In recent months, many of the nation's top credit card lenders have made efforts to increase their presence on social networks and other venues, and it seems these moves have paid off in the form of positive feeling about customer service experiences.
Of the large number of comments about credit card lenders posted online, it turns out the majority of these are actually positive, according to new research from the social media data firm DigitalMR. In all, some 67 percent of all comments made about credit card lenders online - such as on various social networking platforms or open forums - show that consumers feel positive about their issuer's customer service experience.
This was particularly the case for American Express, which has long been considered top in the industry when it comes to providing customer service for its cardholders, the report said. The lender not only had the highest positive sentiment among its customers in the industry, but it also dominated the total number of satisfied comments posted online, with 35 percent of all good experiences. In all, AmEx customers gave the company a net sentiment score of 63 percent, though U.S. Bank wasn't far behind with 61 percent. Citi, Barclays and JPMorgan all had ratings of 30 percent or better (42, 35 and 30 percent, respectively) as well.
Meanwhile, Bank of America was largely unpopular with consumers, with its negative comments accounting for more than twice the share of its positive ones, the report said. In all, it was the only major lender with a score below zero.
"Online sentiment continues to show contrasting pictures of two banks: AmEx which is very positive and Bank of America where sentiment is highly negative," said Ryan Rutan, the president of DigitalMR USA. "This represents a huge challenge for Bank of America to turn this around."
However, lenders also need to continue to use online experiences to engage in one-on-one conversations with customers, and respond to both positive and negative comments frequently, the report said. Further, it can be helpful if lenders encourage their customers to join discussion groups and forums to further talk about their experiences and views, then closely monitor those conversations.
The company found that these comments posted online could generally be used in further developing positive experiences in the future, the report said. For instance, data from good reviews can be used to create advertising, and comments both positive and negative can be used to better tailor existing financial products to consumers' needs, or even to create entirely new ones.
For instance, a few months ago, Barclaycard U.S. even began issuing a credit card for consumers that was essentially crowdsourced. It allowed cardholders to determine the interest rate and other details of the accounts, and also plans to grant borrowers in the group setting the terms some of the profits the company sees from the card.
