So here it is Merry Christmas

This will be my last blog post of 2011 (no cheering, please!) I took the November/December issue of FStech to press earlier this month and my last day in the office is this Friday. With the mag out of the way and Christmas fast approaching, this week is basically a stream of lunch meetings and Yuletide parties, including SourceWire's annual press do at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street. It’s a tough job but…

I’ll sign off by wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. It's been an eventful year for yours truly. I started 2011 as Editor of sister title Retail Systems and end it at the helm of FStech. I've thoroughly enjoyed the first six months in charge and am looking forward to kickstarting 2012 with the FStech Awards (shortlist to be sorted, followed by the judging day in early February...lots to get through). Thanks to all who have supported and worked with the title this year, including Paul Rodgers for doing a great job of chairing our Payments Technology Conference in November; and those who have agreed to be on the judging panel for the aforementioned awards: that man again, Paul Rodgers; Wil Cunningham, Disaster Recovery Extension Program - Delivery Lead, Lloyds Banking Group; Ramzi Musallam, Information Security Consultant, Greatpark Consulting; Neira Jones, Head of Payment Security, Barclaycard; Kevin Brown, Head of Global Product Management, RBS Global Transaction Services; Tim Holman, President, ISSA-UK and CEO 2-sec; and Glenn Murphy, Head of IT, London & Capital.

Right, I’m off to gorge myself on mince pies and mulled wine. Happy Christmas and here’s to a prosperous 2012!

Is that all there is?

RBS: Inside The Bank That Ran Out Of Money, on BBC2 earlier this week, was an exceptionally well-made documentary. It didn't tell you anything new about the RBS story but it did skillfully weave together stock footage, archive interviews, talking heads and the occasional witty flourish (e.g. Peggy Lee singing Is that all there is? over the end credits) to produce an engrossing programme.

Plus there was the bonus of previously never-before-broadcast footage of Fred the Shred's final meeting with RBS shareholders. It's immensely satisfying to see him face up to an angry investor demanding an apology. The then chairman Sir Tom McKillop had already apologised but when an hour passed without a similar gesture from Fred, said investor grabbed the microphone and stated that people wanted to hear the word sorry pass his lips. "I wouldn't want there to be any doubt. I am extremely sorry," says a squirming Fred. Whether he meant it is left for you to decide - the programme has a slightly mocking tone when covering the record loss of £28 billion and Government bail-out and the fact that one of the central players walked away with a fat pension and knighthood intact. But ultimately the narration is coolly detached, rather than Michael Moore style lecture/rant. And all the better for it.

Watch it here.

Ask not what Facebook can do for you...

Anyone else watch Mark Zuckerberg: Inside Facebook on BBC2 at the weekend? A hit and miss affair, the programme was presented by Emily Maitlis who charted the rise of Facebook, from humble beginnings to its current position of online behemoth which has worked its way into the lives of 800 million people.

Maitlis had secured a rare interview with Zuckerberg. So far, so good. But there were a couple of snags. Whilst the programme made some interesting points about the cultural impact of Facebook, it was less successful when tackling the man who created it. Over the course of an hour, we were given about five minutes of Zuck being interviewed by Maitlis and saying 'cool' and 'awesome' alot and waffling on about making society more open - the rest of the time she devoted to an origins story, visiting old haunts and interviewing college professors and friends. The origins thing has already been done, with considerable skill and style by The Social Network. The makers acknowledged as much, throwing in a few clips from the movie and trying to pick holes in it, citing various inaccuracies without really backing them up.

Still, it was worth sitting through for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Maitlis finally landed a blow (around the 50 minute mark) when she quizzed Elliot Schrage, Facebook's VP public policy, on the site's 'Like' button. If you click 'Like' on a brand or product, you could be unwittingly promoting it to your friends in their sidebars. Is it right that a person is used to promote a company when they have not agreed to it, she asked. "Let's pause," said Schrage, with a 'why is the nice, attractive lady from the Beeb ambushing me' look on his face. "You're asking a profound question. What's advertising?" He then attempted to fob her off with talk of  'affirmative linking' and 'ranking mechanisms'. Before excusing himself and jumping out the window...OK, I made that last bit up but watch it and you'll see what I mean.

Secondly, is Facebook really a force for good as Zuck would have us believe? Is it, to quote COO, Sheryl Sandberg, "better if we're all more open and connected" when the facilitator is a multi-billion dollar company dogged by criticism of its privacy policy? For all the talk of a revolution in the way we communicate, is the site essentially just a means of escape for people when they're bored and lonely? And, as such, has it become a master of disguise, mercilessly exploiting its users as it morphs from social to commercial network? As one wag put it: "Ask not what Facebook can do for you, ask what you can do for Facebook."

Sadly, the programme left it too late to really get to grips with these questions, but it did at least provide some interesting food for thought. If you missed it, you can watch it here.

Embracing social media in customer communications

Guest blog post by Mark King, Senior VP, Europe and Africa, Aspect

In its 2011 report Social Banking: The Social Networking Imperative for Retail Banks, Accenture claims that while 90 per cent of financial institutions will dedicate funds for social media initiatives by 2012, the majority are still novices in the field. Forty two per cent of online adults are keen to engage with their financial providers using social media, according to a 2010 Forrester Research study.  However, Accenture suggests that few firms yet know how to generate significant business value from engaging with customers, partners and employees via this channel.

Aspect offers the following best practice tips for organisations looking to embrace social media in customer communications:

1. Engage with employees first: Before reaching out to customers, trial social media with your own staff. Find people that embrace the social scene and create ambassadors that can reach out internally and externally. Also engage social media-aware executives to influence more senior managers.

2. Align social initiatives with business goals: Such as how to grow revenue, or retain profitable customers. Campaigns that engage large numbers of people can sometimes end up creating lots of contacts but little value.

3. Monitor and analyse: Don’t just monitor social networks for positive and negative mentions of your organisation. Also identify and monitor networks where customers, competitors and commentators gather. Find out what they’re discussing, what technologies they’re using and feed this into your social planning.

4. Set business rules that determine how and when you engage with customers: This, together with the subsequent workflows that ensure issues are resolved rapidly and effectively, can unlock significant business value. Integrate social media communications into your overall customer contact strategy as a distinct channel and compare social media performance in the context of your total engagement strategy.

5. Set up direct customer contact options:  Where appropriate, provide customer contact options on your company Facebook and Linked In pages – including self-service pages and helpful Q&As – enabling customers to contact you directly. When Bank of America adopted Twitter for customer service, users said it was easier and faster than traditional channels. 

6. Use customer segmentation techniques: To target specific customer groupings. Accenture reported that Chase created an online community of mass-affluent consumers, working with them to design the highly successful Chase Priority Club Rewards card. 

7. Choose your technology wisely: Identify and implement what’s right for your business – and make use of existing customer contact investments such as workforce optimisation capabilities, workflow rules and call centre performance analytics to maximise efficiency and performance.

8. Bring experts into customer conversations: Using Presence technology, service agents can see the location of specialists and know whether they’re in meetings or available to talk. Customer interactions that start with customers hitting click-to-call buttons and speaking to agents can now progress to screen sharing with at-home experts.

When Bankers Were Good

Very good programme on BBC2 last night, Ian Hislop's When Bankers Were Good. And it had twice the audience of Jamie Oliver's latest show in the same slot on Channel Four. Always refreshing to see audiences choose something of substance over yet another bloody cookery show fronted by one of the most annoying men in the universe.

Bankers' reputations “have fallen below that of estate agents or even journalists" quipped Hislop, who argued that they had much to learn from their Victorian predecessors. The Private Eye head honcho took a look at such philanthropic Victorians as the Gurneys, a banking family of Quakers, Angela Burdett-Coutts, who was a sucker for a good cause, including the British Goat Society and prison reformer Elizabeth Fry (aka the lady on the back of the fiver).

Thoughtful, witty stuff and Hislop made for an amiable host. If you missed it, you can catch it here.

F-commerce on the rise

PayPal has unveiled Send Money, an application on Facebook which lets users send e-cards and money to friends. It's a move which seems like a no brainer, given that the site has more than 750 million users and a large percentage of them have active PayPal accounts.

It'll be interesting to see how many more businesses will take advantage of f-commerce. It certainly looks like an idea whose time has come. Twelve per cent of social media users have made a purchase from a Facebook store after seeing something on the site, according to the latest eCustomerServiceIndex (eCSI) results from eDigitalResearch and IMRG.

The results show an 8.8 per cent growth in f-commerce over four months as more and more retailers import their website functionality into the social networking site. The study also found that 25 per cent of online consumers now log onto Facebook more than once a day. Meanwhile, 97 per cent plan to log onto the internet this Christmas to browse and buy gifts. Twenty seven per cent will access the internet from their smartphone to browse and buy, whilst another nine per cent will use their tablet devices to do the same.

We have a winner!

I blogged a few weeks ago about the 2011 Best Dressed Banker Award.

This was organised by Savile Row tailors, Cad and the Dandy, set up by ex-bankers James Sleater and Ian Meiers. The shortlist included Credit Suisse Analyst, David Roditi; Francesco Chioccola of Credit Societe Generale; Sir Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England; and. Kweku Adoboli, Senior Trader at UBS. Yes, really. That guy.

But there can only be one winner and that is, and I quote the press release, "pretty, petite Michelle Flynn of Sapient’s client service."

Pretty, petite? Who writes this stuff? And what decade are they living in? Anyhoo, that's Michelle on the left, not dressed like your typical banker, it must be said. A controversial winner or will all bankers dress like this in the not too distant future? Message me if you can be bothered.