Yuheng, HuAl Balawi, Ramah2023-05-032023-05-032022https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14154/67960In this dissertation, I aim to examine how events that are external or exogenous to firms can influence their social media-based customer service efforts. In the essay entitled “Brand Crisis and Customer Relationship Management on Social Media: Evidence from a Natural Experiment from Airline Industry”, I investigate the effect of a brand crisis on the CRM efforts of brands on social media. Despite the opportunities social media offers to brands to connect and engage with customers in order to build a stronger brand image and increase trust, it is still unclear how a brand crisis can change a brand’s social CRM efforts. On one hand, social media platforms can amplify the negative consequences of a brand crisis. On the other hand, the unique and public nature of social media platforms offers new means for brands to handle a brand crisis and publicly manage their customer relationships. Compared to traditional Customer Relationship Management (CRM), social media enables brands to communicate with their customers publicly, which can strengthen their relationships with customers and maintain higher levels of customer engagement. Using difference-in-differences estimation to leverage a natural experiment setting, I investigate the impact of the United Airlines crisis on three dimensions of social CRM efforts: informativeness, timeliness, and attentiveness. Contrary to traditional CRM efforts and recommendations, I find that the brand crisis increased informativeness efforts but reduced timeliness and attentiveness efforts. In the essay entitled, “Get a Word in Edgewise: Post Character Limit and Social Media-Based Customer Service”, I study the role of extending character limits on firm responses on social media. By leveraging a natural experiment setting: the unexpected increase in post character limit on Twitter, I empirically investigate the impact on linguistic styles of firm responses on social media. Using a Regression Discontinuity in Time Design and leveraging a panel dataset, findings suggest that extending character limits influences the linguistic styles in firm responses by reducing the readability ease of firm responses, on average, while increasing the concreteness and psychological closeness scores in firm responses, on average. These results suggest that extending post character limits on social media may influence firms on social media platforms to increase the linguistic features in their responses that could positively influence customers’ perception of firm efforts. In a follow-up research question, I show that these changes were effective in influencing customer satisfaction.173en-USSocial mediacustomer relationship managementbrand crisischaracter limitdifference in differencesThesis