Dell’s response to Robert Scoble’s response to Apple
5th January 2007 by Angelo Fernando
An interesting brand discussion through the eyes of reviewers and end users is shaping up. Not about features, or equity and all the typical stuff, but about the how companies treat the customers of their brands –and the media attention they get.
On its blog, Direct to Dell, Dell came back fast on the post by Robert Scoble who posed the question as to why Apple gets better treatment, and Dell gets all the bad media karma.
The language (and hopefully the attitude) is largely influenced by the early Scoble
“We entered the blogosphere in part to take on negative issues. Will we make more mistakes along the way? Sure, but we are listening and learning as we go. In fact, the blog is all about those conversations, and it’s why I’m recognizing this debate that goes on about and around us.”
Scoble’s comments are interesting, because Apple does get a pass, and great reviews. In a previous comment about the bad customer service his son got over a Macbook, he called on the heavywright media tech writers such as WSJ’s Walt Mossberg to show off Apple for what it really is. (Note: Mossberg, who has been featured in an Apple ad, always acknowledges his Mac preference):
Hey, Walt Mossberg or Steven Levy, why don’t you call up my 12-year-old son and write a column about Apple’s customer service failures instead of giving them tons of praise about the new iPod cell phone that’s gonna come out at MacWorld in a week?
So Dell would have relished this, and reader comments to their post. Speaking of which Scoble was accused of turning his son’s experience into a company face off, and doing it for the kind of traffic that Jeff Jarvis got for his Dell hell post. People see conspiracies in what they want to. If I write passionately about a great experience, or a bad one, does that mean I am going off at the deep end? This might turn out to be less of an Apple vs Dell debate and more about the reviewers and bloggers. Interesting.
This post was adapted from a post on my Marketing Communications blog, Hoipolloi.
January 6th, 2007 at 7:39 am
I guess I’m sympathetic to Scoble’s position. He’s absolutely right about the fetishization of Apple - it’s a wonderful enterprise in many ways, but this isn’t the only example of customer service out there. I went round and round not long back about an iTunes “update” that caused my music to skip (badly). There was a fix, but not one that you could find easily, and not one that all of their own people seemed to know about.
But hey, this isn’t an Apple bitch session. As for the reax to Scoble, I think it’s more than fine to rant or praise at will, so long as you have a sense of proportion. You run into problems when you treat the exception as the rule (and vice versa) and begin to use your forum in a way that’s irresponsible. His obligations there aren’t quite the same as mine might be here, though.
One hopes Dell has its PR folks working the traditional channels, too, though….
January 8th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Response to Sam and “One hopes Dell has its PR folks working the traditional channels, too, though….”
That would be an affirmative!