Dell is like the Central Intelligence Agency of customer monitoring.
At Dell World, Amy Heiss, executive producer with Dell’s Social Media Ground Control Center, spends her days “listening to customers” on social networks.
In fact, the software that powers Dell’s social media listening station comes from Radian6 and allows Dell to listen, like a fly on the wall, to conversations about itself on social networks. Radian6, based in Canada and founded in 2006, provides software that allows companies to analyze how their customers are talking about them on social media networks and to respond to them quickly.
For example, Dell monitors Twitter with the @DellCares Twitter account and every time someone mentions the company on that social network, an alert gets sent to one of the screens at Dell’s social media monitoring center. Dell also watches a screen filled with people deemed influential because of their reputation and the number of followers they have on Twitter. If one of those influential people tweets something negative, a red box appears around their name on the monitor. If they tweet something positive, they get a green box. If they tweet something neutral, the box is black.
Heiss says that the color-coded system allows Dell to respond immediately to people who have problems with the company or its products.
Dell launched its social media command center last December at its Round Rock headquarters.
Once criticized for its lack of customer engagement, Dell has fully embraced social media in the past decade. The company sees huge opportunity in engaging customers online. Even Founder and CEO Michael Dell regularly tweets.