Episode 20 - HP Inc.

The sheer size of Hewlett-Packard’s operation – the company recently separated into two different Fortune 50 companies – requires a level of sophistication and scale that most organizations will never experience. But the rest of us can still learn a great deal from a huge, well-oiled machine that’s already solved many of the issues smaller companies are still experiencing.

Hewlett-Packard recently became two separate companies: HP Inc., which includes the consumer-facing printing and PC business, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which includes the servers, storage, and networking technology business.

Kriti Kapoor is the Director of Social Care for HP Inc., which ships 1 printer and 1.7 PCs every second to customers in 170 countries. With an extensive technology background that includes Compaq, Dell, and her own mobile startup venture, Kriti has finally found her true calling in life. “If you ask me today if there was any job I’d pick in any company, it would actually be in social customer care,” she says, “because it’s a convergence of communication and technology and service.”

HP Inc. started social care because there was “nowhere to go” if any of the other channels failed, and also to answer “in-depth technical questions,” says Kriti. The social care platform was launched on top of an already successful series of community forums that receive more than 100 million visits a year. Both are serviced in more than a half-dozen languages, and HP Inc. now sees 100,000 customer service cases every month just in social media.

Kriti joined Dan Gingiss and Dan Moriarty for a lively and enlightening discussion on social care philosophy, strategy, and near-flawless execution at massive scale. Some of the more memorable quotes from the conversation include:

“No business is a business without customers.”

“The convergence of both mobile and social technologies is disrupting the world that we live in today and it’s going to continue to happen.”

“We’ve seen an evolution from pure complaints handling and management to handling pure technical support.”

“The goal always is to help people solve their problems – that’s what we all live for day in and day out in customer service.”

“Service is all about building relationships with customers.”

“We can’t do what we do in isolation. In social customer care, partnerships – broad and deep across the organization – are critical to success.”

Here are some of the highlights of Episode 20 and where to find them:

0:47 Background on Hewlitt-Packard

2:18 Kriti’s diverse technology background and how she arrived at HP

6:52 What the HP Inc. social care program looks like

9:34 How agents are trained across a huge product line, and how the support forums have evolved

12:52 HP’s approach to social care operating hours

15:39 HP’s vast network of volunteer experts who respond on the community forums

18:11 The interaction of social media marketing and customer service

21:50 How HP measures the ROI of social customer care

24:50 How HP’s marketing handle achieved a giant Klout score of 92, and the impact on service

28:42 Kriti describes a memorable social media customer interaction

31:37 Kriti’s advice for starting out in social customer care

Thanks to Jay Baer for nominating Kriti to be a guest on the podcast. If you have had a great experience with a brand on social media, let us know by tweeting at us or by using the hashtag #FOCS.