Thursday, September 20, 2007

Lee Distad's Professional Opinion referenced in Fast Company story about Dell


Longtime readers might recall the discussion earlier this year in which Richard Binhammer from Dell's Corporate Communications Group got involved, and ended up resolving a service issue that regular commenter Charles Farley had been experiencing.

Well, that experience ended up being central, in a tangential sort of way to a story that is now up on Fast Company's website by media/communications expert Valeria Maltoni.

Fast Company.com: Innovation: How DELL is Using Social Media to Regain its Mojo


With the creation of Direct2Dell a year ago Richard and colleague John Pope also embarked on an "outreach" initiative to have conversations with bloggers.

a) On one side, the conversations were about Dell the company, products, business model, and corporate reputation – often drawing assistance from "subject matter experts" b) They used a "swat" team of “the best and brightest” tech support folks to solve technical and customer service issues as they learned about them on the other.

Here’s an example of one of the very complicated consumer conversations which Richard entered on behalf of Dell. It has since ended in a direct exchange between the unhappy customer and Dell. This is an example of a company using social media in its purest sense.


Big thanks to Ms. Valtoni for a great article, and to Dell's Richard Binhammer for doing a great job representing his brand. His work in looking after Mr. Farley was no small influence on my decision to buy the Inspiron 1501 laptop that I'm writing this from. I could get a laptop from almost anywhere, but like most other purchase decisions, personality and support made the difference.

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2 comments:

Unknown said...

And it was some of your best work too, Lee.

Shalom

Anonymous said...

Ok I was the smart ass in the original email talking about virtual parking spaces. To bring this story full circle. One of the warehouse managers I work with asked me my opinions on computers. He was buying three for at home. We go back and forth over the minimum specs he should consider. I relay the whole storyas it was told here and mention the Fast Company article to him. He says Holy F*%k a company proactively searching the net for complaints and solving them. I'm going Dell.