In the 1990s Dell rose to become one of the world's largest PC manufacturers, but by 2005 indifferent customer service levels had dented the company's reputation.
Something had to be done to reconnect with customers, and Dell came up with IdeaStorm, a website where customers are encouraged to submit ideas to the company. The advantage of such an online forum for a company keen to innovate is clear: "For years people have been using focus groups. This enables us to do the same job but with hundreds or thousands of consumers over a period of months or weeks," says Dell's vice-president for communities and conversations, Bob Pearson.
Appealing to the online audience was an obvious step to make, as this was the arena where criticism of Dell had been loudest. Leading the chorus of disapproval was pre-eminent blogger, Guardian columnist and professor of journalism at City University, New York, Jeff Jarvis, with his tales of "Dell Hell".
"I tested Dell and they failed," said Jarvis on his BuzzMachine blog in July 2005. "I chose to elicit the sympathy and conspiracy of fellow pissed-off Dell customers. I chose to see whether Dell is listening. They are not."
The company's initial failure to listen and engage with the debate had left
a void others were happy to fill: "In the online world if you don't do it to yourself someone else will do it to you," says Nick Buckley, director of new social media at research company GfK NOP.
Pearson, however, says that the decision to launch IdeaStorm was less to do with Jarvis's ire and and managing reputation than nurturing innovation: "Every day 500,000 people come online worldwide for the first time. [Company founder] Michael Dell began to ask how we could get ideas directly from our customers."
Dell's first attempt to court its online customer base came in early 2006 with a "blog outreach" programme contacting disgruntled bloggers. This was followed by the introduction of the company's own blog, direct2dell and then IdeaStorm in 2007.
The forum's strength lies in a voting ideas they would like to see implemented. These votes are taken into account by Dell when making the final decision over implementation. "The criteria we apply are based on the number of votes an idea receives and whether or not it's actually a good idea. If something is popular, we may need to act on it regardless of our point of view. Equally, good ideas are not always the most popular," says Pearson.
So far 10,000 ideas have been submitted with 200 implemented. One of the first to gain approval was the installation of the Linux operating system on PCs for customers preferring this to the Microsoft equivalent. Dell implemented this within three months of IdeaStorm's launch; a development that Pearson claims "wasn't even on our roadmap". More recently the IdeaStorm community generated 130 ideas for the new Latitude range of business laptops, launched in August, of which six became key features on the range.
Inviting the world to comment on a product line-up is not without its problems. Expectations are raised and need to be managed — not easy with such a large community. Disgruntled users have suggested that implementing 2% of ideas is not good enough. Others simply post comments headed: "When you ask for suggestions, try responding to them."
Pearson is candid about the site's system that allows users to choose which limitations: "We're trying to do a better job of telling people what work is in progress, but this is more of an art than a science." Acting on the strength of a single suggestion can also be unwise and Pearson talks of the need to leave ideas to germinate on the site, accruing comment from other users.
These niggles aside, IdeaStorm has been widely praised and even emulated, most notably by Starbucks. Faced with its declining popularity in the US, the company launched mystarbucksidea.com in the spring as a forum for customer input. Ideas so far range from "splash-sticks" to slip into the sipping lids of takeaway drinks to a facility that allows customers to suggest new locations for Starbucks stores.
"Many companies are talking about replicating aspects of this model," says Charlie Osmond, chief executive of Freshminds, which builds online research communities. "Online engagement is now at the same stage the internet was at in 1995. In five years' time the majority of companies will be having engaged, online conversations with their customers."
Weblinks
Dell's Ideastorm: ideastorm.com
Starbucks: mystarbucksidea.com
Jeff Jarvis blog: buzzmachine.com
