To focus on the social media interactions that matter, DataEQ’s Crowd identifies the most valuable customer interactions and categorises them using four priority tags: risk, purchase, cancel and service.
Purchase mentions are from prospective customers who want to sign up to a bank’s product or service. Cancel mentions are from customers looking to leave their bank.
Capitec and FNB serve as a funnel from incumbents to newer digital banks
Most of the threats to cancel, or churn, came from the customers of the incumbent banks. Following this, the next largest churn threat came from Discovery Bank customers who threatened to join FNB. In an analysis of the flow of customers from traditional banks to smaller banks, FNB and Capitec appear to funnel the most customers towards digital banks. Customers leaving either Absa, Nedbank or Standard Bank were more likely to say they were going to FNB or Capitec.
African Bank receives a higher proportion of purchase queries
Across banks, purchase mentions (customers looking to sign up with a bank) were slightly more prevalent than cancel mentions.
African Bank had the greatest deviation between the percentage of customer acquisitions and cancel threats in conversation, with purchase topping cancel by 25.7 points. Capitec and TymeBank followed African Bank, at 7.7 points and 6.3 points, respectively. Of the new entrants, TymeBank and African Bank had higher acquisition opportunities than cancellation threats, while Discovery had the inverse.
FNB saw the largest negative discrepancy between purchase and cancel mentions, at -5.7 points. Discovery Bank performed similarly, at -5.2 points.
Discovery Bank receives the highest proportion of cancellation threats
As a proportion of its priority conversation, Discovery Bank had the highest share of cancellation threats. The bank struggled to provide satisfactory levels of customer service to its growing customer base. 76.7% of customers threatening to leave the bank cited its slow turnaround time.
Among the incumbent banks, FNB had the highest proportion of cancellation threats. Although turnaround time complaints were prevalent in cancellation threats directed at FNB, the bank’s handling of Covid-19 relief received backlash from wantaway customers.
To grow and protect market share, banks must prioritise social media as a channel for customer service. This requires banks to pay close attention to their online conversation and ensure they are equipped to identify, from within all of the noise, the priority conversation that requires attention and action. In doing so, banks will be able to improve satisfaction and reduce cancellation threats.
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