For most people in corporate communications they know about DellHell. The story of Dell making a 360 back to having a good reputation. The behind story is pretty long, here is a link to Jeff Jarvis’ archive posts talking about how Dell computers “suck.” The gist of the story is that Dell did not listen to complaining customers and were nieve to the power of blogs. Jarvis was a pretty well known blogger, and when he was gypped of his in home warranty all hell broke loose. He let whom ever was interested in reading, know how “Dell sucks” and how “Dell lies.” His posts about Dell have hundreds of comments agreeing in their hatred for the company. So how did Dell do it, how did they gain the respect from customers again? Dell finally got it, possibly after recieving a letter from Jarvis basically saying, if Dell did not start to listen to customers, and improve customer service, they would not be loosing just one customer, but many of customers and those costomers friends. Jarvis explains that Dell needs to jump on the bandwagon and start checking the internet and blogs, to see who is talking about their company. DellHell happened back in 2006, and now Dell has improved their reputation, by creating Direct2Dell and IdeaStorm. Below is an interview with Vida Killian, manager of Ideastorm talking about Dell’s blogs. Dell has an internal blog for their employees where it encourages them to express ideas. There are focus groups in their internal blog, OneDellWay, which are team written. Michael Dell gets involved in the posts and leaves comments. One of their popular blogs is Direct2Dell which is their external blog. Killians explains it as a way for Dell letting their audience know what is going on with Dell, which is different from their Ideastorm which is more of their customers giving ideas.
Dell’s IdeaStorm is just like My Starbucks Idea. The video below explains how people can post ideas, where comments can be posted, adding to an idea. Then ideas will be voted on and one with many votes might be implemented.
With the use of social media and actually making a change to listen to customers, Dell has gotten back in the game. They have a better reputation, but will always have DellHell reminding them to keep on track.
