2005 A hard year for DELL

Dell Hell!!!
Learn this: SOCIAL MEDIA IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!!! This article gives a good explanation of what the Dell Hell mistake cost the company and what the company learned. A company growing like crazy (rising earnings per share) with an impeccable reputation for customer service and satisfaction, suddenly gets battered by a single customer communicating through a blog his dissatisfaction. Dell was shortsighted by neglecting such a powerful, influential tool as a blog post. It took the founder of the company, Michael Dell, to return as the director and take matters into his owns hands to fix the huge mess. Of course he could not do without a 14 year employer and blogger called Menchaca that by admitting the company’s mistakes consequently stopped the media harassment and gained the respect of fellow bloggers like Jeff Jarvis that formerly helped destroy Dell’s reputation.

I could picture myself being the Dell’s Customer Service Manager watching my stock value plummet just because some fxxxxing unsatisfied customer wrote a blog post that reached Financial Times and Business Week. I would start packing my office and get ready for the boot.

In October 2005 we can see Dell’s reaction by investing and restructuring the costumer service department. This is a sign of how it is fixing the cause of the problem, but the most important fix is the MEDIA, that’s the one that going to help DELL. In this other article we can see how Business Week is writing about how Dell is fixing its problems but at the end of the article you can see the negative comments posted by unsatisfied customers. Is there a way to control this? I doubt it, but you can add positive comments or influential comments from IT critics or influential bloggers such as Jeff Jarvis.

Another point is the size of the company. DELL sells countless number of PCs and satisfied customers are not commenting how wonderful there computer is. It’s the unsatisfied customers that have a powerful voice, especially in social medias where info spreads exponentially.

Lets keep on blogging!!!!! If I had a big company, especially if IT related, I would be friends with bloggers.