pallavibhardwaj.wordpress.com

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Community buzz: On a self-congratulatory path

Taking the thread from my previous post, though I liked what Toyota did, since it came across as a successful campaign and gave freedom of expression to bloggers.

Unlike Edelman Public Relations, who has been caught twice in unethical and fake Wal-Mart blog (flog) scandals and has been accused of bribing bloggers to write favorable reviews of Microsoft's new Vista operating system.

Though such moves do give an initial push and glorified PR, this definitely does not help in paradigm shift to customer involvement. What is needed are not “self glorified” comments and posts, rather a way to reach-out to the consumers and “Listen”, “respond” and “improve” to ensure you give what they want.

A good example of responding to customers is of Dell Blog - direct2dell.com, though they too took a long time to respond to criticisms and Bloggers. "No comment" is no answer for corporations that have a responsibility to shareholders, clients and consumers.

Even when Jeff Jarvis started blogging about being in "Dell Hell" because of problems with a Dell laptop, the company did not take any action. Eventually, when mainstream media and Wall Street took note of Dell's problems, which led to financial losses, Dell finally agreed to address customer service issues.

Labels: Bloggers, Brand association, Corporate Blog, online advertising, online marketing, Online PR

posted by Pallavi Bhardwaj # 2:20 PM

Comments:

Thanks for linking to my article. Here's a laugh - Dell's outreach team contacted me because I mentioned in the article that I was unhappy with my Dell computer.

I told them that their team already reached me, refunded my money for the lemon Dell, and I bought a Mac.

I guess they're still not very much on the ball.
B.L. Ochman

# posted by

Unknown : June 7, 2007 at 5:03 AM

Yes, BL, a new team member made a mistake. Naked conversations lead to occassional mistakes because we are human!!!! Thanks for the helpful commentary.

on the other hand, we are trying hard to be much more on the ball reaching customers one by one to solve their issues, but also enter conversations, listen and learn.

Thanks for the otherwise positive commentary here, and hope that our outreach through blogs like this, Ideastorm and StudioDell also count for something, despite comments like those by BL Ochman's.

# posted by

Anonymous : June 10, 2007 at 11:07 PM

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Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Community buzz: On a self-congratulatory path

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