Blog post written by Robert Neumann. Robert is a former blogger on Blogpodium and is a Consultant within Accenture’s CRM Service Line with a focus on Sales Transformation.

---

When working in the Dutch Financial Services industry today it is fascinating to see the increasing interest of FS companies in social media. Having made it through the financial crisis, a lot of these companies are currently focusing on aligning their sales channels with today’s digital and mobile environments, one important and ever growing aspect of this being social media.

Having this in mind and being triggered by a recent news item stating that Facebook is now the leading social network in 115 of the 132 countries they are active in, I wanted to find out how Dutch financial services companies are doing on Facebook and the current no. 1 in the Dutch market, Hyves (about three times as large as Facebook).

Focusing on the top 3 banks and insurers my quick research revealed a surprisingly large room for improvement:

• On Facebook all of the top Dutch banks have a company page, but hardly go beyond a simple description taken from Wikipedia. The combined crowd of people who like these pages does not pass the 2000-person mark (equaling a certain lack of interest and popularity, at least compared to a Dutch Facebook champion KLM with almost 85.000 people liking their page). Most insurance companies are a bit further with their Facebook pages and are managing them actively with the use of a public “wall”, photos and events. In contrast to these activities stand the rather low numbers of people who like these pages, being often less than 100 persons.

• On Hyves this picture is only slightly more diverse. While most banks and insurers do not have an official Hyves page, the Rabobank currently manages a community of about 350 members  and is offering product-specific forums, testimonial videos and specific marketing activities leading to their own website.

Being surprised by these rather limited results I wanted to find out whether there are any FS companies out there already using more of the possibilities that Facebook offers in order to support their sales efforts. I therefore looked at other European banks and took a short glimpse at the activities in the US.

Coming out on top of my personal favorites list were the Facebook-pages of BNP Paribas Net and Citibank:

• BNP Paribas Net, while not offering any surprising gadgets, smartly connects with their online and mobile banking offering and managed to get the huge number of 117.000 persons liking it.

• Citibank US on the other hand shows how to use Facebook as an additional sales channel with seasonal specific offers and activities. Their “Connect” page is my personal highlight, giving  customers an overview on all the possibilities they have to contact their bank, reaching from traditional ways such as branches and telephone to email, Twitter, mobile and SMS banking. So far I haven’t seen such a broad range of contact channels offered.

What I conclude from this quitck analysis is that many Dutch FS companies are still very much in the conceptual stages concerning the use of Facebook and Hyves as a sales or service channel. First steps can be observed, but to really make use of all the possibilities this medium offers several key questions remain to be answered:

1. What do I want to achieve with my social media presence (besides from only being there)? What value do I want to create for my clients? What value does this create for my company?
2. How does my social media presence integrate with my other sales & service channels?
3. How can I create an active an open community around my social media presence (size being a factor that also matters)?

I’m looking forward to see how Dutch Financial services companies will tackle these challenges and further extend and improve their social media footprint in the months and years to come.