The most recent Fortune Mag joins the dog-pile on DELL, chiding the company for being "in the penalty box". Somehow, I'd bet money that it'll be back on the ice soon enough, but that's beside the point. The point is that Michael Dell is concerned about the "experience" that his company and his flammable products are creating for customers. And this gets me back to my comments yesterday about branding vs. logo-ing. I first heard the "E" word used years ago in Cupertino, California at pre-Macintosh AAPL . In the years afterward, product designers like Frog, IDEO and Smart Design jumped on it. It's a good way to think about your brand. What experience do you promise your user will get in exchange for purchase? Great service? Top-notch technology? An object of desire? Break your promise, like Dell inadvertently did by focusing on the wrong metrics in its call centers, and your reputation suffers. Brand equals promise equals reputation. Simple math.
Stan,
appreciated the comments about Dell, both in terms of our lessons learned, as well as the vote of confidence in our path back.
As you know, our brand was really built in the business-to-business market. The crossover/expansion into the consumer market brought new challenges. More than that, the rapid expansion and growth into that market led to challenges we werent quite ready for, as a young 20 year old company.
As Michael has noted, we know our mistakes and learn from them and every time emerge stronger. We have been making significant ($150 million) in hiring more people, fixing our "systems" and retraining staff. Already, in terms of internal and external customer surveys we are starting to see the turn around.
However, we know we still have a ways to go. As Ro Parra, senior vp of the consumer business noted, we have been sort of "distant" versus taking advantage of one of our competitive strengths -- our direct model and the 1:1 relationship we have with customers. That is experience, not logo-ing to your point.
Going forward we hope to make that direct connection lead to deeper customer relationships, including the customized products but a more customized experience too, as well as delivering differentiated technology that is valued, meeting the specific needs of individual customers.
If you, or any of your readers, want more information, happy to discuss here. You can also check out more at our relatively new corporate blog at www.direct2dell.com.
Posted by: RichardatDELL | September 22, 2006 10:20 AM | Permalink to Comment