I must admit that when I first thought of the list of companies that would embrace this “social media” thingy that has so strongly latched onto cyberculture as we know it, Dell wasn’t exactly on my list.
They weren’t on my list not so much because of Dell Hell or other such occurrences but simply because they didn’t exactly strike me as an “innovative” company the way Apple or Google innovates. Little did I know at least someone over at Dell probably drank the Cluetrain koolaid and did their homework on the whole conversations and social media thing because Dell is kicking some ass.
Really. I mean, I’ve been pretty impressed. I first picked up a nice bit of notes from their presentation at Austin’s Social Media Club where they talked about IdeaStorm, Direct2Dell, and their other efforts. A fantastic bit of information that I will most likely reference in future presentations.
Next on the list, though, was David Armano having been invited to head down to Dell. From there he spoke of dell not being satisfied and wanting to do better. Generally I’d write that off as the political banter of a company that just spent an important corporate wide weekend retreat to rewrite their vision statement. But what he said seemed to feel true between reading all of Dell’s efforts to listen and be involved in conversations and Armano’s second post which touched a bit on what might be some potential innovation in their laptops.
All that is to say, having read up a bit on Dell recently and what they’re doing, I’ve managed to learn some things in the social media space I didn’t know before- which is always neat. I’m excited to see what they will be up to in the future. Who knows, maybe I’ll go looking for employment there come January-ish (graduation is so close, mmm… it’s tasty).
Hi Nathan,
Thanks for the feedback. When you think about it, listening is not really an innovation, although for companies in a social media context I guess it is. But the fact of the matter is that listening is a really important part of anyone’s life and crucial to learning too, not to mention its primary place in terms of really understanding our customers. As you note, learning something new is always fun.
And, David was right, we may be working hard at it…but we know we can do more and do better. Just yesterday, through our listening, outreach and involvement we picked up 5 “tips” or things we could do better. We then shared those ideas with other people in the business. However it is classified (political banter, a mission statement,engagement, continuous improvement)the fact is our listening and learning is to grow and get better. It is a fact of life to work by. We are not perfect. And, we fail too ….but we get up and try again.
You might find the reference to what Manish Mehta said about how we work of some interest: http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2007/10/david-armano-is.html
With graduation close, I hope you are following the Dell University Relations blog…you can find it at http://www.direct2dell.com. Who knows where you will look for, or find, employment :-)
Hey Richard!
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my post :) I must admit, that after reading everything I had, I was still half wondering whether there would be some indication of you all finding (and reading) this or not.
Yes! Listening is crucial to anyones life, which is why I always find it confusing when most companies choose not to. Do they treat their friends and family that way? I mean, I always figured lowering risk by knowing what your customers are saying would be a good thing.
It’s great to see the notion of “we’re not perfect and it’s OK to fail” being said from within a larger company. It’s a belief I’ve held for a while, that companies are composed of humans, and thus should act human, and in acting human will be more easy to relate to anyways (and easier to forgive). A personal thought that has been tried & tested within the business school.
Thanks for the tip to the quote from Manish Mehta. At first glance it feels pretty contrary to what innovation is commonly conceived by (to me at least) but reading over it again not so much. Something interesting to digest, thank you :)
I will check out the Dell Uni (I see Duke in the list. Curse duke!) and look forward to see you guys continue to innovate both on the product end and within the relationships to your customers!