Wells Fargo, like any financial institution clearly feels the angst of the social media explosion. On one hand, they are in a category of business that carries the burden of almost insufferable regulatory controls. On the other, is the customer fear that their financial stuff will be shared with God only knows who.
Then there are people like me, who are quick to point out that there have been no major breaches of confidentiality yet, despite the fact there are nearly 40 million blogs and bloggers are posting new content faster than once per second.
Of course, if I were Ed Terpening at Wells Fargo, who manages a companywide team addressing blogging/RSS issues, I just might take a more cautious approach, which is indeed what happened. The result was Guided by History, a group blog by Wells Fargo associates, braided into the centennial observance of the San Francisco
I was consistently ambivalent about this blog. I found it interesting and well-written. It was devoid of “corpspeak.” It used no false characters, nor did it make any lame attempts to sell. By following it, I learned more about an historic event of interest to me. And now the blog is continuing to cover disasters elsewhere as they occur. All for the good.
But still, I wish that Wells, or some other bank, would take the chance t have a blog that used real employees talking about the finer points of getting loan approvals, soft tips on interest calculations, what happens to them if the till desn’t balance at the end of the day. I want to see real people doing real jobs who I can ewatch and trust and that will build my loyalty to Wells over B of A or some other non-blogging bank.
Will this happen in my lifetime? The following interview gives me reason to be encouraged. Ed makes clear that Guided is but a first cautious step for the bank into the deep blue Blogosphere. What follows, except for a few insignificant condensations and grammar polishes are his answers to my questions.
1. What does Wells Fargo expect to accomplish with blogging?
Blogging is an extension of our web site, in that it gives us another touch point--a way to listen and communicate. We recognize the growth of emerging online social networks (of which blogging is just one part) as one that provides us unfiltered sentiment from consumers and from which consumers can collaborate to achieve goals. Social Networks, like 43Things, http://www.43things.com are a great example of where consumers collaborate to achieve financial goals. We want to use these new media as another way to understand consumer needs and opinions.
2. How does Well Fargo wish to be perceived by customers and prospects? How does blogging impact that, from your perspective?
First, we want to see our customers succeed financially.
We wish to be perceived as a bank that is guided by customer needs, socially responsible, and innovative in both product development and use of technology to make people's lives easier. Blogging helps us achieve many of these objectives.
While our current blog does not have a finance focus, we're listening to what consumers are saying, and have begun responding with comments, identifying and addressing common customer service questions and are considering possible future blogs that may be related to our businesses and the products we offer to our customers. I believe that joining the conversation and using the power of blogs lets us find more ways to help our customers be financially successful, which is ultimately our most important objective. I've already seen evidence of how "being in the room" brings a higher level of constructive conversation, and that's beneficial to all involved.
3. How did the concept of Guided by History come about? What did Wells Fargo hope to accomplish with it? How would you evaluate the results in the brief retrospect that you now have?
The concept came about when we recognized a unique intersection of events and needs: First, we were searching for a way to enter the blogosphere that was somewhat safe (i.e., a short term commitment, non-controversial, etc) to get experience. At the same time, our Historical Services Dept. was preparing exhibitions in our museums related to the '06 quake anniversary. When I looked at what they were doing--especially the first-hand accounts of 1906 employees of the time--I recognized it could make a great blog.
The stories are written as you'd write a blog: first person, authentic, often passionate. The challenge was: how do we go beyond history, and make the event relevant today? It t urns out the same manager responsible for the museums was on a company-wide committee working with The American Red Cross and the City of San Francisco on preparedness events and awareness. So, "Remember & Prepare" naturally married our unique historical perspective. Our history is an important aspect of our company and culture and seizing an opportunity to make history relevant today made perfect sense.
We've evaluated the success of the blog using many data points, including comments (both quantity and sentiment); feedback emails; by reading what more than 100 bloggers wrote about it; and standard web metrics like unique users, hits, etc. Overall, the metrics were extremely encouraging.
4. Guided by History is a highly localized blog. Yet Wells Fargo does business in a much larger geographic area. Why did Wells pick such a localized subject?
Of course the Internet is global, and we're getting worldwide visitors to this blog that care about preparedness, but you're right the topic is somewhat local. There are a couple of reasons for this:
1) we wanted the experience. The idea of blogging is still new to financial services companies, and we wanted a benign topic that allowed us to dip our toe in the blogosphere - the earthquake anniversary made sense and is local to our company's headquarters;
2) we felt the topic had global significance, especially in light of such recent disasters where preparedness was top of mind (e.g. Katrina, Tsunamis, etc.);
3) Wells Fargo focuses on consumers at the local level, so a regionalized blog was not unnatural for us, and speaking directly to communities is something we want to continue to do.
5. You have been criticized by several bloggers including me for not making this blog more about banking services and less about banking, or a banker's life at Wells Fargo. What is your response to these comments?
I accept that as valid criticism. As an industry, we're regulated (and with good cause), and so therefore we're going to approach things differently. I'd like to say we're as "Gung Ho" as some tech companies are in this medium, but the reality is that, as a large financial institution we are careful and conservative given the sensitive nature of what we deal with - people's money and people's trust. As I've commented on Naked Conversations, we've dipped our toe into the blogosphere. The water is fine, so we look forward to providing our customers with more information geared toward their financial interests.
6. You personally responded, as I understand it, to just about every blogger who wrote about the Wells Fargo blog. You used email. Why did you not post a response on a Wells Fargo blog and link back to other bloggers? Why did you not at least leave comments on our posts?
I did leave comments on blog posts (more than 30). I personally responded to just about every blog post about the blog not via email, but rather on the blog that posted the content, as my own comment (disclosing my name, title, etc), and followed up separately via email only when requested by the blogger.
I felt a blog post on Guided by History responding to some of the comments were out of context for a number of reasons: 1) the audience that generally wrote criticisms about GBH were largely industry watchers, not the general public; 2) It seemed off topic; we're blogging about history and preparedness, not _about_ blogging; and 3) I wanted to ensure that the blogger got a direct response to their own post, hence my comment on their own blog. My focus was on our core audience and their needs. I'm open to feedback about GBH - we did this as a learning experience - otherwise I would not have taken the time to find and respond to bloggers who wrote about us. I just felt a direct response via the commenting mechanism was the most direct, respectful, and most in context.
7. What will you do differently next time?
I would have liked to have had more guest bloggers. We're not the experts on disaster preparedness. Had we had more time, I would have signed up more guests and let them run with it. I'd also like to see more community building features added, like polling and other features that surface reader opinions.
We launched this blog in a very short time frame, and I think we rushed through some decisions that I'd like to revisit, such as collection of email addresses, URLs, etc. As a bank, we generally face more restrictive rules limiting the collection of personal information, so we have to be especially careful.
8. What blogs can we anticipate from Wells Fargo in the future?
We'd like to blog about topics related to financial services, to continue to use this platform to reach out to the community (what Steve Rubel calls "Higher Holy Calling", among other approaches), for us to think local-as well as global-and for us to listen and respond. We also expect to follow the broader Social Networking phenomenon for which blogging is a part.
Several groups in the company also use blogging internally to communicate (as well as Wikis, etc). There are at least a couple dozen internal blogs that I track. I hope that trend continues as it will further educate all parts of the business on blogging and social networking.
9. How, in your opinion, will blogging change Wells Fargo in the long run?
We want to be where our customers are, when they are there, which increasingly is the blogosphere and online. Blogging is another channel-- an increasingly influential one at that - to reach a consumer audience; it does not (at this point) replace other forms of communication, including traditional marketing, media relations, etc.
I believe consumer tools that support brand analysis by mining social network data and surface broad consumer sentiment (eg, "Intelliseek for the consumer", like Yelp) will gain acceptance. This will re-enforce the company's commitment to customer service-every customer touch point is increasingly important, as the voice of the "average consumer"
increases in visibility.
I also believe regional blogs will bring us closer to customers and have a very positive marketing impact.
10. How do blogging and the social media impact banking? How will it change relationships between the financial services companies and customers?
Social media and the "connected society" are making the world smaller very quickly. The practical impact is something I spend a lot of time thinking about and observing. I can foresee possible futures, but like the start of the web, what actually happens depends on many factors, including cultural, technological, and even legislative.
The ability of like-minded groups to instantly share broad sentiment on brands and products is extremely empowering. The bottom line is companies like Wells Fargo are very customer focused, react to customer-segment needs more quickly, and address local segments - blogging can take these efforts to the next level. I believe it will also have a segmentation effect on products/services. As companies better understand the needs of segmented social networks online (eg, whether by age group, or other attribute that creates a "group"), we can respond with specialized products. Perhaps a WellsFargo.com tailored for seniors or another for teens.
