One the biggest banking institutes in the United States has joined Twitter, one week ago as of today.

Bank Of America has joined Twitter. (No, the world didn’t stop rotating.) They have joined the dozens of corporations who are adopting Twitter as a means of complementing their existing customer service offerings. From personal experience, I couldn’t think of a bank who needed it more. Known for their often displeasing customer service, similar to Comcast, Bank Of America has recognized that Twitter is a free and quick way to reach their customers and at very least, attempt to solve their issues.

Introducing: David Knapp. David is Bank Of America’s designated customer service representative for their Twitter account. The account has had minimal following and buzz — in a week’s time is only up to barely over 100 followers. Based off David’s tweets thusfar, there was no formal introduction to the Twitterverse, though he has been responsive to replies. Unlike many businesses on Twitter, Bank Of America has not chosen to to try to find their customers already using the service.

AT FIRST GLANCE
Pros

1. Creates a face for a brand

2. Responsive to Replies

3. Maintains customer privacy by requesting personal information via Direct Messages

4. Regularly engaged with the community, not for limited durations

Cons

1. Does not offer customer specific support, only general information

2. There is no added value for their customers

Could provide financial tips, site navigation tricks, help finding ATMs, etc

3. Many Bank Of America customers are on Twitter and unaware of their recent presence

Not optimizing the effort

4. Not able due to the nature of the medium to provide the sort of customer service many of their customers are looking for

How to battle privacy and policies while using social media as a financial institution?

One user on Twitter poked at Bank Of America today with the creation of a copycat profile, BofA_helps (versus the legit BofA_help) in hopes of demonstrating to them and other financial institutions, the risks they face from Twitter-based phishing attacks.

Another user on Twitter runs BankofApathy. Even though they’ve been on Twitter much longer, they currently have almost twice the number of followers as the official account. Almost 200 people consciously chose to subscribe to updates from someone mocking Bank Of America’s policies and messages. Is this not a visible sign of unhappy customers?

I am very interested to see what Bank Of America does with the recent move into social media. Due to their size and vertical, they are limited by corporate policies left and right. For example, will their Unsolicited Idea Submission Policy apply to their Twitter account? Do they plan on finding existing communities of customers outside of Twitter such as Get Satisfaction? BofA already has two pages of problems, questions, suggestions and a little praise but yet to have any representatives endorse their presence on the site. How are they selecting which sites they want to engage in?