Some of the Indian Banks are
effectively using social networking sites to listen and engage with customers
that will help them in improving their marketing focus & target customers
effectively, capturing consumer perceptions, brand building & increased product
research. According to Facebook, its
India user base has more
than doubled in a year to 51 million at the end of March 2012 and Twitter has
around 15 million users in India .
Most of the social media users in India are younger generation in the
age group of 18-34 years, predominantly male and are mostly inclined to use
social media for doing banking transactions. Private Banks are the most active
in using the social media with IDBI Bank (637K Likes), Axis Bank (545K likes),
ICICI Bank (475K Likes) and HDFC Bank (109K Likes) as of May 2012. Public
sector banks like SBI, etc are yet to start actively using the social media
platforms but they still have presence.
In January 2012, ICICI Bank, India's largest private bank, launched
its Your Bank Account Facebook application, which allows users to check their
account balances, apply for debit cards, and other tasks like request statements and cheque books without
leaving Facebook. ICICI assures its Facebook users that the app is hosted on
separate ICICI bank servers and no data is transferred to Facebook as many of
the social network users are concerned about privacy and data security which is
hindering the active usage of banking applications on the social networking
sites. HDFC Bank, one of the early adopter and with an active presence on
social media space, runs the Money Matters section on its Facebook page. The bank
through its Facebook page engages visitors by putting up interesting news
articles, small puzzles and games to educate users about various banking tools
and even posting latest offers on cards and loans at the bank. HDFC Bank even
lets its customers voice their grievances on the bank’s Facebook page and
responds to them within 24 hours.
Axis
Bank has an active presence with highest number of likes, has interactive apps &
promotional offers that allow the bank to communicate with its target audience.
Brand campaign apps like Meri Zindagi ka Safar and Meri Zindagi ki Picture both
have seen more than 20,000 monthly active users and bank is promoting its platinum credit cards on
Facebook by integrating a movie ticket-booking transaction engine. IDBI
Bank is the largest socially networked bank in the country in terms of official
presence on four platforms namely Google+, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube with
the largest number of fans/followers/subscribers/circles across these platforms
as compared to any other peer bank in India . IDBI social media success
formula is because of their approach which is an interesting mix of informative
content, product awareness and grievance redressal. Social Media Platforms are
an active part of IDBI marketing strategy.
Despite the fact that many Global
banks are still apprehensive about offering their services and allowing
customers do banking transactions using social networking applications due to
data security and privacy concerns, Indian Banks majorly private banks are
actively using the social media platforms to engage with customers and allow
transactions through the applications. Apart from offering a low cost, effective
customer engagement & marketing platform, Social Media usage through the
mobile devices is also on tremendous rise as more people use their phones or
mobile devices to make payments or other banking transactions through social
networking sites.