Providing a #WinningExperience for the Digital Customer

By Bobbi Dangerfield

@BobbiAtDell

Michael Dell, said it best: “We’re a company with big ears” – a good thing considering there are more than 25,000 online conversations about Dell each day in English. While that number can be overwhelming, it underscores the wonderful opportunity social media offers for companies to listen, engage, and ultimately understand customers more than ever before. Here are some tips and tricks we’ve learned at Dell that you can use to help provide a #winningexperience for your digital customers.

1. Go where your customers are – Dell interacts with customers on a variety of social media platforms around the globe like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Sina Weibo, RenRen, QQ, Google+ and more. In fact, combined with Dell forums, Tech Center and Direct2Dell, we have more than 21 million social customer connections. We’ve learned early on our customers are as diverse as the platforms they choose to spend their time on.

The Dell Social Media Listening Command Center helps us to listen, engage and act through whichever platform a customer shares a compliment, complaint or idea about the company.

2. Be responsive – It is not enough to merely listen, you have to respond to your customers and put the proper checks and balances in place to make sure you’re meeting their expectations. Our social media outreach teams, @DellCares and @DellCaresPRO, cater to our consumers and business customers respectively. These dedicated community teams address over 3,500 posts a week in 14 languages. In fact, @DellCares has a 97% resolution rate – and we’re always looking to improve! Our social outreach services team (aka SOS) has a target SLA of four hours for our support accounts on Facebook and a subset of Dell Twitter accounts. Quality audits are performed on each SOS team member and there is a dedicated audit point for SLA.

3. Empower ALL your employees to get social – Every employee across the business should feel empowered to interact with and respond to their customers. While we have a dedicated team in place to respond to customer support issues, we empower employees Dell-wide with our Social Media and Communities University (SMaC-U) training. The program formally launched in 2010 and since then, we’ve certified more than 9,100 team members and more than 17,000 team members have completed at least one training course across 55 countries.  In addition to employee training, SMaC University recently launched executive social media training (#SocialExec) for executive director and VP level employees. Executives receive customized training modules with community and engagement recommendations based on the individual’s expertise and area of the business.

4. Thank your customers – Dell has several proprietary social initiatives, like the #DellLove Thank You Program, a unique platform where Dell’s customer service team members thank our customers for spreading the word about Dell and its products. These personally-addressed messages to random Dell brand loyalists surprise most but let them know that we’re always listening and have the power to brighten our customers’ days. The #DellLove team has posted over 450 individual videos as of December 2013.

5. Inspire your customers to engage on your behalf – There are no better advocates for your company than your customers. At Dell, our Dell Community Rockstar Program identifies, engages and empowers 75 Dell enthusiasts and advocates to share their expertise and passion with customers in the Dell Community and other social properties. After all, sometimes it’s best to learn from your peers. In addition, IdeaStorm, which was created to give a direct voice to our customers’ ideas and suggestions has crossed the 20,000 idea mark with more than 547 of our customers’ ideas implemented across product lines.

Bobbi Dangerfield is the Vice President of Dell’s Global Sales Operations. In her role, Bobbi is responsible for enabling customer experience, sales productivity and business growth through operational excellence and flawless execution. In addition to her responsibilities for Dell’s Sales Operations, Bobbi plays an instrumental role in powering Dell’s commitment to diversity and giving. She currently serves as North America co-chair of both Dell’s women’s employee resource group, Wise, and Dell’s North America Giving Council. As a member of Dell’s Global Diversity Council, she helps drive diversity initiatives throughout the company in partnership with Council Chair Michael Dell.

Bobbi has more than 20 years of experience in Information Systems, Customer Service and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). She joined Dell in August 1999 as an IT Director with responsibilities encompassing network, desktop and server support; help desk, systems operations, asset management and call center technology services for all internal Dell functions. Bobbi also led the U.S. Consumer Customer Care organization, U.S. Consumer Call Center Operations, Customer Experience, Customer Centricity and Global Technology Product Management organizations at Dell. Prior to joining Dell, Bobbi held positions at Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and IBM.

She received her BBA in Marketing/Management from Dallas Baptist University and her MBA from Southern Methodist University. She serves on the Accenture Women’s Leadership Forum Steering Committee and is a member of the board of directors for Arizona State University’s Center for Services Leadership, Dress for Success Austin, and the Komen Advisory Board Austin.

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