Social Marketing – My Report of Part 2 of Dell Cap Days

It has now been 2 days since I returned home from the Dell Customer Advisor Panel Days and I have had more time to think about and process what went on.

I was included in the first group of attendees; we were the group of vocal complainers about Dell on the social networks.

We were invited to give Dell our perspective of everything we thought they were doing wrong and it was not a pretty picture. No one held back. Our main complaints centered around the Dell policy of outsourcing customer support to other countries. Most of us had horror stories of hours on the phone trying to solve support issues with people from other countries who barely understood or spoke english.

Many of us, including myself, had jumped ship and purchased computers from competitors. Most of of us that did, bought a Mac because their support was based in the US.

One of the positive things that came out of the conversation was that Dell realized they had a marketing problem. (which should be relatively easy for them to fix). It turns out that those of us that had the most support problems were part of a new group of consumers. We are small business people and entrepreneurs who work from home and who use our computers pretty much 24 x 7.

We combine work and life and never turn our computers off. We walk around the house with our laptops running and sometimes fall asleep with it in bed at night (I know its sort of creepy) so it may be powered on for days at a time.

No one ever told me not do that but it does make sense because it is a machine after all. Client education should be able to take care of this problem. It seems that a computer for the casual user is not up to the abuse we social media freaks dish out.

When Dell figures out how to segment their market before they make a purchase so we can be directed to the heavy duty line of computers, that problem should go away.

The support issue will not be as easy to solve because there is not enough profit in the cheaper models to offer US based support without raising prices. I think they should just offer fee for service support for all the inexpensive computers and build the cost into the other models.

All and all I enjoyed meeting the committed and passionate Dell employees and I also appreciated the opportunity to connect with other entrepreneurs like myself who made their living virtually. I thought it was a positive experience. The transportation to and from the airport was wonderful, the hotel was very upscale and modern and the meals were excellent.

The only down side of the trip for me came at the end of the day when were heading back to the hotel on the bus and people began to complain that Dell did not give us anything for our trouble. It seems many people had expected a gift such as a free netbook or something.

Now I won’t say I would have turned a gift down but it certainly was not the reason I went. I went because I was curious about how Dell was going to use this event and because I am always excited when I see an innovative use of social media since that is my specialty.

But now I wonder. Since I know perception is everything now I want to know how everyone really felt about this and not just what the few vocal ones on the bus thought.

I have created a short survey for everyone who attended the event and I will really appreciate if you would take it just for my own information. I promise to publish the results (the answers are anonymously of course) so everyone will know for future reference.

Just click here to go to the survey.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BVNNG5G

Thanks in advance for your help.