The recent 2018 CX Index conducted by Sitel Group uncovered staggering insights regarding consumer relationships between brands and social media.  30% of consumers who have had a negative customer experience say they would share it on social media, while 49% of consumers who have had a positive customer experience say they would share it on social media.

While this indicates that consumers are more likely to share positive experiences than negative experience – it can seem that platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, are rife with negative feedback. Especially, for highly scrutinized and sensitive industries, like finance, healthcare, and education.

Therein lies an opportunity. In collaboration with U.S. Bank, we sought to explore how we can use content to facilitate positive experiences on social media. And, in an industry like banking, it’s not hard to find negative commentary.

Introducing a New KPI: Response Relevancy™

The goal is for brands to create content that lifts brand affinity and mitigates negative or irrelevant consumer responses. This creative work has always been subjective, requiring a lot of manual review, creative assets, as well as instinct.

But is there a way to reduce subjectivity? Can you guide the creative process? Is the key hidden in mountains of data? That was the challenge.

It sparked the development of Nichefire’s Response Relevancy™ measurement. This new technology uses the latest applications of AI–such as advanced natural-language processing–to  compare two bodies of text and generate an estimated measure of how relevant or irrelevant the content is for social content and advertising. This metric helps you see what types of content and advertising generate on-topic responses to the brands, and what types of content and advertising generate irrelevant comments.

What’s more, our Response Relevancy can analyze any brand’s social content–making it especially powerful to deepen competitive benchmarking.

“To do competitive benchmarking is strategic. And this can be added to a company’s KPIs,” said Troy Janisch, Director of Social Intelligence at U.S. Bank. “The tools created with Nichefire give us a line of sight for opportunities, making us more nimble. By observing the right mix of competitors and innovators, we can spot the ‘white space’ opportunities in a crowded market—as well as relevancy.” 

Initial Discoveries

The average Response Relevancy for Fortune 500 banks in Q1 of 2021 was 29.1%. That means only 29.1% of responses to banking content, on average, were relevant to the content. The remaining 70.9% of responses were off-topic complaints, criticism of the industry, and political commentary.

The graph above shows the top 10 Fortune 500 banks in Q1 of 2021 – ranked by Response Relevancy. The orange sections represent the percentage of comments that are “on-topic” (or are responding directly to the brand’s content); the blue sections represent the percentage of comments that are “off-topic” (or are general complaints, criticisms of the brand, irrelevant political rhetoric, etc.).

The most intriguing aspect of this statistic is that there are clear differences between content that generates high Response Relevancy and low Response Relevancy. 

Content with high response relevancy had characteristics, such as:

  • Personification of the brand and/or features or real people and testimonials.
  • Storytelling about the subject, person, or organization.
  • Genuinely relevant topics and influencers that engage consumers (such as a contest with a beloved baseball team or musician).

Content with low response relevancy had characteristics such as:

  • Highlighting the brand first before the hook of a story.
  • Virtue signaling (i.e. “we’re proud to support..” or “we donated $x to…” are examples of content that is perceived as virtue signaling).

Political rhetoric (especially if the organization making the post has not taken actions that follow its own words, or is deemed hypocritical by the audience).

Want to learn more?