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242 Managing Customers Through Economic Cycles

They started off with a reasonable uptake of 1480 members.
But they were not prepared for the criticism that came from
the members about how the application lacked functionality
and features – “we didn’t anticipate that”. The employees
who were monitoring and facilitating the conversation were
not prepared to participate: “… chats are going on instant-
aneously; you have people criticizing the bank, and in some
cases asking questions”. Employees were asking, “Please tell
us what we can tell them, help us.” The bank reacted quickly
(within 48 hours) and appropriately by creating a group to
monitor the criticisms and questions and coach on the
feedback.

It’s a major challenge to truly add value to the demo-
graphics of Facebook users. The critical question though is
how to maintain the truth of your brand and yet not be seen
as pandering to the Facebook demographic.

1. Quality of Content (value-add) 4

2. Quality of Conversation 3

3. On Consumer’s terms 4

4. Virality/Advocacy 5

Visa’s first face on Facebook

Visa created a new Visa business network on Facebook.
As part of the launch, they advertised it by giving away
$2 million in Facebook advertising credits. Visa would give
$100 advertising credit to each of the first 20,000 new
members. They had an initial reasonable uptake of 70,184
monthly active users (up from 23,000). Users rated the new
business network 2.9 of 5 up from 2.6 based on 83
reviews.

Visa’s value proposition was to “[c]onnect with other small
business owners, learn ways to manage your business more