Take the woes Dell Computer has faced. In recent months, big-name blogger Jeff Jarvis, on his Buzzmachine.com blog, has hammered on Dell for its poor customer relations. That, in turn, unleashed a deluge of similar comments from his readers, and spurred other bloggers to whine about Dell, too. On Wednesday, the University of Michigan released a survey confirming a drop in Dell’s customer satisfaction ratings, something that may or may not have been related.
If I ran a company, I’d have somebody search the company name on Technorati several times a day to find out what people are saying, and try to get ahead of the buzz.
UPDATE: Reader Kevin Crosby emails:
Not trying to pile on here, but I read Jeff Jarvis’ rants about Dell and it turned me off, just when my two kids (age 12 and 14) wanted to replace our aging (Win 98) desktop with a Dell. This came just after a small businessman friend had multiple problems with a new Dell system. I opted for a very price competitive system from a local builder who was highly recommended, built to my specs.
Dell’s fears have come true – a blogospherian rant negates all those brochures and ads. Am I the only one under the Jarvis spell?
I should note that my own experiences with Dell have been quite good.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader John Sandison emails:
About Jeff Jarvis and Dell – for me the turn off has been the other way round. As my experience with Dell’s support has been so good, I found Jarvis’ many complaints irritated me enough that I was reluctant to visit his site.
With Dell, I have twice called them on a Friday and had replacement parts delivered on the Monday (one of them a power converter I’d left out in the rain). I have also had a tech guy come to the house to replace a motherboard. All with no fuss, no hassle.
Yeah, my experiences have been pretty good too. That’s the trouble with anecdotal evidence, of course, but if I were Dell I’d be using blog complaints as an early warning system.