Hewlett-Packard (HP) is an electronic devices company that focuses on computers, printing, servers, storage and IT management solutions. Personal systems are around 29% of the total business, printing is 21%, the enterprise group 25% and enterprise services are 20%, with the remaining 5% coming from software and financial services. William Hewlett and David Packard founded a partnership in 1939 and the modern HP was incorporated in 1947. The company has transitioned between many businesses since that point in time. It was rumored a few years ago that HP was going to exit the personal computer business, but those rumors proved false (Loftus, 2011).
Evaluation of Global Presence and Accommodation
Social media are used for both marketing and public relations by HP. The company is active across multiple social media platforms, and generally uses them to address customer concerns, and to promote the company's various products and initiatives. The company uses a number of different platforms for social media. One of the unique elements of the HP social media program is the customer-manned forums. With these forums, the company has customers who are knowledgeable about the systems and issues empowered to help other customers resolve problems. This relieves some burden on company tech support, and often the customers provide better advice and service, because they have a genuine interest and concern (Kelly, 2013).
The company deals with customers all over the world -- international boundaries are not exactly relevant online so whether the company actually knows where a given person is with whom it is communicating is not always known. More importantly, because HP operates globally, it has offices all around the world, so it can tailor some of its social media presence to international markets by using different offices and different languages.
The processes at work are technological support, marketing and public relations. The exchange with Michael Dell (Loftus, 2011) is an example of the company using social media as a public relations tool. The intern manning the Twitter account countered the rivals claims, and did so in a manner that promoted the company's products and did so in a positive way, actually serving as a counterpart to Dell's snarkiness, which might have turned some people off. HP probably won a customer or two with that exchange. The customer-manned forums have been an especially popular move, because these forums are able to resolve issues quickly, and the company is ultimately at arms' length from any sort of bad advice, while able to take credit for the speedier resolution. The key is that quick resolution to problems increases customer satisfaction, something that helps the company overall. I rate this a 3.
Evaluation of Marketing and Sales
As noted, the social media are being used for marketing and public relations. Customer service and outreach are part of marketing. The company pays special attention to support services as part of its social media program, because that is one of the most important elements of marketing. Hewlett Packard's enterprise customers in particular are repeat customers, often signing multi-year service contracts with the company. As a result, there is a lot of money at stake in providing good service. HP's multiple initiatives to improve service serve the needs of the company well with respect to fostering stronger relationships with its customers. One such initiative combines HP's analytics capabilities with customer service and customer-relationship management (CRM) applications (HP, 2013). This level of social media integration provides added value for customers. I rate the marketing component a 3.
Evaluation of Customer Service and Support
Again, customer service is a critical element of marketing, and a key component of the HP social media program. The company has actually developed a high level of competency in this. HP now markets its ability to assist with customer relationship management and service in particular, with its Media Aggregation Service (Autonomy.com, 2014). The company is engaged with monitoring conversations about its brand, which gives it the opportunity to intercede and either resolve problems for customers or offer up commentary or defense of key policies, or to troubleshoot issues where necessary. The high level of monitoring allows HP to identify key issues for itself proactively, rather than waiting for issues to come to it -- some never do so the proactive approach is good for business. I would give the company a 4 on this, as it has such a well-developed program that it is packaging it and selling it.
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