VIENNA, Va.-Navy FCU here has the technology it needs to send automated responses to the 34,000 e-mails and social networking posts it sees every month. But when it comes to social sites like Twitter, the CU chooses to respond by hand.
"The whole point of engaging in social media is to build a relationship with members," explained Johnna Strahle, manager-correspondence, at the $40-billion CU. "If you start sending automated responses within social media, you're going to get caught really fast. Lots of people will notice if you send out the exact same answer multiple times, or if you mistakenly send out an inappropriate automated response. You take the risk of damaging the relationship."
E-mail is different because messages are confined to one recipient; the risk of damage is lower, she said.
Though Navy FCU tweets by hand, technology helps Navy Federal search for "chatter" about the CU across Twitter, YouTube and even social sites where the CU doesn't maintain a page. Since October, Navy Federal has performed automated searches using Cloud Monitor, provided by RightNow of Bozeman, Mont., which offers customer experience products.
Cloud Monitor searches are better than manual searches because "you don't have to build your search for relevant posts each time you search, and you can be consistent about what you're searching for," Strahle said.
Seven employees spend a collective total of 13 hours per day using Cloud Monitor to search, track and manually respond to posts at various social media sites, she added. Cloud Monitor identifies about 1,700 posts weekly that mention Navy FCU, which the team further reduces to about 200 that contain relevant mentions. From there, the CU manually responds to about 10% of relevant posts, said Strahle.
For now, Navy Fed responds only to compliments or neutral comments, she continued. "We want to acknowledge people." Soon, however, NFCU will dive a little deeper and respond to vague complaints, as well. "We'll invite people to send us an e-mail with a contact phone number and then do outbound phone calls."
The relatively "small" number of relevant mentions of Navy FCU at social sites makes it possible for the CU to respond to people by hand, Strahle continued. However, as the CU begins interacting at social sites more often, advertising its Twitter pages and hosting its first Facebook page this summer, she said Navy FCU will continue answering all relevant posts manually instead of using Cloud Monitor capabilities.
Beyond making it easier and faster to search for relevant social media posts, Cloud Monitor also tracks and reports on social media interactions, said Strahle. Each relevant post can be stored as an "incident" in Cloud Monitor. The CU then manually categorizes the topic, such as mobile banking, and type, such as compliment or complaint, of each incident.
As Navy FCU expands its presence on the social web, Cloud Monitor will tell the CU about trends in compliments or problems, Strahle said. These trends can be easily integrated with and tracked against trends from email and secure messaging channels because Navy Federal also uses RightNow's Email Management application, she said.
Cloud Monitor will enhance Navy FCU's "whole" view of the member, added Jennifer Sadler, the CU's public relations manager. "We can capture social media incidents along with all of our other member interactions from e-mails, calls and visits and attach them to the member record."
