Connie Bensen

A couple of years ago I had a conversation with Sean McDonald, former Director, Online and Marketing at Dell, about his vision for community. We had a very similar philosophy about the shortcomings of having a community manager or a team of them and how the concept of empowering the organization would be necessary. We agreed that staff across the organization needed to be trained and empowered, but we pondered what that looked like in regard to a culture shift and the huge challenges that presented.

That is the objective of my present day job. I just published my tenth white paper in a series on the ROI of Social Media on the topic of ‘Creating A Social Business Through Listening’. It is a culmination of over two years of direct focus in the social media monitoring industry. My work with Alterian SM2 (formerly Techrigy) has contributed to evolving online listening based on customer needs and industry requirements along with the measurement of value and ROI. So this was indeed a momentous occasion for all I evangelize and represent!

My vision is that every company needs a community strategist to guide the culture shift in a company so that the organization can embrace and leverage social channels in order to meet it’s business objectives. It is only through building community internally that the company can realize the full potential of the social web and build an external community along with realizing all the benefits.

Dell gets this! and they are executing on a massive community building project internally. They have trained 5,000 staff of their 100 k strong. And they are listening to their community (both internally & externally). I see the new listening control center as a statement to their commitment to not only listen to their customers, but to make sure that change happens. As we all know, Listening is the first step and the most imperative!

It was amazing to hear the passion that these people have for socializing Dell and making their brand strong. I was touched to see Michelle Brigman, Social Media Listening & Engagement Operations Sr. Manager, get emotional when talking about what they’re trying to accomplish. I watched her express how they want to provide their customers with the best service in the upcoming seasonal rush when everyone gets harried. They are working as fast as they can to empower their teams company wide to provide the best customer experience possible. Imagine the scope of this project.

In the near future I will be sharing some videos that imparts the efforts and passion of this amazing project that Dell has taken on. Manish Mehta, VP Social Media & Communities, asked me if I thought other companies would be doing this and my response was, “Absolutely! This is the future!”

Thank you to the Social Media team for inviting me to join your celebration of Community Building and Listening. Special thanks to Lisa Grimes for coordinating it. I appreciated the opportunity to be introduced to Michael Dell and shake the hand of a man that is leading such a huge change in the profession and industry that I’ve been pioneering. Congratulations to Dell on making great strides in setting a new organizational standard.

More information from Dell’s perspective can be found on Mashable. And you can read about my experience with Dell’s Customer Advisory Panel:

Dell Takes Listening to a New Level with #DellCAP

What companies do you think are doing a good job in operationalizing social media?

I experience a child-like wonder when a brand reaches out to me. And when it’s a big monolithic brand, like Microsoft or Dell, I am in total awe. I don’t think that will ever change. It is the power of the social web that I will always appreciate.

Long ago in 2007 a developer from Microsoft commented on my blog post about LiveWriter. As team lead he asked for feedback. When I read his signature, I rubbed my eyes and asked myself, can this be real? Granted I came into the online world as a result of a company reaching out to me. So I asked my readers what their suggestions for MS LiveWriter (which was in beta at the time) and posted them. Imagine my surprise when I woke to a Facebook message from that same Microsoft developer suggesting that I check out the newest release because they had incorporated my ideas! It made me feel as if my ideas mattered and I felt ownership in the product. I still use LiveWriter, evangelize it & train my staff in it’s use.

So when Chris Byrd @ChrisBatDell invited me to Dell’s first annual Customer Advisory Panel #DellCAP I was both honored and thrilled. The date fit between a couple of corporate meetings and so I booked Austin in between Chicago & Rochester, NY.

I learned in May that 3 cities in one week isn’t advisable, but I was excited to see what Dell was up to. I have been watching them steadily grow their team of online community managers. Their invitation was transparent that there were no expectations and they were taking care of all expenses.

The talented Mack Collier moderated the day. Imagine starting out the morning with an audience of Dell’s CMO and other executives. The group of 15 of us were gathered around a board table at Dell’s Executive Briefing Center and members of various Dell teams were behind us in the room. Our conversation was focused and we were invited to share out thoughts and ideas.

The topics were:

Expectations with CMO Erin Nelson – we talked about Dell’s brand and the opportunities that Dell has. I firmly believe that the new marketing is education.

1. Help consumers help themselves in the purchase process.
2. Capture and utilize user generated content of knowledgeable users to create a knowledge base
3. Use profiles in the Dell community to highlight the type of hardware that person uses to facilitate people connecting with others of similar computer needs.

We also talked about price points, customer service and expectations. I felt completely comfortable in expressing myself candidly.

Customer Support – This was a hot topic and surfaced in the earlier session. Dell is moving towards a new model of combining customer service and tech support. I expressed my experience with having support outsourced. I found Twitter to be much more effective. @ChrisBatDell resolved my issue a year ago. I was surprised to hear that they wanted to encourage social media channels for support. I am curious to hear how they communicate that to their customers?

Support centers rely heavily on scripts. We expressed our frustration with that. It made me realize the huge value in the reference interview that we used in the library world. Imagine if the support were to take a few minutes and ask 3 questions rather than asking, “Is your computer turned on?” Here they are:

1. What is the problem?
2. What have you done to resolve it? (then make an educated decision on how to resolve
3. Set expectations and agree on the goal of the call. In other words repeat and make sure that the customer is in agreement and that both sides understand the need.

Design Lab – This is where everyone geeked out over the new Streak. I enjoyed seeing the Adamo and Adamo XPS. It caused me to realize that my work issued Dell Latitude doesn’t fit my needs.

Technology Briefing Center – A senior product manager gave a product demonstration that hasn’t been shared with others outside of Dell. We signed an NDA and enjoyed being privy to secret information.

The last session of the day was on Sustainability and Recycling. Unfortunately I needed to go to the airport, so i missed it.

One of the highlights of my day was having lunch with Caroline Dietz. She created IdeaStorm. I loved how she described how it evolved. And it was nice to visit with Lionel Mencheca again. He shared that they are transitioning away from a centralized social media team and scaling it out to teams by business unit. I look forward to watching how that evolves!

Overall I have to give Dell total credit for bringing in their leadership to spend the day with us. They brought in a group with very diverse backgrounds. We had a variety of ideas and it was a great focus group. Earlier in the week they had brought in a group of 15 detractors. I had seen their tweets and they were negative. I hope that Dell was able to garner constructive feedback from both groups. Their process was excellent. We filled out a pre-survey. They created a community and now I need to fill out a post-survey. There is a lot of content in a variety of formats floating on the web. I see on Twitter that a couple of people have ordered Adamos so the products sold themselves.

Thank you Dell for your invitation to listen to us and your hospitality! I hope that as an organization you can continue leading the way in implementing ideas from consumers.

If you’d like to read more about #DellCAP, Mack Collier is gathering all the content. Sunni Brown captured the day (this was very cool!).

If you had the opportunity to talk directly with a company, which company would it be? and what would you tell them?

On May 26th I was invited to present at #WebCom 2.0 in Montreal. My topic was the Community Manager role and how it supports innovation as well as the disruption necessary to drive the culture shift in an organization required to successfully engage in social media.

I always enjoy conferences that are well organized. This one was very well done. They interviewed all of the speakers and put them on YouTube. What a nice touch! The slide deck from my presentation is below.

The slide deck on Slideshare. I presented the deck virtually to a Roundtable group in Geneva, Switzerland. The recording is here on my speaking page.

On my recent trip to Alterian corporate offices in the UK, I ventured to Bath. It’s a destination that has amazing architecture. For lunch I had the traditional fish & chips along with the mushy peas (which were recommended by the waitress). I agree that they are good!

The Abbey and the Roman Baths seem to be the center of Bath. A choir had just started performing and provided the perfect ambience.

A view down a street.

The one thing that amazes me about Europe is the age of the stones and structures. This is what remains of the medieval wall.