Long-time readers will remember the Dell Hell episodes of a while back. My, how things change. Jeff Jarvis recounts his story of getting together with a number of Dell representatives last week. The key quotes from Jeff:
"It is clear, through them, that at least at some levels, Dell has changed its culture and certainly its attitude toward bloggers. They now see value in reaching out. As they’ve said before, bloggers tend to state their problems clearly, which makes it easier (and, I assume, more efficient) to solve them. A problem solved is not only a customer likely to be saved, but also often leads to good PR and branding as the bloggers recount their happy endings."
and
"Welcome to the age of customer control. This isn’t just crowdsourcing. This is crowdmanaging. Companies still fear this. But, hell, if even Dell can lean back and let its customers begin to take charge, anyone can."
and
"[Here] is the genius of Lionel Menchaca [Dell blogger]. In a flash, he transformed the image of Dell in my eyes. From a company that wanted to look at but not touch people like me, that wanted customers to come deal in the company’s space on the company’s terms, here suddenly was a guy who spoke honestly and directly. He admitted the company’s problems. But he also answered back...Here, we all could see, was a reasonable man. He immediately earned the respect of me and many other bloggers; this, too, was a point of coalescence. Like Robert Scoble, he gave a borgish company a human voice. He gave us respect and got respect in return.It works."
Indeed, it does work. As technology life cycles shorten, real connections -- real relationships -- between people are the long-term differentiators of a business.
(hat tip: johnnie moore)
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