I’m thrilled to share that Dell has received a Forrester Research Voice of the Customer Award. The award recognizes initiatives that help companies dramatically improve how they collect, interpret and react to customer feedback. This year nearly 40 companies competed for the award and Dell was one of three who won. Dell was chosen after being judged on five areas of customer focus: clarity of its approach, business value to the organization, positive impact on customer experience, innovation and potential for other companies to repeat the practice. We’re proud of the progress the award indicates, but recognize we still have a long way to go.
Said Harley Manning, vice president, research director at Forrester Research, “The best VOC programs demonstrate that executive involvement, measurement and insights that are tied directly to action are critical to customer experience success.”
We understand that our company’s continued success is based on a common theme—putting customers at the heart of everything we do. How customers use their technology to grow and succeed is at the center of why we exist. It is our purpose. Initiatives like our Customer Advisory Panel (CAP) Days were a success, and are an example of how we can continually learn from our customers. When we visited with customers during the CAP Day sessions, some were unhappy; others were thrilled. All seemed delighted that we invited them to Dell for an open discussion around their IT issues. We’re glad to see other positive reactions to the event and encouraged that the dialog continues at #DellCAP on Twitter.
You might ask, what are some of those practices that help us learn about our customers’ preferences? In recent years, Dell has gained valuable feedback through customer surveys, through our own social media efforts in general and sites like IdeaStorm. To date, hundreds of ideas from the IdeaStorm community have been implemented. Since 2006 more than 100,000 customer ratings and reviews have been shared—that’s an average of 150 reviews per day submitted to Dell.com based on direct customer feedback. We’ve also focused on celebrating our customers who submit reviews through things like Customer Spotlights on Dell.com. You’ll hear directly from them about the kinds of things they use their systems for, what they like about it and see the configuration they use to get things done. Other initiatives underway include a pilot of a 24/7 chat service in the U.S. and other countries where chat seems more popular over traditional phone service, redesigning support.dell.com, revamping of extended warranties, and a redesign of the Dell.com online configurator experience to name a few. The scope and direction of these initiatives – and others – are shaped by what we hear from customers. We look forward to sharing progress on them in upcoming conversations.
The Forrester Research Voice of the Customer Award demonstrates that we’re headed in the right direction. We appreciate your feedback as we continue the journey.