Dell’s IdeaStorm: Social Media in Motion

Instead, they asked users to answer one simple question:

What ideas do you have for new Dell products and services?

That simple request opened the floodgates, and the community responded with a zeal and passion that pleasantly surprised the brass at Dell. The idea that far and away trumped all others was the desire for Dell customers to have the option to preload Linux-based operating systems onto new machines purchased from the manufacturer.

The company then blogged about every step of the process, finally confirming that they would indeed take the advice of their customers and offer Linux as an OS option for new PC purchasers.

Here’s what Matt Cutts had to say about Dell’s strategy:

The important thing is the process. It’s a process that many groups at Google use, and that (frankly) every team at Google should consider using. I’m not advocating that you set every goal by what the outside world wants. If you do that, you’ll miss some thunderbolt-from-above ideas that only an internal team can suggest.

But for many products, paying attention to what your users are saying can really provide great feedback and ideas for how to improve, and that in turn leads to “love” and even more future feedback. In this case, I think Dell did well.

It’s good to employ a bit of reversal every once in a while. While generating buzz for products that have been developed in-house is one of the most effective uses of social media, sometimes it’s nice to give the customer the reins for a little while.

The ruckus all started as a result of discussion on Dell’s IdeaStorm suggestion site, where the community outcry for a pre-installed Linux distribution is currently destroying all other topics in terms of popularity and user comments. Both enterprise customers and home consumers continue to express disappointment with Windows Vista, the latest OS offering from Microsoft.

Their customers have been saying they want a Linux option on their Dells, and apparently Dell has listened. Dell has now confirmed its intent to provide Linux-based packages. Matt Domsch, a Linux Software Architect, had this to say on Dell’s blog:

Your feedback on Dell IdeaStorm has been astounding.  Thank you!  We hear your requests for desktops and notebooks with Linux.  We’re crafting product offerings in response, but we’d like a little more direct feedback from you: your preferences, your desires. 

We recognize some people prefer notebooks over desktops, high-end models over value models, your favorite Linux distribution, telephone-based support over community-based support, and so on.  We can’t offer everything (all systems, all distributions, all support options), so we’ve crafted a survey (www.dell.com/linuxsurvey) to let you help us prioritize what we should deliver for you.

According to the survey, there are five particular commercial and community supported Linux distributions that Dell is looking at potentially providing:

·    Novell/SuSE Linux Desktop
·    Red Hat Enterprise Desktop
·    Fedora
·    OpenSUSE
·    Ubuntu

The survey will close on March 23rd, which is a little over a week away, so Linux supporters would be well served to surf on over to the site and cast their votes as quickly as possible.

 As for me, I’m pulling for Ubuntu.

The speculation stems from Dell’s IdeaStorm website, where the discussion surrounding the possibility of Linux distribution and support is currently dominating the community consciousness.

Growing dissatisfaction with Windows Vista and the attractive pricing of most Linux distributions (hard to ague with free) have led to a growing consumer sentiment toward the open source operating system in recent months.

Krishna Srinivasan explores a scenario that would see Linux offered as an option for purchasers of Dell PCs:

If the big hardware vendors are able to create their own support groups for a community Linux, they can in essence almost have their own operating system. Dell might "adopt" or sponsor the Gentoo Linux distribution and create a community of support for it. Then it would be Dell pushing out the Dell Gentoo Linux version with Dell’s own dollars for a Dell co-branded solution.

Ars Technica’s Ryan Paul, however, believes that any Linux talk right now would only be limited to enterprise solutions rather than individual consumers due to the challenges of providing support for Linux:

There is still a lot to gain by offering Linux preinstallation, but it’s a lot more relevant to large deployments rather than individual purchases. Schools, companies, and public institutions that want Linux preinstallation can already work with Dell’s partners to roll out Linux-based Dell desktop systems on a large scale.

Although it might make sense for Dell to start offering Linux preinstallations for regular consumers a few years from now, most people wanting to make the switch from Windows to Linux at this stage should do so with the guidance of a Linux enthusiast who can perform the installation and help them make the transition, or by purchasing from a shop that specializes in Linux preinstallation.

I’m not saying this because I think that Linux isn’t ready for the desktop. I’m saying this because I don’t think that Dell is capable yet of providing full technical support for desktop Linux. Dell has a hard enough time as it is supporting Windows.

Support for Linux has always been one of the major sticking points for users in determining whether or not to make the switch from a Windows or OS X based operating system.

Consequently, it has also become the major hindrance for manufacturers as well. So while the buzz surrounding the possibility of Dell picking up Linux as an option for its clients is a good thing, enthusiasts of the operating system would be well served not to hold their collective breaths waiting for the speculation to become reality.

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I love it.

In a nutshell, Dell have turned user feedback into an entire social network site, complete with Digg-style voting, memberships, commenting and all that jazz. It’s a master stroke.

Now, if Dell want to know what their users care about and are most hungering for, they just go to this website and the front page lists the most requested product and feature ideas in order of demand!

Compare this, for a moment, to the typically boring “been-there-done-that” corporate approach to user feedback:

• Post-purchase “Are you satisfied?” emails/direct mail pieces… boring.
• Occasional customer surveys with gadget prizes as hooks… boring.
• A typically hard-to-find customer feedback page that doesn’t promise your email will be answered… excruciatingly boring!

I could go on…

But what Dell have done is:

• Invested so much effort into this community site that the message “we REALLY do care to know what you think” is heard loud and clear.
• Invited their customers into a community experience that is rewarding in itself.
• Shown the courage to expose their most valuable and (presumably) unedited user feedback/ideas on a publicly-accessible site where their competitors can see it too.

So, again, three thumbs up to Dell for this cool tool.

Now the challenge for Dell will be to make good on the promise to actually ACT on these suggestions, otherwise the whole thing will flow. This will test Dell’s time-to-market capabilities and the effectiveness of their internal channels of communication between Marketing (whom we presume run this site) and Product Development (who have the challenge of turning these customer ideas into products, features and services).

Now, How’s It Actually Going?

A search of the blogosphere shows that the conversation on the site is leaking outside as well, mainly related to the very loud and clear request for Linux on Dell notebooks. And how have Dell responded? Well, three days ago they announce that the users are getting what they asked for! So don’t miss this: Dell took JUST ONE WEEK from the launch of this site (Feb. 16th) to assess the demand, make the internal decisions and get the announcement out to the public! That’s pretty impressive.

The mainstream IT press seems cautiously optimistic that this might all be part of a new resurgence for Dell, who need some new wind in their sails.

Ultimately the litmus test for Dell will be to back image up with substance… to listen carefully to the users and to be quick to respond in the Product Development Department.

So far so good I think.

Lessons for Bloggers Like You and Me

So… what are the takeaways for you, dear blogging reader? Well, the point of this story for me is that there is always room for someone smart and skilled to innovate in a way that surprises their customer base (read: readership). For Dell, applying “Digg dynamics” to the lack-lustre subject of collecting ideas from customers took some deep-down right-brain thinking. Can you do the same thing? Sure you can

Here’s an idea for how to do that: ask your readers! Put up a blog post asking your readers what they’d like to see you do/write/offer differently. You may get deafening silence, you may get one pearl in a pile of rubbish.

Now, putting my own advice into practice… what would you like me to do differently? How would you like me to shift the focus of my writing to better suit your needs and questions? Do you like the focus of my writing or is it a little “hit and miss” for you? What burning questions about blogging do you have for me? What tools/features/stuff would you like me to provide here?

I’m all ears!

Comments

Longtime Dell partner Microsoft will probably object to the first two suggestions. Dell probably doesn’t want to jeopardize lucrative deals with Google and AOL that place their software on Dell hardware by default, either.

That’s the hazard of publicly soliciting public feedback. The people may want something that the company won’t be able to deliver even though it may be capable of doing so. Dell would have to make a bet that demand for clean or Linux-installed machines would offset what it could lose from partnership deals.

The Direct2Dell blog, which started in the aftermath of Dell eliminating its once-effective customer support message boards, noted the arrival of both IdeaStorm and videos on StudioDell.

On StudioDell, its users can upload the videos they make showing how they use their Dell products. One video features a professor from Rice University, describing nano-modeling and how it is used to help research cancer.

Dell has been going through its share of changes beyond just adding a couple of web services. Founder Michael Dell recently ousted CEO Kevin Rollins to take that role himself. A couple of top VPs also announced they would leave not long after Dell returned as CEO.

They may need more than a Digg clone to reverse a trend that has seen H-P pass Dell as the top global PC manufacturer.

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There’s no question that Dell has come a long way since the early days of the Dell blog, when Jeff Jarvis ripped them a new one (mostly for not mentioning him and all the blog coverage he got after having a bad experience with Dell support). They responded to that openly and honestly on the Dell blog, and they followed it up with lots of posts about what they were doing to fix various user problems such as faulty batteries, etc. And best of all, they admitted that they still had lots of learning to do.

The big question now, of course, is: How much of this community input will Dell actually put into practice? In other words, the walk must eventually be walked, rather than just having the talk be talked. The top user suggestion as of this writing is the “No Extra Software Option” — in other words, the option to buy a Dell with no extra software. It had about 2.000 votes on Saturday afternoon. Will Dell listen? No doubt the company has agreements with software companies to include their products for a fee. Will it be willing to give that up because the community wants it to?

Mark Evans has more on Dell and IdeaStorm here and Richard MacManus at Read/Write Web has a post about that and Dell’s other Web 2.0-style innovation, which is a user-generated video site called StudioDell. And Richard points out that more companies should be trying to listen to their customers the way that Dell is. What does it cost? Barely anything. But the payoff — even just in goodwill — is enormous.

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About the Author

Mathew Ingram is a technology writer and blogger for the Globe and Mail, a national newspaper based in Toronto, and also writes about the Web and media at www.mathewingram.com/work and www.mathewingram.com/media.