How a scathing blog post helped turn Dell around

OK, it was actually a whole series of posts. On June 21, 2005, media blogger Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine vented his frustration (censorship added):

I'm having all kinds of trouble with the hardware: overheats, network doesn't work, maxes out on CPU usage. It's a lemon.

But what really irks me is that they say if they sent someone to my home -- which I paid for -- he wouldn't have the parts, so I might as well just send the machine in and lose it for 7-10 days -- plus the time going through this crap. So I have this new machine and paid for them to F'ING FIX IT IN MY HOUSE and they don't and I lose it for two weeks.

253 comments. June 23 (93 comments), June 24 (109 comments), two posts on June 26 (483 + 358 comments). That was just the beginning. Clearly he struck a chord. Many others were in the same boat, and Dell was deaf to the problems of its customers. To add insult to injury, in July the company closed their customer service forums.

August 17, 2005, Dear Mr. Dell:

Your customer satisfaction is plummeting, your marketshare is shrinking, and your stock price is deflating

Let me give you some indication of why, from one consumer's perspective. I won't bore you with all the details ... but your product was a lemon and your customer service was appalling.

Note the links in the original. That's part of what makes blogs credible: citing real evidence.

Fast forward nearly 2 years; Jarvis meets Michael Dell at a party.

I told him that I never intended to start a riot. When I hit a wall with my computer, I just blew of steam on my blog. But once I did, I, too, learned how amazing the internet is at allowing people to coalesce.

Fast forward to today: a guest column in Business Week:

The following April, Dell (DELL) did join that conversation. It dispatched technicians to reach out to complaining bloggers and solve their problems, earning pleasantly surprised buzz in return. That July, Dell started its Direct2Dell blog, where it quickly had to deal with a burning-battery issue and where chief blogger Lionel Menchaca gave the company a frank and credible human voice. Last February, Michael Dell launched IdeaStorm.com, asking customers to tell the company what to do. Dell is following their advice, selling Linux computers and reducing the promotional "bloatware" that clogs machines. Today, Dell even enables customers to rate its products on its site.

After detailing some specific (and interesting) changes that Dell made to their customer service, Jarvis continues:

the opportunities created by the conversation go far beyond dousing fires. ... 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.

A quick roundup of reactions: consistent with their new approach, Dell's blog covered the story. Stuart Henshall suggests: "every VP Marketing should be enabling a social media listening program." Geoff Livingston puts it in perspective:

Is Dell perfect? No. I think their social media pros Lionel and Richard would be the first ones to tell you that. But they are part of the conversation, and they are actively serving the community.

Jarvis offers additional notes at his blog:

it's hard not to praise them when they ended up doing everything I was pushing in my open letter to Michael Dell. I'm not saying that I caused that, just that we ended up agreeing and they ended up seeing the value in listening to and ceding control to customers.