Dell Learns to Listen

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Has It Made a Difference?

The crucial word you hear at Dell is "relationship." Dell blogger Menchaca has led the charge in convincing bloggers that "real people are here to listen," and so he diligently responds and links to critics, and holds up his end of the conversation. "You can't fake it," he says. Dell's team is stanching the flow of bad buzz. By Dell's measure, negative blog posts about it have dropped from 49% to 22%. And the Dell Hell posts on my blog, which used to come up high on a Google search for the company, are now relegated to second-page search-engine Siberia. "That change in perception just doesn't happen with a press release," Menchaca says.

But reality still has to catch up to perception. To this day, I get blog comments and e-mails from disgruntled Dell customers. The University of Michigan's PC satisfaction scores show Dell dropping from 78% in 2006 to 74% this year. Internal Dell measurements showed satisfaction was actually much worse than that. A year ago, it was 58% among core users, even lower in the high end. That, Hunter says, made the boss "go ballistic." Today, Hunter's measurements show satisfaction among high-end customers at more than 80% and among core consumers at 74%—numbers that he says must further improve."I think what the Web has brought is the voice of that 25%," Hunter says.

Customer Collaboration

But the opportunities created by the conversation go far beyond dousing fires. The cant among executives trying to play the Web 2.0 game is that the customer is in charge. Well, if you really mean that, if you cede control to your customers, they can add tremendous value. Dell's customers not only make product suggestions and warn of problems, they help fellow customers fix them. Today, customers share their knowledge in so many ways that Dell's team says the challenge is to manage that knowledge and spread it.

To enable collaboration, the company is starting wikis that users can edit together. To encourage interaction, Dell plans to experiment with loyalty programs, rewarding good customers with gifts, opportunities to meet Michael, service upgrades, and possibly discounts. I ask whether they'd compensate helpful users, creating a marketplace of advice.

But Manish Mehta, head of e-commerce, is uncomfortable with payment, fearing it might compromise the credibility of these customers in their communities. And credible advocates are at the heart of the strategy Dell's new chief marketing officer, Mark Jarvis, is devising. "By listening to our customers," he says, "that is actually the most perfect form of marketing you could have."

I contend that this marks a fundamental shift in the relationship of customers with companies. Dell and its customers are collaborating on new forms of content and marketing, but note that they are doing this without the help of media and marketing companies.

Michael Dell predicts that customer relationships will "continue to be more intimate." He even speaks of "co-creation of products and services," a radical notion from a giant manufacturer. "I'm sure there's a lot of things that I can't even imagine, but our customers can imagine," Dell says, still sounding very bloggish. "A company this size is not going to be about a couple of people coming up with ideas. It's going to be about millions of people and harnessing the power of those ideas." Once you can hear them.

Jeff Jarvis is an outspoken commentator on technology and media. Jarvis, who heads the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, will post a longer version of this commentary on his blog, Buzzmachine.com.