Dell Hell

The writer and creator of the blog BuzzMachine, Jeff Davis lived a bad customer service experience when he bought a Dell computer back in 2005. Jeff Davis paid for a 4-year warranty and service that included home assistance to address any technical problem that the computer could have. A few days after the expected delivery date, Jeff received his new computer. To his and Dell’s misfortune, the device didn’t work. Concerned and unsatisfied by the product he called customer service and asked for assistance to get his computer repaired and a technical expert was sent to his home to fix the computer. Unfortunately the computer malfunctioned every time and Dell’s inability to solve this problem unleashed a series of angry complaints that escalated in color and aggressiveness towards Dell.

Jeff Davis descrived his experience as Dell Hell and his post in his blog rapidly gained followers who found a space to upload a concerning stream of heavy complaints and destructive criticism against Dell. Through his blog, Jeff escalated his complaints through various levels in the organization until he finally addressed directly to both Michael Dell and his son. Nevertheless, he didn’t received a response and a satisfying solution to his problem and continued attacking the companies inability to solve a problem. This situaton continued gaining momentum until the point that media started to notice the problem and start publishing it in its pages.

Dell failed to identify the magnitude of the problem. At the moment one computer over more than three million might not seem significant and one complaint more was merely statistics. Unfortunately, when Dell realized, this unattended customer had created a snowball that strongly hit their reputation. Dell reacted among other things by hiring a professional blogger with a long history of work in the company to add PR balance in the blog media and offer a channel for new ideas of improvement and a voice of the customer to the company.

This has helped to improve the image of Dell but definitely there where things that they could have done in very early stages to prevent the problem to convert to Dell Hell. Back then there was not a defined culture regarding how to address complaints and issues raised through Internet communities but definitely a if back then Dell had followed the growth and gradual escalation of the problem through the web and the progressive impact in the media that followed to connect probably they might have seen the threat and acted accordingly to address the problem with more resources.

Dell might have learned an important lesson but many other companies too through someone else’s experience. Companies must broaden their territories to Internet in terms of awareness of their popularity, acceptance and perception in words of their customers and media. The ones that fail to do so will lose opportunity to communicate with their customers in a new environment where blogs offer a forum for people to say what they feel or think and if there is no one of the company to answer, someone will.