Providing effective social customer service is a challenge for any business, but when you’re one of the world’s largest electronics companies the challenge is somewhat different. Explaining and resolving technical problems in 140 characters is simply not realistic and when you consider that Sony produces thousands of different products the problem is compounded.
The natural solution is a forum. Sony believed that by creating an online community they would be able to answer many queries and reduce support costs, but the company really struggled to get their staff involved in the community. Instead, it became apparent that the best support was being offered by other Sony users.
This became the focus of their strategy and to better encourage and enable community members they started to identify and reward their most valuable ‘super fans’.