From American Banker:
Eighty-two thousand of PNC’s more than one million Virtual Wallet account customers participate in a blog that can be accessed only from within an online banking session, providing the bank with valuable and focused feedback.
The “Inside the Wallet” blog has played a key role in the evolution of Virtual Wallet, a group of checking and savings accounts that lets users track their spending using online-specific features such as a calendar view of their spending.
“I can remember the day we first turned Virtual Wallet on, when we had zero customers and we didn’t know what we were creating or how popular it would be,” says Mike Ley, vice president of e-business and payments at PNC Financial Services Group (PNC). PNC announced Tuesday that it has reached a million Virtual Wallet accounts.
The blog provides a more valuable level of feedback than PNC gets through other communication channels such as Twitter and Facebook (FB), he says.
“From our perspective, it’s a little more in-depth, the kinds of questions and the kinds of insight you can get from people who have used the product and are engaged and are invested in it,” Ley says.
PNC’s use of blogs and social-media platforms to communicate and engage with its customers makes sense. Not only does it provide two-way communication between the company and its customers, but it offers opportunities for richer communication overall.
Such techniques offer new ways to share feedback and insight, and offer a “discovery” environment from which ideas can be shared and vetted. This should increase customer engagement, and foster increased loyalty and customer satisfaction, something every financial institution aspires to improve.
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