But evidently not, according to this exchange, which followed on from a post on The Consumerist about 22 Confessions of a Former Dell Sales Manager.
You’d think by now this would be received wisdom viz
- You’re caught.
- You say “Fair cop, we screwed up. Here’s how you can be confident this won’t happen again.”
- You act. You put policies in place rebuild trust through concrete actions, not words.
I’ve blogged about this before but big corporations seem to have a hard time learning that they’ve more to gain by treating their customers as equals rather than chattels. You’d think a consumer brand like Dell would have more of a clue (no pun intended) but evidently not.
[Update - my comment below in answer to David Russell probably puts my main point rather better. Post in haste, edit at leisure...Also, see also my post on Dell's response]
Filed under: Dell, corporations, marketing, marketing social networks
Dell isn’t complaining that they were ‘caught’ giving people poor service, they’re complaining that one of their employees is apparently acting in breach of a confidentiality clause in his contract. Enforcing a contract is not censorship.
Hi there. My first point would be that when someone (with no legal good cause) starts throwing around ‘cease and desist’ letters, I’m inclined to think of that as censorship. If they want to sue someone, they should start with the sales manager. Now one or two of the practices the former sales manager recommends are not the sort of thing any customer should indulge in (trust works both ways). But many of them could be firmly defined as poor customer service. And since when could “Extended warranty for desktops – There is nothing in a low end desktop (non XPS) that is worth the price of the warranty should you have to replace it. Only pick it up if you have absolutely no clue what you’re doing once the case is open.” be called a commercial secret? Which brings me to a second point – aren’t you a tiny bit shocked that Dell are comfortable with the kind of relationship with their customers implied by the standards/service documented?
So I guess we’re at cross-references here – my post (which I probably expressed poorly) is about Dell’s surprisingly poor level of social CRM and an attempt to censor or control that social discourse is only part of the issue. The actual substance of the Consumerist post is actually less interesting than the story it tells about Dell’s level of respect for their customers.