I dont know if its a benefit or a curse that english speaking call centre staff can be recruited around the world while presumably Polish and Hungarian speakers are more likely to be locals.
Then again if its an agency, with limited Honda knowledge who is likely to be better ,a university educated call handler in Sofia, or someone working from home in their dressing gown and slippers surrounded by pets and children.
Bean counters have ruined many a company.
Agree with all your comments. I have a feeling there's a bit of an echo chamber going on at Honda. Everything seems fine and dandy over on Reevoo:
https://www.motortrader.com/motor-trader-news/automotive-news/honda-dealers-achieve-top-reevoo-rating-sales-experience-03-05-2017.
To an extent, Honda can control how this content is referenced on their website.
But completely ignoring their Trust Pilot rating is a huge mistake. I do this sort of thing for a living (driving digital improvements within companies) and recall a few years ago benchmarking traditionally well-regarded companies who were failing online in terms of customer support. Miele, was one. Now, they've completely turned that around:
https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.miele.co.ukTrust Pilot does have its own issues but someone at Honda should be taking ownership of this issue and, with their teams, working diligently to improve the rating (it takes about a year to get things on track). This means answering each and every comment on the platform and routing / escalating via the relevant dealer as needed.
This is harder to do if a third-party is handling the day to day running but not impossible. I would be banging heads and bringing this into my weekly metrics to measure. After all, on social media and the Internet, every negative comment potentially drives away buyers, especially if there's critical mass on certain issues (i.e. reliability, expensive servicing, crappy dealers, poor customer service).
With less than 1% market share in the UK (and falling) they really need to pull their fingers out. Likely they will be saved for the next 2-3 years by an increasingly good model range (new Civic seems like a corker, great new HR-V+ new CR-V to come). But with the likelihood of selling more models, they really need to fix the underlying issue with customer support. And I see nothing to suggest they will...