Dell joined forces with a leading text analytics provider to leverage sentiment and text analytics data. Their patented Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine uses a mix of rules and dictionaries to break down and analyze customer feedback text, and to score it on an 11-point sentiment scale for added granularity and measurement. The sentiment and text analytics solution enables Dell to make sense of the vast amount of customer feedback data available quickly and effectively. In order to make the insights relevant to Dell’s business and understand brand health through the voice of the customer, the Social Analytics team developed a proprietary patent-pending metric, the Social Net Advocacy (SNA) metric. This metric not only incorporates customer sentiment, but also takes the context and author into account as an indicator of purchase intent, giving Dell a clear view into customer advocacy of the Dell brand. Once the social media data is collected, analyzed, and scored for sentiment, it is then scored against Dell’s SNA scale. Dell is at the cutting edge of turning social media conversations into actionable insights that can be used to make sure the company is delivering the best services and products to their customers as quickly as possible. The comprehensive system of measuring social media data has given Dell further insight into customers’ pain-points and allowed Dell to engage in additional conversations with key customers. By putting together the SNA program, Dell can now take over 25,000 social conversations that take place about the brand and in a short amount of time, turn them into actionable data. That means customers have a shorter amount of time to wait for response or resolution to a problem. The customer feedback derived from the SNA program is delivered across the entire organization, from departments such as customer care and quality control to marketing and product development. The real time analysis and measuring of social data has allowed Dell to proactively quell any public concerns before they grow into potentially larger issues. Dell has always placed the utmost value on listening to customers, tailoring every service and solution to fit their individual needs and paying close attention to customer feedback. The company always sought to build direct relationships with its business customers through focus groups, direct product quality data that comes from its tech support, externally published product and satisfaction rankings, surveys, and social media outreach. As Dell’s customers began to use social media to reach out to brands and discuss products, Dell created customized programs aimed at connecting with its customers through multiple social media platforms and creating numerous programs focused on connecting with customers online. Through their multiple Twitter accounts, blogs and Facebook pages, Dell constantly strives to find innovative solutions to customers’ pain-points as quickly as possible. But Dell was determined to take their customer listening program one step further by integrating the voice of the customer in all aspects of the business from marketing to operations in order to maximize business results and achieve more. Dell, like so many other companies using social media, needed a way to sort through the noise and find out exactly what customers were saying and where any potential problems existed. It wasn't enough to just talk-at customers through social media, Dell strived to become directly involved with customers and make it a priority to understand and solve their issues as quickly as possible. Dell wanted to analyze and measure social conversations in order to understand brand advocacy, improve brand health and make intelligent decisions to generate business value. With so many social conversations occurring on a daily basis, Dell needed to quantify the customer feedback in real time, answering questions such as: What are the emerging concerns and how significant are they? How should we prioritize decision-making? And how do we contextualize and quantify the insights for different parts of the business from end user computing (laptops, desktops and tablets), enterprise (servers, storage and networking) to services, in order to make intelligent business decisions. In order to realize these goals, Dell needed to address two key challenges, the first was to find a way to efficiently aggregate more than 25,000 social conversations taking place daily about Dell and the competitive landscape into a single brand-advocacy metric in real time. The second challenge was to intelligently understand, quantify, and contextualize the customer feedback in to 150+ topics about the different product/services Dell offers as well as other facets of the business such as marketing, customer support and packaging. The Dell Social Analytics team needed to quantify the customer feedback in a way that made sense and was relevant to Dell’s corporate culture and customized business model. Through the SNA program, Dell is able to add context to the sentiment and SNA scores such as understanding whether the customer is a brand advocate or not and how the company can better serve their customers. For example, within hours after the launch of a specific Dell product, the Social Analytics Team saw a declining trend in SNA (decreased by more than 50%). When the analyst team looked further into the issue, they found a significant number of social media conversations expressing anger over the pricing for the new product. They turned to Dell’s Chief Blogger who quickly wrote a post explaining the situation and rectifying the price concerns. Within one day, Dell was able to return to original sentiment levels. Moreover, the general manager didn’t even need to be brought into the issue- employees are empowered to make quick and informed decisions. By creating a system that clearly maps out and translates all the social media buzz surrounding certain products and the brand as a whole; Dell can easily understand what road-blocks are impacting the growth potential and profitability of its products. Dell can then find a subject matter expert to address those road-blocks and engaging with customers to create the best solution for the company and the consumers. Dell’s goals have always been to create the best product for their customers, and through social media, it has become easier than ever to make sure customers love every product.
