TooKam, Credit Agricole’s Social Media Bank, Turns 2, Attracts 3K Banking Customers

Social media banking. TooKam, Credit Agricole’s 100% digital social media bank, turns 2, celebrates: 3K customers, 85K web facebook chat, 4M virtual currencies distributed.

Time flies. I still remember vividly covering the launch of TooKam.com, another digital banking innovation from the Credit Agricole Pyrenees Gascogne under the leadership of its visionary CEO Jean Philippe.

I invite you to read my article from 4th April 2011: ‘TooKam.com: a Social Media rEvolution in (Engagement) Banking‘.

On 1st April 2013, TooKam celebrated its 2 year anniversary with a short press release and a link to the past.

Omnichannel Banking

• 3D customer university: an innovative way for customers to learn about banking (an inspiration for AIB’s The Lab?)
• Web chat (also available on facebook) for real time social customer care
• Social media presence (facebook, twitter, google+, viadeo…) for news from the TooKam team
• Direct phone number of your dedicated personal advisor
• Online appointments on Skype

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SEE ALSO

• Le Credit Agricole Championne l’Ouverture Bancaire avec son SDK [INTERVIEW]
• 89.6% des 1,300 Clients TooKam Recommande la Première Banque 2.0 en France
• Le Crédit Agricole Innove Encore Avec Pelikam.com [Epargne Communautaire]

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Key Achievements

• 86% of TooKam customers recommend the direct bank to their friends and family
• 3,000+ new banking customers in 2 years
• 85,000+ conversations on web and facebook chat with banking customers and non-customers
• 3,948,254 Tookets distributed to charities (virtual currencies), twice as much as year 1
• 0 marketing €uro spent to maximize value of financial products

First of all, my congratulations to Jean Philippe and his team for demonstrating its genuine commitment to social media banking: after two years, the service is still very much live and growing with a mere 3,000 banking customers joined Credit Agricole’s innovative bank.

Also, the dynamic TooKam team didn’t share much information on neither the origin of those customers (how many were already customers with the traditional bank) nor the value and share of wallet of those customers.  Jean’s own detractors and other conservative bankers would argue this inititive didn’t prove successful and they would challenge the very existence of the service.

Jean would surely responds to this negativity by affirming that this initiative:

1. Demonstrated the unique position of the Credit Agricole Group -as a champion of solidarity- and their dedication to help local communities (with their Tookets),

2. Put the regional bank on the radar of many journalists and influencers in the digital banking industry worldwide.

Unarguably, those results are far from the ambitious forecasts from the soon-to-launch BNP Paribas 100% digital social media bank: 500,000 new customers by 2018.  But contrary to Credit Agricole, BNP Paribas will surely fully leverage the power of its efficient marketing and communications strategy and its sizable budget to drive awareness and increase brand consideration quickly…

So in your opinoin, how valuable to the Credit Agricole is brand TooKam? It is still early days, but would you say this experiment in social media banking is a TOP or a FLOP?  I invite you to share your thoughts on TooKam here or on twitter.