Emergence Marketing

I said on Kelly's comments:
As I've written, beyond Dell's relationship with me as a customer who returned a $2k purchase -- which, in scale is a problem -- no, I agree and have said that I was not an influencer. But when I told my story hundreds -- the hundreds you're looking for -- commented and emailed and posted about and linked to my tale with tales of woe of their own. I found myself at the head of a mob with pitchforks and torches. I didn't influence them or anything. But all it took was one consumer to tell this tale for hundreds to coalesce around it. And that was a leading indicator of the problems Dell is having, problems that came out shortly thereafter with falling customer satisfaction, sales, and share prices. Yes, my relationship with Dell is my issue with Dell. But the hundreds who responded to my tale with their own.... that's Dell's problem, big time.

I think the problem at Dell existed long before Jeff shined a light on it. It didn't become a problem when one blogger highlighted it and hundreds more chimed in because if they had been monitoring the problem beforehand via customer service lines or Internet forums, it would have become quite apparent that other people were having problems. I doubt if Jeff was the first blogger to comment on it either, so it is Dell's own fault for letting this beome an institutional problem.

This all throws a much larger issue into the glaring light of those torches (for all us peasants to see)...Companies resistant to or just flat refusing to the "right thing." From the purely cold-blooded business side - even if they don't care about little things like integrity - companies need to learn to think past the gross revenues from an individual customer transaction. How much future revenues (and profit) are they losing from a customer they mistreat or ignore?

For example, Sears blew me off with a poorly printed boilerplate "Thanks for your inquiry! Can't help you! We value your business!" postcard in response to my writing to the CEO about a refrigerator that needed major repairs after only 2.5 years. My family has been buying Sears since there was a Sears. Now, no more, not ever. And, I'm telling everyone about it as well.

Oh - and no, I won't be buying any Dell products either.

Jeff, Piaras and Mary - thank you for taking the time to post your comments.

I agree that the problem was probably there before Jeff highlighted it. The point I was trying to make is that Dell should have responded more quickly and nip this issue in the butt before it totally went out of control and finally found its way into the mainstream media.

Because let's remember that not all blogs are created equal. If Jeff complains about it, it will find its way to Yahoo News and other blogs way faster than if some of those other hundreds of bloggers complain about it.

If Dell would grok this and have responded faster, then perhaps I (and I am sure many other people) would have continued to buy Dell products instead of switching to other brands.

You can't be 75601 serious?!?