be addressing any tweets mentioning them. They even went further to comment on my previous blog which was where I was originally alerted to this whole thing. Really good to see the outreach goes to not only their social platforms, but also where the discussions are.
@russlol Hi Russ, Thanks for helping us join in on the conversation. And thank you for your kind words! *blush*
— Julie from Coast (@Coast_Capital) January 29, 2013
Well, I should mention that I am a member of Coast Capital Savings and the first I heard of this was a comment from a reader on The Upsell. Is that my fault? A little. I did receive a pamphlet in the mail explaining all the details. But, I found the information readily available once I started digging (it’s right there, clear as day on their homepage). So, whether old school or new school…they were pretty covered in their communications. Sure it sucks that they’ll be cutting services for 2.5 days, but they did a fairly good job of making sure we all knew about it and have any questions answered. Insert something here about lemons and lemonade.
THE CONCLUSION: Going steady – This could be the beginning of something major.
You’re good Coast Capital…oh you’re good. All that listening and engaging and being accessible, all the ingredients to proper customer service, especially during crisis communications. Could you share a little more, connect a little more, during peace time? Sure. But when it came down to when I really needed you…you…you were there for me.
Service Rating System:
Friend Zone – I just don’t like you in “that way.”
Booty Call – If I don’t have anything else better going on, I’ll stop by.
2nd Date – I’ll give you a second chance.
Going steady – This could be the beginning of something major.
