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Cahoot, the e-bank part owned by Abbey and Santander, has lived up to criticism that banks fail to fully use their websites to keep their customers informed in a crisis. Despite suffering a power cut in Spain a fortnight ago that collapsed its website for 36hours, Cahoot, and its owners, are yet to upload a home-page statement to its customers. Account holders who visited the online bank reported on-screen messages warning “error” or “site maintenance” before no page at all made them think the worst. An absence of online statement by Cahoot, or its parent groups, resulted in affected customers setting up internet chat rooms to try to make sense of the outage. Their move came just days after major banks and other leading FTSE 100 companies were accused of not using their website effectively or quick enough in the financial crisis. Researchers at Investis said that despite the “volatile” markets, some of its major British players had done little this year to keep their non-customer stakeholders informed. After testing 200 criteria per portal, the firm found some leading banks were guilty of providing upbeat marketing spiel in lieu of industry perspective and context on their websites. Al Loehnis, its director, believes the shrewdest corporations have a contingency plan to keep control of their messages through a crisis, almost regardless of its cause. “All companies should have some form of ‘special situation’ website waiting in the wings for events like this [the credit crunch] that can be signposted prominently from the homepage. “This allows you to give proper weight to major events and most importantly it lets you take the communications out of the context of a marketing-led website. Keep it updated, little and often [even] if there are no major news developments.” If banks are unwilling to invest in a ‘crisis’ portal, they should use their ‘FAQ’ and ‘Press Releases’ sections to reassure customers they are “still communicating and in control”. Investis, the leading architect of corporate websites, added that today’s financial crisis has “exposed a lack of planning around online crisis communications in the banking sector.” Mr Loehnis explained: “People have come to their websites looking for answers to questions that really matter – ‘I'm a shareholder - what's happening to my company?’, ‘I'm an investor – are my savings safe?’ - and have found little more than a tersely worded press release and upbeat marketing messages.” Addressing chief executives, he added: “Sure, events have unfolded fast, but saying nothing really shouldn't be an option if you want to keep the trust and confidence of your most important stakeholders.” Oct 28, 2008 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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