Robinhood in crisis mode as Affogata tracks spikes in negative conversations
Updated: Jul 7, 2022
The 31 million users of American financial services company Robinhood Markets Inc. have been feeling concerned since yesterday (Nov. 8th), that their personal online data might have been stolen. Following Robinhood's data security breach announcement, including the details about the unauthorized third party demand for extortion payments, those millions of customers, along with the rest of the financial industry, are fearing the outcome of the situation. A C-net report claimed that only 7 million out of the total users were hurt and also mentioned Robinhood's involvement with the Gamestop data breach earlier this year.
Robinhood's Chief Security Officer Caleb Sima indicated that "as a ‘safety first’ company, we owe it to our customers to be transparent and act with integrity". It seems that his comforting words did little to calm down the company's customers' anxieties. When a customer trusts his own private information and money at the hands of a digital app, the least he can expect is for that company to maintain his privacy. As a result, Robinhood currently faces its second major crisis of 2021.
Robinhood, founded in 2013, gained great popularity and a large customer base as a result of pioneering commission-free trades of stocks, funds, and cryptocurrencies via its mobile app since 2015. By differentiating itself from the rest of the competition, the California-based Fintech company was quick to gain leadership of its market. Its ability to recruit so many customers relies also on the explanation for its unique name: Robinhood is on a mission to "provide everyone with access to the financial markets, not just the wealthy".
Robinhood has just entered a "crisis mode" phase and besides trying to resolve its data breach and deal with the third party demands, it must also track reactions and reply to its customers. Affogata was alerted with a spike in negative conversations from the open web following Robinhood’s announcement.
At these moments of crisis, Robinhood needs to create a new strategy to deal with these sorts of bridges but also shut down all the fires from the negative feedback coming from the internet. While it is extremely hard to prevent PR crises such as these, platforms like Affogata are very important in these situations to mitigate the crises. Affogata’s AI alerts companies when there are surges in negative conversations and it allows world-leading brands to answer all mentions from all channels, all in one place.
Conversations on the open web gathered by Affogata
Other than the quantity, Affogata is also able to analyze the most talked-about topics. In a crisis situation, it is important to understand what are the leading topics that customers are concerned about so that the crisis management would be able to respond to the ones which are garnering the most attention.
It will be very interesting to see how the Fintech company responds to the data breach and how it will improve its brand reputation. Fintech security concerns are real, and it is critical for such companies to protect their customer data.