From PR Stunt to better Customer Satisfaction

Hola!

and hope you enjoyed this lovely sunny day as much as I did. with my lovely friend and my beloved sister who was visiting.

if you were following my Blog, (I feel sorry for you, don't you have anything better to do??) but I hope you like the new changes, it's a bit empty on the left but will find something interesting to fill it.

Mean while without any due delay I'll carry on with our topic for the day!

what was the effect of Dell Hell on the general Laptop ranking for Dell. and how could have dell prevented it.

well I'll start with a short example from my old job. I used to be part of a family business that was Samsung Electronics Dealer for West Africa (mainly Ivory Coast and Ghana)

even though I must admit that the client base is different from anywhere else in the world, the main focus of the manager _and I could only understand why after I experienced it personally_ was to keep the after sales service center as far as possible from the sales show rooms. even though it didn't make (financial or logistical sense) all the time... but it shows the effect that the technical quality (and not the promoted features) of a product had on it's all performance.

The sales were oblivious to the troubles the after sales service would go through. on the other hand the after sales had the liberty to even replace the whole product in case of a "lemon" (in these cases the client will get freebies on top of the replaced item). this was considered not only the strategic thing to do (ensure repeated purchase) it was the most economical thing to do.


I assume that what is relevant in the Buzz machine/ Jeff Jarvis/Dell Hell case is that it is not enough anymore to separate the After sales from the Show rooms.

hail the strength of the blogosphere. this shift in power still amazes me.

this loyal customer tried to explain how to avoid such outcomes in the future and I would agree with few points:

1- it's people who are important not systems
2- communicate with your customers don't try to silence them.
3-Address any form of dissatisfaction head on.

and I would add as our Jeff from one row behind me slightly suggested, bring them on board. yes it sounds like asking the devil if they are accepting job applications but it's not.

the way I see it if some one gathers momentum and people (bloggers) converge around the same idea... that's an indication of a substantial issue. instead of spending huge investment on market research, R&D and collecting customer surveys, here is the chance for a company to get all this for free and in real time.

every product developer now has his personalized, by product Wikipedia. open source hardware platform (well not exactly the engineers still have to come up with the assembling).

I believe we are in an era where we have to embrace the changes and by "changing how the company adapts to the world of the Internet" reach a win win situation where all parties benefit and not only make it a P.R stunt.