Communications works! Especially in times like these when the typical means of communications are less evident and awareness is crowded out by the economy, racial injustice, COVID and the politics behind the election. In a recent survey by American Banker with RepTrak of bank reputations, bank communications in response to COVID-19 made a discernible difference. Lack of impactful communications harms the reputational equity that gets built over time. In the annual study, the reputation scores that banks received from survey respondents who recalled some communication from the bank or knew about COVID-related actions it had taken were as much as 24.5 points higher on the scale of 1 to 100, compared with the scores received from those who lacked awareness.

Regional banks compared to large national banks performed the best in terms of lifting their reputation because customers were more aware of their words and actions. Perhaps COVID-19 increased local efforts more stringently because people were so restricted to their localities.

The finding that truly stood out to me was this: “Opinions about how banks responded to the crisis overall were considerably less favorable than opinions about their particular actions — such as giving employees the flexibility to work from home, showing support for health care professionals or donating to organizations helping to deal with the crisis.” Thus, your overall reputational trust in an institution is important and provides a halo but if communications about specific actions are elevated, your reputation will reap the benefits and your halo will be even brighter. We all like to be humble and quiet but speaking up during times likes these are necessary. As we have seen in other research, actions — not just words — steal the show. Reputation demands consistent proof and contact (personal or not, online or offline, word of mouth or written or visual).