Company Updates

DellCares+ – Expanding Our Social Customer Service Options

By   |  
Topics in this article

Woman using smartphone to take photo of Dell social media listening command centerWe launched our social media listening command center in 2010, but we’ve been listening and responding to online conversations much longer than that. In fact, simplymeasured.com has ranked Dell among the top 10 brands delivering customer service on the twitter platform (via our @DellCares handle).

Our English-language @DellCares account was created on Twitter in May of 2010 and by the end of 2013 we had surpassed a combined 100,000 followers on the 14 different language accounts the Dell Cares team now manages. Our original Facebook Support tab has evolved as that platform did and today our team fields and average of 750 requests for assistance every month.

In her recent Econsultancy post, Tamara Littleton noted: “Dell is famous for being a social brand and even offers social media listening training to other businesses,” and it’s true we do offer Social Services. It always feels great when someone sings your praises like that, but we’re not just resting on our laurels. We’re continuing to expand our Dell Cares presence – most recently within Google+.

“Our customers’ admiration for our service and accomplishments is a constant source of motivation for the team,” says Nidhi Pratapneni, director of the team that launched the G+ engagement. “Now, we have set up the Dell Cares community under our Google+ brand page where our goal is to provide support related to consumer products.”

We reach customers on their platform of choice, and we base the decision to go into new ones on the amount of Dell-related conversations we see there.  Our Dell Cares team is staffed globally to ensure round-the-clock coverage with varying business hours and they work across continents to help cover customer cases.

“The job I do is important for Dell's success moving into the future. It allows me, as one of Dell's representative in social media, to help our customers in a new and exciting way,” said Vijay Prakash. 

“We are able to reach out to our customers, to interact with them instantly online, and help improve their experiences with Dell, showing them how the company is evolving and carving our way to provide an amazing experience and build a relationship”

That instant interaction and relationship building pays off according to this sampling of customers:

Even sometimes multiple social media platforms collide, as well:

You may notice the statement at the bottom of this and all of our Direct2Dell posts that states requests for service will be unpublished here and think it sounds a bit hypocritical. I know I did as I came into the role of managing this blog.

But, then as I started digging deeper, I came to realize that it doesn’t mean we won’t deal with customer issues here. It just means we want to focus the conversation on each post to the topic at hand. If there are pressing issues,  we will address them here openly in posts on the topic. But, if readers come here wanting to hear the conversation about our OEM solutions for the Telco industry, we don’t want comments on that thread to be mixed with requests for assistance shipping a consumer tablet. The audience for each is different and the goal is to help our readers reach the signal through the noise.

I hope that clarifies things and that our readers will take advantage of all the other ways you can reach us for assistance through social media. 

About the Author: Laura Pevehouse

Laura Pevehouse was profiled as one of five “social media mavens” in the March 2009 issue of Austin Woman Magazine and named an AdWeek’s TweetFreak Five to Follow. She has been part of the Dell organization for more than 15 years in various corporate communications, employee communications, public relations, community affairs, marketing, branding, social media and online communication roles. From 2014-2018, Laura was Chief Blogger/Editor-in-Chief for Direct2DellEMC and Direct2Dell, Dell’s official corporate blog that she help launch in 2007. She is now a member of the Dell Technologies Chairman Communications team. Earlier in her Dell career she focused on Global Commercial Channels and US Small and Medium Business public relations as part of the Global Communications team. Prior to that, she was responsible for global strategy in social media and community management, as well as marcom landing pages, as a member of Dell’s Global SMB Marketing, Brand and Creative team. When she was part of Dell’s Global Online group, Laura provided internal consulting that integrated online and social media opportunities with a focus on Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. She managed the home page of Dell.com, one of the top 500 global web sites in Alexa traffic rank, and first brought web feeds and podcasts to the ecommerce site. In her spare time she led Dell into the metaverse with the creation of Dell Island in the virtual world Second Life. Laura has earned the designation of Accredited Business Communicator from the International Association of Business Communicators, and received her Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Louisiana State University. Before joining Dell Financial Services in 2000, she worked at the Texas Workforce Commission and PepsiCo Food Systems Worldwide.
Topics in this article