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Dell, like a sleeping giant, appears to be waking up....
No doubt the public response to their joining the conversation with their one2one blog has been a rude awakening. But still -- you could have knocked me over with a feather when I got a call from "Dell Resolution Expert" Rick South, who's promised to look into the issues I've had with Dell in the past and see if they can convince me to make my next computer a Dell.
I gotta say, that's pretty impressive. But hey, if they'd bother to call and email me, why am I banned from the Dell blog?
My phone call from Dell and the strategy that led to it are remarkable on several counts. Dell has realized that:
1- a single customer, even one who may have bought only one Dell computer, can influence other customers and potential customers worldwide and turn them off to the brand
2- social media gives customers the ability to reach other customers and potential customers directly, bypassing mainstream media
3- businesses live and die on the reputation among their customers, not by what bankers, brokers,stockholders, industry analysts, or mainstream media say about the company
4- on the Internet, content is forever.
A fundamental shift in the way Dell deals with customers is necessary. But they have to start somewhere, and bloggers are a good place to begin. Notice they didn't try to get mass media to transmit this message, or to deliever their message with advertising the way Ford is doing. Dell is becoming painfully aware that customers believe other customers. They care what a company does, not what it says.
Negative comments from bloggers and other customers will always be in search engines. However, if Dell can truly improve its customer service to the point where the majority of comments are positive, those will rise to the top. People will be able to see, by looking at search results, that there have been many problems in the past. But if customers start having nice things to say about Dell, it will be clear that change is taking place, and the positive comments will rise in search engine ranking. That's a heavy order, but it's the one Dell needs to fill.
Dell knows they have a huge customer service issue, South told me, and they're determined to do something about it. Since bloggers have been extremely vocal about the problems they've encountered, they've put together a team that is investigating some of the worst srervice issues reported in blogs. And now, he says, they will try to do something to sweeten the bad taste that was left by encounters with Dell customer service.
As Jeff Jarvis pointed out today: "nevermind caveat emptor. This is the age of caveat venditor - let the vendor beware -- and caveat creator."
Stay tuned.....
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Comments
How do I find a customer complaint blog for Dell that they don't run? Dell pulled a sort of "bait and switch" on my father and overbilled him for a monitor by $200 and signed him up for credit with Dell when he didn't ask for credt. Basically, they've ruined his perfect credti score now and cost him over 100 hours of time trying to fix the problem. I'd love to get the word out to others and provide one more example of why Dell is in the mess they are today- falling sales and unhappy customers.
Posted by: Annette Hunt | 07.18.06
I wish Dell great luck in turning around their service issues and talking to bloggers and their audiences is a great way to start.
If they are open in this process and commit to making the required changes without fear or ego, I think they have a pretty darn good chance to make good on their promises. The public are mostly on their side in this - despite the assertions of old-style corporate shills who insist that trying to deliver what the customer needs spells sure death for a company.
Dell has tremendous resources. Improving their customer service may cause them a short-term hit but, in the long run, it will pay off in improved efficiency and increased sales opportunity.
It frankly astounds me that people like the Strumpette fail to understand that, ultimately, listening to the customer and reaching an understanding with them about service and price is the heart of the free-market system. Before globalization, when the large majority of businesses were local, this is how the market worked - if blacksmith A overcharged and delivered shoddy work, people would warn eachother and then take their business to blacksmith B. Smith A would then have troule feeding his family until he fixed his business model or moved to a place where the folks hadn't heard about him.
With the advent of quick and easy air transportation and mass advertising, it became much easier for the purveyors of shoddy products and services to keep reaching people who hadn't heard the warnings from customers who'd been burned. The ease of communication among the customers had not kept pace.
Now, that is changing.
We need to find the new balance and bloggers are the natural partner to large business in exploring this. There will always be the shrill detractor who is never satisfied. We know this and I doubt that any person expects Dell or any other large company to micro-tune their customer service to make that sort happy. What we *do* expect and deserve as a public is our traditional role of telling a company when they are doing the wrong thing. In the age of mass advertising, this was denied us because companies found it very easy to ignore us and move on to a new batch of suckers.
Smart companies are finding a way to listen to us again. And as customers gratefully gravitate to them, their stockholders *and* customers will reap the benefits and the companies that don't listen will falter.
Posted by: Ariel | 07.18.06
Ariel: Interesting idea about how globalization is really making the world small again.
And I guess you also could say that bloggers are the new town criers.
Posted by: B.L. Ochman | 07.18.06