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July 10, 2006
The Impact of Bloggers on Corporate Reputation: Dell Hell Hits Home…
In a recent search for information on the influence of PR on brand perception for a client, we came across a report that’s potentially devastating for Texas-based computer maker Dell, along with any other company that delivers such abysmal customer service that someone feels compelled to Blog about it. It should also make the rest of us sit up and take notice. As a result of our insights on the power of Blogs, we’ve already helped our client begin to analyze brand perception in some new and interesting ways.
Blogs are here to stay; Technorati now indexes 22 million of them. So how does Blogging affect brand attitudes and corporate communications? Either they’re a great new communications tool “Blogs Will Change Your Business” (Business Week 2nd May 2005) or they’re a first step to brand obscurity, with a stop on the lower levels of PR hell “Attack of the Blogs” (Forbes 14th November 2005).
With a nod towards the Forbes perspective, all we need to do is examine blogger Jeff Jarvis and his blogsite Buzzmachine. Jeff Jarvis had a faulty Dell laptop and a negative experience with Dell’s customer service. He blogged about this and brought the story into mainstream coverage from The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times among others.
The report we came across is a study from the UK that examines whether Mr. Jarvis has had any impact on the public perception of Dell’s customer service. The short story? Don’t tick off a Blogger. “Dell Hell”– an expression coined by Jeff Jarvis – has become shorthand for the customer service issues he experienced.
By examining a metric called the “Issue Influence Index”, the study finds that the Buzzmachine Blog is twice as authoritative as Dell on the issue of Dell’s poor customer service.
As a marketer, I cringe to think of the time, energy and money that Dell’s spending every day to counter this. The study noted above also tracks the negative effect of this news on Dell’s share price. Our own quick exercise proves out at least some of this: “Dell Hell” appears in Google 115,000 times; “Dell Customer Service” only 100,000. The two together? 27,500 results. Ouch! Further, the study finds that the influence of online media sources like Slate and Yahoo! also handily beat Dell’s efforts to control the negative flood.
Our advice? Listen and learn; most customers are pretty good at understanding whether or not you really care. If your organization has a handle on the hard and soft drivers of customer loyalty, you’ll know how to treat your customers in a way that both satisfies their needs and drives them closer to your organization. And if you do this, you’ll have much greater latitude when the inevitable mistakes occur.
Posted by MCorp. at 10.07.2006 17:02 | Permalink
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