Wells Fargo Revisited: Social Media Monitoring

Let's revisit Wells Fargo's (WFC) response to its consumer banking scandal to try and find any change in its communications strategy, message, and tone in its conversation with people on social media in the company's attempt to regain consumers' trust.


Wells Fargo created over two million unauthorized accounts for its customers. In the process, WFC robbed millions of dollars from its own customers in the form of fees. This scandal was driven by WFC's ridiculous sales goals.


The WFC consumer banking scandal crippled WFC's 165 year old reputation, resulted in the resignation of its CEO and the executive of its consumer banking arm, the termination of 5,300 line staff, a fine of $185 million, and the loss of customers and future businesses. Full timeline of the scandal is available here.


In response to the scandal, WFC launched a commitment campaign with a TV ad, attempted to communicate with consumers on social media (SM) about its commitments, and created a web page to apprise customers of the scandal and steps WFC is taking to make things right. In a previous blog post, I argued the failure of WFC's approach in responding to the scandal. In this post, I will revisit WFC's SM pages to explore any change in its communication strategy, and report on any changes in the perception of the company following this scandal.
 
I acknowledge the difficulty in assessing the impact of one product line on brand image, particularly in the case of Wells Fargo, a diversified company with multiple product lines. This is not an attempt to arrive at superficial conclusions on the lasting effective of this scandal but rather to explore alternatives to WFC current communications to rebuild customer trust.

What's new

At this moment, people are more concerned about WFC financing of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) than its consumer banking scandal. Citizen activism is pressuring cities to discontinue its banking relationships with Wells Fargo. D.C. is the latest city to join the advocacy in divesting from Wells Fargo.

Wells Fargo's response on social media has been to ignore messages posted on its SM pages that reference #noDAPL #waterislife #divest. WFC silence has not slowed activists' push to encourage divestment from Wells Fargo for its involving in the DAPL.

There was no response from WFC to the above response and many more that are on Twitter. Furthermore, on social mentions the tag #noDAPL shows strong activity and reach.

Yet, the brand appears unaffected by the negative commentary on SM. Below is a snapshot of +Wells Fargo from social mentions. It is likely that the diversity of products and the size of the company mitigate the impact of negative commentary about one product line or a certain business contract such as DAPL. Maybe +Wells Fargo is right to not engage people discussing divesting from it. Maybe WFC is not only too big to be jailed but too big for criticism to impact is brand.




Wells Fargo Social Mentions



Facebook


There is still a lot of commentary on Facebook about +Wells Fargo in relation to its scandal. There is a subtle change in WFC engagement with people that comment on its posts. WFC responses are still automated and formulaic. The formula is acknowledge the person, apologize, offer to assist via private message (PM). The minor change is that WFC has decided to ignore replying to certain posts. Below are example of posts the company is not responding to.




Bhumi Rami writes in response to Joe Gorzkowski comment seeking assistance to resolve a mishap with changing his billing options:

 

A new campaign coming soon


WFC will run a national ad campaign, “Building Better Every Day” in mid-April. According to Sloan, CEO of WFC, the intent of the campaign is to continue to communicate the banks message that it is focus has changed to continuous customer service improvement. Sloan said,

It's not just a tagline. This is our commitment. So why better? Better is the drive that lives in all of us. You get up in the morning, all of us, individuals, communities and organizations, and you want to be better. You don't want things to be worse than yesterday. You want them to be better, to have a better future. You want more people to hear about how we're making things right, how we're fixing what was broken, and how we're building a better Wells Fargo.

It is just a tagline. To me, this sounds like a desperate plea and a pile of 💩. Previously, I have argued that this strategy is ineffective in rebuilding trust, that TV ad campaigns

...may have worked in a different era, but this is the era of social media, the era of the groundswell, the era of collectively trolling you when you F**k up.

I guess +Wells Fargo has not seen my previous blog post or the gazillion tweets and Facebook posts from others.


To understand employee perception of WFC mission statement, WFC is administrating survey to its employees. 

The survey will help us understand how you experience our culture. Our goal is to uncover our culture’s positive attributes and its potential weaknesses, so our leaders can understand how best to foster an ethical, inclusive and customer-focused culture.

Previously I did not stand with the line employees as I did not understand how we can excuse criminal acts of individuals. So here is the best I can do in defense of white collar criminals.



WFC leadership is still infatuated with pointing the fingers at line employees. It is well documented that it was not perception of culture, but rather unrealistic sales goals that created the environment for corruption to thrive. The checks WFC put in place, such as its audit and fraud departments failed, not for lack of notifications about illegal activities, but because executing an investigation meant crippling company sales goals. Instead of looking at how employees interpret the culture, WFC ought to look at the failures of its leadership in designing such a weak system. Audit 101, create space between auditor and the department being audited. I guess WFC doesn't get that too.


You say SWOT, I Say SWAT


What are the strengths of WFC on social media.


+Wells Fargo has a strong following on Social media. Over 940,000 follow WFC on Facebook and over 960,000 like its Facebook page. On Twitter, there are 260,000 followers, and 25,000 likes. On Instagram, the company has 22,000 followers.


In addition, banking is not an exciting sector that people would want to constantly stay in touch with, thus this serves as a shield for WFC in limiting its exposure to a wider, more critical audience. Keep in mind that WFC is a corporation with $1.9 trillion in assets. WFC has tremendous resources to employ in rebuilding product trust.




Weakness of +Wells Fargo is well noted in my previous blog. I will briefly restate some of the points I have made. First, its overt focus on national TV ad campaign is ineffective. Second, its webpage to highlight its commitments lacks any social features that involve consumers in the discussion on changes that need to be made for better banking experience. Third, its responses to SM media posts come across as robo-generated, insincere, particularly its silence on certain post critical of its scandal and the divestment movement in in which people are seeking dialogue in working on solutions together not being dictated to.




Opportunities abound for +Wells Fargo to repair its stained consumer bank products. First, it can sincerely engage with all commentators by hiring a cross-sectional team with one underlying objective - the customer is right. So long as actual (real) consumers complaints are present, it will continue to drive away potential customers. Agree to disagree. Give customers what they demand. Second, engage everyone that engages with you. For those concerned about the DAPL, hire a team of philosophers to argue your point. The underlying argument can be to agree that water is life, but that it is the responsibility of our political representative to protect our water resources. It may be best to pressure your government to change course, instead of us. if we don't do it, I bet someone else will, like the bank of North Korea. This may sound like a weak argument, but I think it would redirect the energy in the right direction, our government. Third, make the damn webpage for your customers social. Add a forum, a chat room, and here is a grand idea, schedule a Q&A session between customers and the CEO on the webpage.


Threats are minimal for a bank of this size and with as diversified of portfolio as WFC. However, if WFC is unable to create a more positive social media ecosystem, it will continue to lose customers. It is concerning when a competitor is praised on your post and you don't reply to the post. If Wells Fargo is providing innovative features such as using a code on your mobile phone to make withdrawals, it ought mention that in response to a post about competitors. Furthermore, I think its biggest threat is its continued financing of DAPL. Water is vital to life. If a bank can not stand up for that, they will certainly trample over your consumer rights over and over again.




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