Dissecting Wells Fargo’s new blog
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Loading ...Debbie Weil at BlogWrite for CEOs just posted on Wells Fargo’s new Student Loan Down blog targeting students seeking college loans.
I think the Student Loan Down blog is a great idea by Wells Fargo and should see some success, regardless of what you think of the name. However, to me this is yet another example of a company using an inadequate tool - the blog - to achieve business goals - closer relationships with their student loan prospects and customers to drive increase leads and loyalty.
I wrote here at the ListeningPost (and replicated here at Kalivo’s Customer Hub), using the Dell and Southwest blogs as examples, about how the blog tool is inadequate for company needs in their executing on their customer engagement strategies. The Student Loan Down blog provides another example to showcase why blog tools are inadequate solutions and what features Wells Fargo (and other companies with similar ambitions) will need to achieve customer engagement online.
Don’t get me wrong, it may not appear to be a problem at first to the companies implementing the blog. After all, as Dell noticed, they will see a dramatic rise in conversations and feedback where none existed before. This is a great step forward. However, it will shortly crush under its own weight from both process shortcomings and lack of feature requirements to achieve the business goals.
Some examples of shortcomings on the Student Loan Down are already apparent:
- This post, My dirty little secret is a nice way of introducing students to the fact that not all financial aid is need-based. At the end, the author has posted a survey. This should be a separate discussion item with data collection and results display capabilities so the company and the community can see, and discuss, the results. Figuring out the results from the comment section is not interesting to anyone; the effort may be made once to do it, but not twice.
- About This Blog: “We’re here to start a conversation with you.” Also, they state in the About Page that you, the reader can start a conversation. Really? Well, what if I want to talk with you about something that is not a current post? The reader has no way of starting a conversation about something they are interested in. The blog format is more like a lecture with a Q&A session, and less like a conversation.
- The About Page also highlights the goal of “talking about the resources. Where are the resources? Do I need to leave the blog and go to the Wells Fargo site and search for them? Why not provide them within the blog? Wells Fargo has their customer/prospect captured in the discussion, why let them go rather than point them directly to the resources they need. Moreover, why not have those resources discussable, so that if the reader has a question or concern, they can just post a comment to the resource and have Wells Fargo or another customer/prospect respond with information or their own experience?
- The About Page also references that they are not only providing this blog resource for students, but for their parents to become more knowledgeable about the student loan process. Why not provide a “Parents Connection” area of the site where Parents can converse with each other about the student loan process? Wells Fargo could go a long way toward allowing parents to collaborate with each other and (a) ease their concerns about the process and (b) increase their comfort with Wells Fargo as a solution provider to them.
Forgive me for the small commercial, but a large part of our contribution to thought-leadership in this space involves the solutions we are building with our customers. Here goes …. We at Kalivo believe a Discussion Hub, rather than a blog tool, is the proper solution for companies to truly engage with their customers. A Discussion Hub allows companies to blog, but it does so much more as well to achieve business results and accommodate the business processes required to manage an effective customer engagement strategy.
Some examples of features a Discussion Hub allows that a blog does not include (I’ll restrict the commercial from a lengthy discussion of the business value of each of these - view our website if you are interested in that):
- Two-way conversations - both the Hub owner and the members can start conversations and reply to conversations
- Polling and Surveys, with data collection and display, and the ability for members to comment as if it were a blog post
- Announce Events in a calendar context and enable discussion on events
- Include external content from domain experts around the Web with a single click - why write something when someone else has already done a stellar job on the topic and allows you to share it
- Robust and flexible security to restrict members from starting conversations in certain areas, enable private discussion areas, and much more
- Import documents to enable sharing and discussion of critical resources while you have a member’s attention
- Full RSS support for all tags, personal spaces, and conversations
- Social networking features, including profiles, member-specific RSS feeds, and more to come
I applaud Wells Fargo for pursuing the Student Loan Down. And I cannot fault them for choosing a blog tool and blog metaphor as their implementation - there really are no other solutions on the market yet. Kalivo will be changing that this month with the launch of its Customer Hub and Professional Hub solutions.
In fact, I believe hosting a targeted Discussion Hub for each market segment is an effective way for companies to truly engage their customers in a meaningful and personal way, and drive leads and loyalty. Wells Fargo is showing the way here to other companies with an effective strategy. They just need the solutions to match and enable their strategy.
– brian
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