BUILDING A SOCIAL MEDIA CULTURE AT DELL
HBS CASE: BUILDING A SOCIAL MEDIA CULTURE AT DELL
Answers from Chenghao Zheng (Chuck)
1. Why has Dell been successful at building a social media program?
Dell developed a social media program that helped solve customers’ problems, improve Dell’s reputation, and educate customers. It depended on social media to improve sales, predict trends of the market and create the better brand perception online. The company builds the business case for social media, which creates an astonishing model to reduce costs. By putting more problem-solving online, it reduces the volume of calls their customer service representatives receive. By finding trends that that might turn into big problems earlier, they can prepare solutions faster and by having more tools to learn about and talk to customers, it can make their marketing more effective.
2. Can you build a top-down Dell corporate brand with decentralized social media structure?
The social media structure Dell has now is centralized form. The Social Media and Community (SMaC) team come together to oversee social media activities of the company. It created a hub-and-spoken system in which all Dell departments communicated with the SMaC team for guidance on social media practices. The employees will be allowed to speak to the customers on behalf of the company only if they get the training of the company and receive the certifications. This model is good because it is relatively easy to manage. But it is bot social and become outdated. Instead, the decentralized social media structure is two-way flow between central division and the trained employees, who are blogging and tweeting and engaging people with the brand in different ways and provided problem solutions. The decentralized model will bring more brand noise, more compelling content, more relevant customers, more savvy employees, more quick reaction is a crisis, more feedback from the customers and more creative ideas for social media from the employees. In order to do
Answers from Chenghao Zheng (Chuck)
1. Why has Dell been successful at building a social media program?
Dell developed a social media program that helped solve customers’ problems, improve Dell’s reputation, and educate customers. It depended on social media to improve sales, predict trends of the market and create the better brand perception online. The company builds the business case for social media, which creates an astonishing model to reduce costs. By putting more problem-solving online, it reduces the volume of calls their customer service representatives receive. By finding trends that that might turn into big problems earlier, they can prepare solutions faster and by having more tools to learn about and talk to customers, it can make their marketing more effective.
2. Can you build a top-down Dell corporate brand with decentralized social media structure?
The social media structure Dell has now is centralized form. The Social Media and Community (SMaC) team come together to oversee social media activities of the company. It created a hub-and-spoken system in which all Dell departments communicated with the SMaC team for guidance on social media practices. The employees will be allowed to speak to the customers on behalf of the company only if they get the training of the company and receive the certifications. This model is good because it is relatively easy to manage. But it is bot social and become outdated. Instead, the decentralized social media structure is two-way flow between central division and the trained employees, who are blogging and tweeting and engaging people with the brand in different ways and provided problem solutions. The decentralized model will bring more brand noise, more compelling content, more relevant customers, more savvy employees, more quick reaction is a crisis, more feedback from the customers and more creative ideas for social media from the employees. In order to do