1. Analysis & Outlook
Social Media is not only for marketing, customer engagement and corporate communication but
also is very effective in customer service. Social Media platform like Facebook and Twitter are
being widely used by companies to provide customer services.Customer service or after sales
service is an essential component of overall customer satisfaction and it often plays a key role in
retaining the customers and increase customer loyalty. Automobile companies have embraced
the social media aggressively in the past few years and have been effectively using the various
social networking sites for brand promotion, customer engagement, product launches, product
innovation and last but not the least customer service. Twitter provides the customers a platform
wherein they can directly reach the company for solving their complaints and problems. They
can express their satisfaction and dissatisfaction of the product and service immediately and
companies can respond to the issues fast and avoid further dissatisfaction.For Automobile
companies it is even more important as there is severe competition within the industry and
dissatisfied customer may even influence other customers including the prospective customers
through negative word of mouth.Automobile industry had been going through its fair set of
problems mostly related to vehicle recalls due to safety concerns for the drivers by faulty parts
and components, product quality and performance issues, dealership issues and non-response of
dealers, etc.
Honda Motor America is using twitter for customer service effectively for the past few years and
is helping the customers to solve their problems and issues. @HondaCustSVc is an exclusive
account for Honda Motors customers to complain about the company products and services. This
account is maintained by three exclusive personnel of the company whose photographs are
visible on the Twitter account page and they are available Monday to Friday 07.30 hrs to 16.00
hrs PST for resolving the customer complaints. The twitter page also provides the details of the
toll free phone number, contact postal address, fax number and customer website address of
Honda. There are close to 9,000 followers and close to 7,000 tweets on this specific page and the
customer service team are very prompt in responding to the customer complaints. The response
time is very fast and they are either resolving the issues or guiding the customers to the relevant
place for resolving the issues. Some of the types of complaints on this site are they are
dissatisfied with products and services, lack of proper response from dealers, vehicle recalls,
schedules and letters and also queries relating to the financing of the vehicles. Some of the
tweets highlight severe dissatisfaction of the product and services of Honda Motors and the
customer service team is efficiently handling the tweets and avoiding serious repercussions.
Twitter interactions of Honda customers are a proof that the customer service through twitter is
one of the most efficient ways in which the customers can directly contact company customer
service using their mobile devices instantly without any problems and tweet directly with
guarantee that they will get the response as soon as possible. A dedicated customer service team
is responding to the customer tweets in matter of minutes and guiding customers so that they can
resolve their issues immediately. This is good case study for customer service through twitter.
Social Media Customer Service @ Honda Motors Customer Service on Twitter
@HondaCustSvc