How Tech Brands Create Raving Fans

The first official question in my Dell CAP days adventure from our wonderfully fantastic moderator Mack Collier was what makes you a Dell evangelist?  I referenced my experience way back early in my tech career.  I had a Dell M300.  It was a super tiny little laptop and I adored it.  I forget why, but one day I was trying to get at some of the parts inside the laptop and ended up stripping one of the screws.  I still needed to get in, so we had to destroy the screw to get into it (leaving part of the screw inside, and then I SUPER GLUED the door shut (since I couldn’t put a new screw in there).  Well, later the network card went out on the laptop.  I had only the basic warranty that came with the laptop.  I had to send the laptop in for service, and when it came back it was better than new!  Not only did they fix the real problem, which was the network card…. they fixed the door and replaced all of the screws.  There was also some strange marks on my screen, and those were gone as well.  What impressed me was that they could have just replaced the motherboard (which didn’t even require getting into the door that was broken, and left it at that.  What they did though was look the entire laptop over and repaired everything that looked broken!  It was then that I became a Dell customer for life.

Other folks in the group had similar things to say, they like Dell’s products, they like being able to “build their own machine”, and they like Dell’s social media efforts.  We then moved pretty naturally into discussing high quality versus low price, and where Dell has helped bring costs down (namely overseas support, but I’ll get to that when I talk about the support panel tomorrow).

One of the key takeaways from this panel though was the need to educate the customers on their purchases.  I discussed the fact that people constantly came to me and asked me what they need to get in a computer.  Many people want to purchase a Dell computer, but perhaps get a little intimidated by the website and all of the options they can select.  Generally people want to get a good computer, but they don’t know what constitutes “good”.  I would just like to throw my hat in the ring as a perfect person to put the technology into terms the non-techies can understand for Dell.  🙂  Who better to educate the non-techie moms out there than someone who is already doing that very same thing!  Empowering the customers with education on what they need will go a long way to creating customers extremely happy with their purchases.  One thing I thought was VERY interesting was that the panel on Day one came to the same conclusion.  The fact that customers WANT to be educated on their purchases is obviously a hot button item right now.  You can check out Day 1’s notes on their image created by Sunni Brown below.

We also talked about ways to tailor the Dell website so it’s easy to read the reviews of people who are similar to yourself.  For a non-techie to read a review by someone who is speaking on a completely different level (way above their own understanding) would not be very helpful to that person.  Another techie though may not want to read the review of the mom who says that her kids can navigate the computer easily.  With varying profiles you can find reviews of people who have similar interests as you.

The last thing that I had to say about marketing was the way I felt about Dell’s current marketing… the horrible horrible Lollipop commercials.  First, there is the extremely suggestive nature of the begining of the commercial.  Then the “workers” start squirting what looks like crap onto the conveyor belt (which clearly implies that the Dell computers are made out of crap!), and lastly the workers don’t “work” at all.  They just stand around singing while the machines make the computers.  Which really doesn’t give me a personalized feel to my computer.  So, the quicker those lollipop commercials can get off of my TV, the happier I will be.  If Dell wants a really good commercial, just hire me to talk tech to the moms… it’s what I’m good at. 🙂

Tomorrow I’m busting into the support panel, so definitely don’t miss that!

What do you think of Dell’s current marketing (and even the dreaded lollipop commercial), and do you agree with our ideas about what can help the marketing of Dell and help the brand?

*Disclosure – Dell paid for my trip to Round Rock, TX to visit Dell headquarters.  They did not ask me to write a post about my trip or compensate me in any way for these posts.

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