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Australia's financial institutions are taking advantage of Facebook and Twitter. Picture: Thinkstock Source: news.com.au

The Commonwealth Bank is set to introduce 24-hour round-the clock monitoring of social networking sites. Source: Herald Sun

HUNDREDS of thousands of Australians have turned to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to get immediate responses and information from their bank.

The Commonwealth Bank is among many of the nation's financial institutions using social media to their advantage, with more than 225,000 "likes'' on Facebook and thousands more followers on Twitter.

Digital and social marketing general manager Andrew Murrell said the bank would introduce 24-hour round-the clock monitoring of social networking sites within months to keep up with the rising number of customers using this avenue to communicate with their bank.

"As the scale of the followers are growing particularly on Facebook we have worked with our direct banking to have customer service available like you do from the telephone,'' he said.

"At the moment that's 7am to 10pm but we will be looking to go 24/7 before the year's out.''

"We have two Facebook pages, three Twitter channels, two YouTube channels and a blog as well, so it's continually growing,'' he said.

``A lot of people are searching out information on companies, we use social media channels to put out and talk about ourselves and the expertise of who we are as a company and what we do in the community.

"They are also playing a vital role these days with issues management, such as when NetBank goes down.''

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Banks switch on to social media