Crisis Management in the blogosphere – Case study

Who should have had a blog.

Sometime ago Dell launched a new monitor, the XPS One. Unfortunately the monitor was not working properly so an upset customer wrote his feelings and bad experience towards Dell on his blog. His blog was read by another blogger who also wrote about it on his blog and his post was so popular that a new term for Dell was created:

This blogger’s post became the number 1 result on Google’s search! As a result, Dell got negative press coverage in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Dell, those days, did not have a blog, so they were unable to communicate with the angry blogosphere but luckily there was a happy ending. Dell set up its own blog.

First step Dell dispatched technicians to reach out to complaining bloggers and solve their problems, earning pleasantly surprised buzz in return and saw a 79% decrease in negative blog posts. Most importantly Dell saved hundreds of millions which would have costed to create an ad campaign.

There are quite a few similar stories happening to companies in Oman but i thought this is a better example.