Social Listening: Lessons from Frost Bank’s Customer Experience | Ep. 433 with Audrey Cannata
James Robert Lay
I help financial brands stop ?? losing loans and deposits in less than 30 days through website secret shopping studies ?? 2X Best Selling Author ?? Top 5% Podcast ?? Global Keynote Speaker ??
This article first appeared here.
Financial institutions often struggle to manage and appropriately respond to online feedback, especially negative reviews, risking the loss of potential loyal customers. Statistics reveal that a single negative review can severely damage a brand’s reputation, requiring up to 40 positive experiences to counteract it.?
In this episode of the Banking on Digital Growth podcast, Audrey Cannata and James Robert Lay discuss the critical role of listening and responding to customer feedback for financial institutions. By sharing real-life examples, such as a commendable response from Frost Bank to a negative review, the podcast emphasizes the importance of proactive customer service and reputation management.
Join us as we discuss:
The key moments in this episode are:
00:00 Welcome to The Banking on Digital Growth Podcast
00:52 Turning Negatives into Positives
01:57 Personal Anecdotes and Lessons
04:55 Understanding Customer Segments
06:43 Secret Shopping Insights
08:56 Real-Time Feedback Response
15:32 Statistics on Negative Experiences
17:48 Responding to Negative Reviews
25:57 Google My Business Strategy
29:59 Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up
The expanded summary of this episode:
Real-time Test of Frost Bank’s 24/7 Live Human Support Feature
Findings from the Test
Social Listening and Proactive Monitoring
Impact of Negative Feedback
External Digital Experiences Shaping Expectations
Importance of Customer Reviews
Google My Business Rating Strategy
Actionable Insights for Financial Brands
Full transcription of this episode:
Audrey Cannata [00:00:00]:
In today's digital age, people have more platforms than ever to share their experiences, good or bad. Knowing what your account holders are saying and learning how to respond appropriately can make the difference between a lost customer and a loyal advocate. In this episode of the Banking on digital Growth podcast, we'll discuss how to stay on top of what's being said about your brand, why your response matters, and how to handle negative feedback effectively. You're listening to the banking on digital growth podcast. Welcome back to the banking on digital Growth podcast. I'm Audrey Kanata, operations lead here at the Digital Growth Institute, and today we're going to explore how focusing on what you can control your response can turn a potentially negative situation or experience into a positive outcome. But first, want to see how your financial brand's marketing and sales communication compares to others? You can schedule your marketing and sales benchmark review when you visit www.digitalgrowth.com benchmark now. Joining me for today's conversation is founder and CEO of the Digital Growth Institute, James Robert Lay.
James Robert Lay [00:01:21]:
Hey Audrey.
Audrey Cannata [00:01:22]:
Hey James Robert. I'm excited about today's conversation.
James Robert Lay [00:01:26]:
I am too, because it took a what could have been a negative experience. Like, I think we're all susceptible to worse, and it has transformed it into a positive one. I mean, that's the whole reason we're having the conversation to begin with in the first place, is because we were heard, someone listened, someone responded.
Audrey Cannata [00:01:55]:
Yeah, absolutely. Before we get into this interesting situation that we had, which is kind of a follow up to one of our recent podcast conversations, what is going well for you personally or professionally?
James Robert Lay [00:02:10]:
I would say watching my oldest son struggle, watching him flounder around as a freshman in high school, having to do real work, which requires real discipline. He's now in the third week of school and had a bit of a meltdown yesterday around his history class. He's a freshman, but it's a college level course. He gets college credit for this. And he was just all in a fit. And I said, listen, now's your time to step up. Now's your time to be do, to be disciplined, to do difficult things. And growth happens in the struggle.
James Robert Lay [00:02:57]:
Growth never happens in the comfort zone. And I said, as much energy and time that you have now wasted, it's since you've been home from school fighting, not wanting to do whatever the assignment was. Imagine if you had invested that time and energy appropriately, you'd be done by now. You could go and have your fun. But nope, you chose to complain and to pout and to feel sorry for yourself and as a result, it's gonna be a late night for you. He's like, well, I'm just gonna quit this class. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna go back to the regular history. And I was like, listen, you're more than welcome to do whatever you do.
James Robert Lay [00:03:39]:
Just know that if you quit, you're telling yourself and you're telling your future self that whenever things get just a little bit challenging, it's okay to quit. It's okay to stop. It's okay to step away. So this is where you can start to train your mind and to be disciplined, to do difficult things. The only thing that, that differentiates those who dream and those who do it comes down to discipline.
Audrey Cannata [00:04:08]:
That's a great, it's a great lesson. I appreciate hearing that. I always, always love it whenever we can swap parenting children stories. I know that. So, you know, we're very similar in many ways on our approach with our children. And so anytime you come to me and be like, oh, one of my kids just got their butts kicked, I'm like, yes, tell me more.
James Robert Lay [00:04:33]:
Well, what else happened? But I think that's a lot of, like, how, how we also, we approach our work with, with financial brands and their marketing, sales and leadership teams. It's, we want to see them succeed. We want to see them grow. We want to see them level up. But we also know that there might be some struggle along the way. And, you know, I would say someone who has helped me along the way, and they've been in the industry for over 50 years, was recently having a conversation with them, and he gave me some really good perspective. He said that, you know, about one third of people want to continue to grow. They want to be challenged, they want to level up.
James Robert Lay [00:05:19]:
Another third of people, they're, they're just there. They're okay. They're, they're not exactly looking to grow, but they're just there. And then another third are going to fight you. They're going to resist, they're going to push back. And it's the, the first 3rd that I'm most interested in working with because those are the ones who are looking for help. Those are the ones who want to be helped. The middle of the two, the second 3rd, maybe we can help them, maybe we can't.
James Robert Lay [00:06:02]:
It's the last third, just, we can, we can't help them. And, and that's okay. You, I'm learning the hard way that you can't help everyone. And so I'm being more intentional in my time and my conversations, having conversations, making connections with those who I think. I think we can help. That's step number one. Step number two is do they want to be helped? And then once we have a conversation, then the step number three is do we even want to help them? And that's where I think today's conversation really picks up. Because what we all coming together, it is what we surfaced for.
James Robert Lay [00:06:54]:
Today's conversation is the direct result of an organization that wants to be helped because we facilitated a website, secret shopping study for them. And we benchmark their experience against a, we'll call them a competitor that is three times their size and assets. But it was interesting because through that secret shopping experience, we actually found a gap in a blind spot for the competitor. And we did a podcast about it. We recorded it, we talked about it, and it was in real time. We just picked up the phone, we called this competitor to see what would happen. And the expectation that was set on the competitor's website was not met, nor was it realized, which was like, you know what? You're saying one thing, you're communicating one thing, but I'm experiencing something else. There's an experience gap there.
James Robert Lay [00:07:53]:
And when there's an experience gap, that is where the negative emotions begin to creep in.
Audrey Cannata [00:07:58]:
Yeah, this was a, that was a fun conversation because it wasn't planned, but also the, the feedback we got. And I think it was just, just our listeners and our audience getting to hear this in real time. And there was actual life to the situation because we could share data and we can share stories all day long, but when you're actually part of the scenario and you can hear firsthand the experience and how it didn't match up with what they said on the page, and that's okay for whatever reason. And it wasn't, it's not a knock to that financial brand. It was more so bringing awareness. And I don't think we said anything negative, but we did post that on our YouTube channel. We posted that little clip to share, to bring awareness to what we found. And I believe, and I don't even remember if you checked this before.
Audrey Cannata [00:08:56]:
I did, but I know that I checked it about two days after we posted and we had a response back from the bank.
James Robert Lay [00:09:06]:
We did have a response. And I think, you know, we really need to give them a shout out because they heard a negative review. They were aware, they accepted that there was an experience gap.
Audrey Cannata [00:09:30]:
Yep.
James Robert Lay [00:09:32]:
But then most importantly, they took action. And the way that they took action was they just simply replied to was a great response. And it was a great. Do you have that pulled up by any chance, of how they responded?
Audrey Cannata [00:09:48]:
Here, I can get it for you very quickly.
James Robert Lay [00:09:51]:
I'm actually, I'm actually going to our YouTube channel, by the way, if you're watching, um, you're, you probably are watching.
Audrey Cannata [00:09:57]:
I will say, you know, they could have easily taken it personally, you know, went into defense mode. Um, you know, because when we go, what?
James Robert Lay [00:10:10]:
That was me. I was not talking. I was actually pulling up the video right here. Yeah, I got it pulled up. So this was Frostbank. Frostbank out of San Antonio, Texas. And their response, and it was interesting because in the text on this YouTube video says, in this episode, we dive into a real time test of Frostbank's 24/7 live human support feature with a focus on their promise of no press. One or two, we put their customer service to the test.
James Robert Lay [00:10:43]:
Will they live up to the expectation? Join us as we explore the user experience, discuss the key takeaways and highlights of importance of managing customer expectations in digital banking. You continued since you wrote the description. This unscripted, spontaneous call gives you a behind the scenes look at how we conduct website secret shopping and evaluate the customer journey for financial brands. Watch to see what happens and learn how your business can avoid common pitfalls. The suspense, the suspense, those suspense.
Audrey Cannata [00:11:10]:
Yes.
James Robert Lay [00:11:11]:
Now where they stepped up and I'm so impressed is they replied a couple of, maybe within a day, maybe two days.
Audrey Cannata [00:11:23]:
Yeah.
James Robert Lay [00:11:24]:
Quickly quote, we're so sorry we couldn't get to the phone. We're so sorry we couldn't get to the phone faster. When you called, we were, and I love the emojis. They actually use emojis.
Audrey Cannata [00:11:35]:
Me too.
James Robert Lay [00:11:37]:
Why is that important? Why are emojis important? Audrey?
Audrey Cannata [00:11:41]:
Ooh. I think when used, when used appropriately, it's the visual. The visual communication. Yeah, it's a little bit harder, I think.
James Robert Lay [00:11:52]:
Well, it's the iconography. I mean, if you go back to, like, for example, hieroglyphics or pictures, they told a story. And the tone. The tone words and the human brain can process images about 60, 65,000 times faster than the written word. And so we see this. We'll continue. We're sorry we couldn't get to the phone faster when you called. We really appreciate the review and recommendations that are passing them onto our customer service team right away.
James Robert Lay [00:12:23]:
Our customers can also speak to a real person, so they're reinforcing the expectation, the promise, a real person 24/7 via live chat and our app and our award winning team is always here for you. Now, the idea of the award winning team is important because I know that that has been something that has continuously tested well when we have secret shopped the website. They have 15 years, they have won JD Powers award for customer service. And I'm on their website now for the 15th consecutive year, Frostbank ranked number one for retail banking customer satisfaction in Texas, according to the JD Power 2024 US Retail banking satisfaction survey. So I. This is a great testament to their ability to listen and respond.
Audrey Cannata [00:13:14]:
It is. And what's interesting is that we didn't tag them in anything. This isn't like we were on a social channel and we tagged, you know, their handle. So they had to have alert setting up. So they're, you know, they're proactively looking to see or to hear their name on different channels correctly. I mean, I know they have, I know we like Google alerts and whatnot, so they had to be proactively looking for this. We didn't come to them with this and we didn't tag them in this.
James Robert Lay [00:13:50]:
And there are social listening tools, right. That can be part of a larger digital growth strategy conversation for another day. The important point of this conversation is they were able to hear and listen something that I've talked about for the longest time since writing banking on digital growth, the acronym of go all in, ask good questions, listen to what people are saying, and then learn through observation. Well, they. Well, they didn't ask any questions. We were the one who was asking the questions. They did listen, they did learn, and then they responded to a negative experience. And that begs the question, for those watching or listening, how are you responding to negative experiences that might be communicated, talked about in social channels, on Twitter, on Facebook, in this particular case, even YouTube.
James Robert Lay [00:15:02]:
The power of social media is both ways. It is powerful for brands to communicate with people, but it's also very powerful for people to communicate with people. And we have some research around people sharing negative experiences that I think would be helpful. What did we find when, when just thinking about this idea of listening and responding?
Audrey Cannata [00:15:32]:
Yeah. Statistics show that 95% of people are likely to share a bad experience and 54% have shared a bad experience with more than five people. That says a lot. So even if. Even if the negative feedback is not being shared with your brand, it's still being spread to others. That's hard. That's hard to accept.
James Robert Lay [00:16:04]:
I think there is a. There was another stat, and I'm in real time trying to pull this up. There's a. There's a stat of how many positive reviews it takes to overcome a negative review. Do you remember when we talked about this?
Audrey Cannata [00:16:29]:
I think it's. I do. It was like ten or something up there.
James Robert Lay [00:16:34]:
It was like double ten to one or twelve to one.
Audrey Cannata [00:16:37]:
It was.
James Robert Lay [00:16:38]:
I'm going to Google right now, how many negative or how many positive reviews to overcome a negative review? Ah, so. So this is actually from Rocket review. They're out of the UK and we were undercutting the number. Oh, I'm gonna quote from their article. Great reviews. The lifeblood of any business. While you'll receive plenty of great reviews, a bad review will come creeping along. It takes 40 positive reviews to under the damage of a bad review.
James Robert Lay [00:17:19]:
Now, now this is where I like to get cross reference.
Audrey Cannata [00:17:22]:
That's a little vague.
James Robert Lay [00:17:23]:
Yeah, I get cross referenced. This now comes from reputation Xdem. It says you need about twelve positive reviews to overcome the brand damage from a negative review. I think that's more in line with what we were seeing before, from when we were having this conversation a while back.
Audrey Cannata [00:17:48]:
Yeah. And I think, you know, while obviously we want to be as proactive as we can to get ahead of any negative experience, and I connect with the customer and provide that empathy and let them know that we're listening before it gets shared socially or among friends or somewhere on the Internet. I do think, though, so much in this is just how you respond, because a lot of times we, as much as we try to, we can't always control the experience, the perception, we can't always control. I mean, we could be doing phenomenal and the wrong person on the wrong day with the wrong attitude could think we're garbage. We can't do anything about that. But we can control how we respond to the situation. Yes, that's something that we. And I mean, it's stoicism right there.
Audrey Cannata [00:18:46]:
Focus on what you can control. Who cares? Don't worry about the negative remark. Now it's time for you to focus on what you can. And that's your response back. How are you gonna respond back to that? And Frost, great example. They empathize with us. They listen to us more often than not. When people complain, they just want to be heard.
Audrey Cannata [00:19:10]:
They just want to be listened to. They just want to know that you heard them and it mattered. I think a lot of this, you know, when a negative situation happens, for me especially, I have this, you know, need for, like, justice. And I don't know, they shouldn't be able to do this or this is a bad situation. So for me, more often than not, I just want someone to say, yeah, I hear you. That was not great. I own it. I take responsibility.
Audrey Cannata [00:19:38]:
Moving on. Like, for me, that's good enough.
James Robert Lay [00:19:40]:
And I really appreciate controlling what you can control here. You might think that you're doing the best that you could possibly do, but expectation and is in the eye of the beholder. Like, and if you think about, like, digital expectations, for that matter, those digital expectations and buying journeys are often being set by things that we can't control. For example, expectations are being set by Amazon esque experiences, Netflix experiences, online shopping experiences. And I think that's the crux of it all. When I hear financial brands talk about their website and they think that internally, the belief is, well, that's just a, that's just where we put our information about our products and our services. That's a limiting belief, because in today's world, the website is e commerce, it is digital sales, it is digital retail, it is a digital storefront. And people visiting that site have certain expectations and beliefs, biases based upon their experiences that are most likely not like the experiences of those that work within a financial institution.
James Robert Lay [00:21:03]:
And so that's, that's where the experience gap begins to creep in. As, as you were sharing here, Audrey, I was doing some other. Just quick googling. I'm channeling my inner Joe Rogan now as you and I keep having these conversations, pulling things up in real time. This is an ink article. The secret ratio that proves why customer reviews are so important is the title. And in this particular article, they actually, they actually go back to the 40. It takes roughly 40 positive customer reviews to undo the damage of a single negative review.
James Robert Lay [00:21:43]:
So that, that could actually be some updated data right there. And it says the ratio is derived from a combination of human behavior, math, and logic, and. Go on. I'm going to quote, a customer who has a positive experience is unlikely to leave a good review. In my experience, only one in ten happy customers leaves a good review.
Audrey Cannata [00:22:08]:
Yeah.
James Robert Lay [00:22:09]:
So your company, continue quote. Your company or product rating reflects an overall average of good and bad reviews. So if the goal is to maintain an overall rating of four stars, you'll need four five star reviews to make up for every one star review. That's the math, that's the logic. Now, now here's where it all comes together. Assuming that only one out of every ten happy customers or account holders, as we're talking about, leaves a positive five star review, and knowing it takes four five star reviews to make up for each one, one star review. 40, that's where the number 40, you can figure it takes 40 positive customer experiences, not reviews. That's the difference.
James Robert Lay [00:22:55]:
It takes 40 positive customer experiences to make up for a single best bad review. And all of this fits into our banker strategy circle that we teach. Build an audience, build a community with data, attract with personalized offers, nurture with content and automation. Convert for loans and deposit. Expand the relationships by delighting accounts, and then they are. Repeat the process with ratings, with reviews, with referrals. So the question once again is, are you listening? How are you listening? How are you, and how are you responding? I mean, I think that's a great way to wrap up, is give people an exercise right here. What would you recommend, Audrey? What can they do?
Audrey Cannata [00:23:51]:
That's a good question. You know, I think is you just get into the mindset that feedback is, you know, positive or negative. It's an opportunity to learn. So if you start to just switch your perception into this is a learning opportunity, it's not, you know, we get a negative response. It's nothing. You know, the worst case scenario, we can flip it. We can make the experience even better. But at the end of the day, at minimum, it's a chance for us to learn, learn where there might be gaps in expectations, communication.
Audrey Cannata [00:24:33]:
So I think that, I mean, that first and foremost would be, what I would say is just to shift your thinking a little bit on that and just not, you know, not take things so personally. I know that's hard. One of the four agreements that I love is that don't take things too personally or don't take things personally at all. And it's clear that frostbank didn't. Frostbank did not. When they responded back to us, they didn't think that we were dropping this video just to tear them down and to be rude and to embarrass them. Like, they didn't come at it with that attitude because we weren't. I mean, we know that's not how we were approaching the situation, but they could have taken it like that and gotten offended, gotten their feelings hurt, but they didn't.
Audrey Cannata [00:25:20]:
And now we're having it. Look, now we're having a wonderful conversation about it. About them.
James Robert Lay [00:25:25]:
Well, exactly. And I'm going to build, in a way, this is a bit of advocacy. You know, we're talking about them in a positive light. We are. You know, I think it's important, you know, there's no sponsorship to this. It's just saying, hey, we want to celebrate organizations who are doing really good things within financial services. I'm going to build upon your thought. Build upon the action that someone who is watching or listening can take.
James Robert Lay [00:25:58]:
What is your Google my business response strategy? What is your Google my business rating strategy, for that matter? And the reason I'm asking is while you were talking, once again, I pulled up a financial brand community institution. It was just random. And they have one. And this is all about Google. My business is all about ratings, is all about reviews, is all about the banker strategy. Circle. They have 123-4566 different branch locations. But if we look at each one of their branch locations.
James Robert Lay [00:26:37]:
3.4 stars 25 reviews 3.8 stars 49 reviews five stars two reviews 2.3 stars 16 reviews 2.3 stars six reviews 3.913 and if we, if we. 3.224. If we dive in, I want to go back to the one where it was 2.316 reviews. I'm going to click on that location and then we're going to go to the reviews. If we look at. So it's 2.3. Can I see the number of stars for each one of these? Like for example, there was one. I mean, here it is.
James Robert Lay [00:27:20]:
This is hands down the worst bank I've ever dealt with. And I wish I could give them negative stars. It's taken four days to figure out a simple car loan. I thought was I was supposed to drive 2 hours today to make a deal and they called me right before they were supposed to leave asking for something that can't happen today. If I could give this bank zero stars. Customer service is non existent and workers are very rude. The bank is horrible. I would not recommend to this bank to anyone else.
James Robert Lay [00:27:53]:
Worst bank ever can ever keep in touch. I mean, these are all like I'm reading. I was charged $30 overdraft for having 1121 in my account after I paid my bills. If you live paycheck to paycheck like most of us, then stay away from this bank. Been on hold for three days now. Bad service. The same. Here's the thing.
James Robert Lay [00:28:17]:
Something is going on with this particular branch location. And I. And I would say I don't even think it's the branch location. I think it's the organization at a larger level. That's just this branch is the one that's coming up in the Google reviews. Out of all those negative reviews I just read, there were only two that had been responded to. And this is within the last about 18 months.
Audrey Cannata [00:28:38]:
Right. That was going to be my question.
James Robert Lay [00:28:42]:
So we. What is, what is your Google? My business rating strategy to ask account holders to rate the business based upon their positive experience because we know one out of every ten is going to leave a positive review and it's going to take 40 experiences to overcome one negative, one star.
Audrey Cannata [00:29:02]:
I mean, there's, there's no reason not to respond to a negative review because their perception is what it is. Regard. I mean, you have nothing to lose at this point, like giving a response back. Well, I guess. I guess a negative response back would make things worse. But if you leave a nice response back, you've nothing to lose.
James Robert Lay [00:29:26]:
Well, and I think that's the thing. A lot of times we just hear you. We hear you. Thank you for sharing. Bring the conversation. Invite the conversation to go offline. Because what's happening now is other people who see those reviews now, those are going unresponded. All those negative reviews are going unspotted.
James Robert Lay [00:29:44]:
So now you got a 2.3 star, you know, Google rating out of like 25 reviews. People are making judgment decisions based upon just the stars alone, in addition to the fact that those reviews are going unresponded. So as we wrap up, shout out and prop to Frost bank and their social listening team for hearing us, responding to us, and then telling us that they're going to take some type of action by sharing this internally.
Audrey Cannata [00:30:13]:
Yes. Well done. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the banking on digital Growth podcast.
Thank you, for the follow up review!