OCBC Bank Proves Companies Don’t Walk the Talk

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Roderick Low is a social media coach and trainer at Expeditus Media. He helps small and medium businesses make sense of the social web and equip them with the skills, tools and strategies necessary to reach out and connect to their target audience.

A blogger by the name of Kitchen Tigress (KT) wrote about an experience she had with OCBC bank, which serves as a perfect example to why marketers need to be honest, transparent and sincere in their engagement with customers.

According to the bank’s TV commercial (below), customers get a cake on their birthday as a way to show OCBC’s sincerity in serving them.

In KT’s (now famous) blog, she wrote about her visit to one of OCBC’s branches to ask for a birthday cake (It was her birthday, no doubt about that).

Well, instead of getting greeted with friendly smiles and a beautiful cake, she had to wait for ‘eternities’ before the branch manager got out of his office to ask his staff to get her a cake.

In her own words, she wrote: “After an eternity, the bank teller lady who went off to consult her supervisor emerged from the internal bowels of the bank.”

The conversation went like this:

“We don’t have any cake . . .  It’s just an advertisement . . . “

The blogger responded, “If you don’t give customers birthday cakes, why do you advertise that you do?”

The bank teller then went back to her supervisor.

“Tick, tock, tick, tock . . . . After another eternity, she came back, this time with a bright yellow shopping bag.”

“Would you like the shopping bag instead?”

“That’s not a cake. NO CAKE! NO CANDLE! NO GOOD!”

Whether she was pulling a prank is not the question. The question is why are companies not walking their talk?

Who was at fault

2 days after publishing the incident, the post received about 240 comments. Some criticized KT for being a nuisance with too much time to spare, but others supported and empathized with her.

In the advertisement, the tagline was, ‘It’s our pleasure to serve you!’; but when the operations was tasked to deliver that promise, it failed. It seems to me that the OCBC PR and Operations departments don’t believe in the same values.

Can we blame ourselves for asking too much? Or should companies re-evaluate their own marketing messages to ensure that realistic promises are made to customers?

This is a classic example of a social media disaster, and if companies don’t monitor their reputation online, they are definitely going to regret it.

Saga Update

As I was writing this post, I came across a tweet about the saga. Yes, we have part 2. With a letter being sent to the top management, I wonder how would OCBC react to this crisis. With the power slowly being transferred to the customers, what do you think companies should do to manage or avoid such a crisis?