A month ago, our favorite discerning-technologist-masquerading-as-a-banker Bradley Leimer penned a fascinating post that looked deep into (bank) Simple’s Twitter feed. He drew a dozen conclusions parsing the startup’s back-and-forth with customers over Twitter. Here are a few more thoughts on Simple’s approach.

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Simple is the first (virtual) bank to go “open” by entertaining customers’ wants, needs, problems, and various crazy requests on its Twitter feed. The chatter exposes the ugly underbelly of transaction processing, points out the startup’s painful process of scaling up, eats up way too much staff time, and is just a royal pain in the you-know-where.

And I love it.

With every Tweet, the startup shows that it cares, that it is technically savvy, and most importantly, that it has a devoted following.

Bottom line: Customers have many detailed questions that go unasked, and unresolved, because there is no convenient or timely way to get answers. Answering questions in public via Twitter, user forum, blog, Facebook page, etc., can be an effective way to solve them (note 1).

Simple has a unique positioning that is unlikely to be copied by existing banks and credit unions. But everyone can learn from its experiment in openness, frank talk, and use of humor.

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Simple’s Twitter page (link)

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Note:
1. We’ve covered various social media outlets in our Online Banking Report during the past few years, including: Banking on Facebook (Feb 2012), Connecting to Customers with Twitter (May 2009), and Bank 2.0 (Nov. 2006). Subscription required.