KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE AND YOUR ENEMIES EVEN CLOSER…

Jeff Jarvis’ DELL experience... 

Jeff Jarvis is a journalist and a reputed blogger that was made even more famous in 2005 when he wrote about DELL on his blog. DELL was back then the nº1 computer manufacturer in the world and Jeff Jarvis had purchased one of DELL’s very best and more expensive PC’s with all possible premium warranties, at-home service and complete care, so as not to have any problems.

This was his third DELL computer and it turned out to be the worst purchase ever. His computer didn’t work from the very first day, and the after sales service offered by DELL didn’t deliver on its promises… and left Jeff Jarvis without a computer for weeks.

Very disgusted by the situation, J. Jarvis decided to write about it on his blog (Buzz Machine) and published a first post entitled “Dell lies. Dell Sucks” at the beginning of June 2005 and then followed that post by writing others under the title of DELL HELL, giving up-dates of the situation to his followers and asking people NOT TO BUY DELL.

The Blog era…

J. Jarvis’ posts where highly commented and created a strong trend against DELL on the Internet. Important medias such as the Financial Time or the NY Times covered this story and many other blogs also followed the trend of complaining about DELL; this giving DELL very bad publicity all over the net. As a result of this DELL’s sales plummeted...

Who would have thought 10 years ago that blogs, and by extension bloggers, could have had the power to influence a multinational company such as DELL? This is a revolution. Now everybody has the possibility to talk and be heard… “Individuals are now empowered to not only voice their dissatisfaction, but will also group together to amplify their impact” (Dell Hell - Public Relations Today). This has changed how companies work on their goodwill. When in the past they only had to gain the confidence of the most prestigious journalists of specialized magazines and important papers, they have now to be as close as possible to the web opinion leaders, the bloggers. It is now vital for them to consider the “blog power”. As Jeff Jarvis said: “Now the time has come when it's the seller who must beware. A company can no longer get away with consistently offering shoddy products or service or ignoring customers' concerns and needs”, “...the customers can talk back where they can be heard”,  “can gang up and share what they know and give their complaints volume”, “they can use their reviews and complaints to have a big impact on a company's reputation and business”. 

  

What should DELL have done…

It is always simpler to give advice afterwards… and I think that not many people could have anticipated back then how a case like this affected so negatively the sales, reputation and brand image of a company of the size of DELL (again, let’s remember that in 2005 it was the world leader in PC manufacturing!)

I think that the first thing DELL should have done is to properly monitor what was said about its brand on the Internet. In this way they could have seen much sooner what was happening on Buzz Machine and other blogs (“Dell hell: nearing the end” - words of Dwight Silverman, tech guru of the Houston Chronicle) and could have solved the problem without it making so much noise. The solution was easy, replace a computer and compensate in some way the disappointed customer…

Once the problem got bigger and was commented in the media I think that DELL should have tried to get closer to their attacker. “KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE AND YOUR ENEMIES EVEN CLOSER…”. I love this expression and I think it could have helped DELL a lot. After the case was made so public imagine if DELL had reached an agreement with Jarvis to compensate him, and then asked him to help them improve their service by providing them with information compiled on his blog and then get good reviews on his blog, etc… This would have cost them very little, would have avoided this strong “massacre” and could also have benefited the brand’s image showing that DELL was concerned about its customers and how much it wanted to improve its service.

It sounds very simplistic but sometimes easy solutions are the best to big problems. The funny thing is that the same Jeff Jarvis talked about it on one of his posts: “You know what: If Dell were really smart, they'd hire me (yes, me) to come to them and teach them about blogs, about how their customers now have a voice; about how their customers are a community -- a community often in revolt; about how they could find out what their customers really think; about how they could fix their customers' problems before they become revolts; about how they could become a better company with the help of their customers. If they'd only listen”

So maybe I’m not so wrong in the end…