Often, social media conversations about a company or brand tend to be largely negative in nature. In fact, I recently experienced a situation with Dell that elicited an initial negative response. However, Dell quickly addressed the concerns and seized the opportunity to turn negative buzz into positive. In light of their adept issue resolution, i felt Dell deserved a bit of praise. Here’s how it all went down:
Given the fact that I’ve got a little one on the way in just a few months, I recently decided that I really wanted to pick up a pocket HD camcorder. Something that I could carry with me most everywhere, but with decent quality for full-size playback on our HDTV. Soon after coming to that conclusion last month, I stumbled into an ad for a great deal from Dell.com on a Kodak Zx1 HD camcorder. After running across the ad a couple of places on the web, I thought about it for an hour or so, and finally pulled the trigger on the deal.
A few minutes later, I got a confirmation of my order, including a link to track its status on the website. As I didn’t need it right away, I had chosen the standard shipping. Even so, I still felt the need to check the site rather impatiently for updates. For the rest of that day, the status remained at “processing.” Then the next day, still “processing.”
“No problem,” I thought, as I was sure many others had taken advantage of this same deal, and the great price was worth a few days’ wait. Overnight on that second night, I received a shipping delay notice, telling me that due to overwhelming demand my shipment would be pushed back by an extra week.
The prospect of more delays wasn’t exactly ideal, but again I chalked it up to the popularity of the deal. So when, around noon that day, I received an email telling me my order was canceled…well, I was a bit unhappy.
Frustrated with the lack of concession or even an explanation, I took to Twitter and Facebook, directing questions about how the issue was handled and what options were available to jilted purchasers. Within the same day, Dell Support had both DMed me and sent me a Facebook message offering to help.
I ended up dealing with a contact who manages Facebook operations for Dell, who not only exchanged online messages, but called me at least 3 times in the course of addressing my concerns. And, in the end, he worked with me to provide a solution that was beneficial to everyone involved. I did get a camera – though not the original one I ordered – and I was very pleased with the compromise we reached.
In social media, bad press can be especially damaging for a company like Dell that caters to a tech-friendly market. Instead of letting this issue cause social media backlash, Dell addressed it swiftly and helpfully, forestalling any major negative effects from coming to fruition – a skill that many other brands would do well to develop.
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