One way or another, many of us have been affected by the National Australia Bank (NAB) again suffering problems with updating the accounts of its many customers. This comes nearly six months after a similar incident that affected people right around the country.
The Twitter account for NAB copped a pasting today whilst all the unfortunate staff member (going by the initials AB) could do early on was to apologise for delays and then going silent for two hours and offering the following message:
We’re listening to everyone & sorry we haven’t replied individually. I’ll post the next update here as soon as I have it. Pls RT ^AB
Great, so the NAB was going to keep us informed – fantastic. Wield social media to stay in touch with your customers and let them know what is going on.
Pity the next update took six hours.
- NAB Twitter Page
Not surprisingly, the media was all over this event like a rash and as you can see in the screenshot above a producer for ABC Radio was keen to speak with a particular person who tweeted NAB early this morning.
Similar messages were posted on the NAB page on Facebook which were easily drowned out by the conversation going on amongst the people wanting to share their views or find out more information.
Social media cuts both ways but can be more damaging when you don’t use it for its intended purposes – to communicate. Two tweets from the NAB in the space of six hours with no real information (granted that a tweet only allows 140 characters) is just poor form in my opinion.
It took NAB until 1930 hours to make the following update to their website:
NAB Website @ 1930 Hours
This is a much better update compared to what was offered earlier in the afternoon:
- NAB Website @ 1530 Hours
At any rate, this is a huge blow for the NAB which touted its “break up” with the other banks (which is now pure fodder to fuel the flames of ridicule). This single event could have wiped out any good will and loyalty for the bank that was left after the last incident in November 2010 and regained with its recent marketing campaign. It’s enough to make people consider moving their accounts elsewhere (myself included).
I guess the lesson here is that if big corporations want to cuddle up to the masses through social media then sharing is caring. It’s all well and good to listen but communication goes both ways. Providing meaningful and ongoing information is vital and anything less will simply invite people to pick things apart.
So NAB, third time lucky?
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