Influx

Noted blogger Jeff Jarvis caused chaos in June with his negative comments about his experience with the customer service department at computer giant Dell. He dubbed the experience “Dell Hell’ which rapidly became part of the web vernacular and challenged Dell’s reputation as “friend to all consumers who walk the planet”.

Most naysayers would brush this off as an isolated incident with little or no long-term impact. With little evidence to prove otherwise, they might have been right. Now a triumvirate of UK companies (marketsentinel.com, onalytica.com and immediatefuture.co.uk) have put together a white paper that examines what Jeff Jarvis really did to Dell. The paper can be found here. (It’s in the blog post dated December 6th).

The paper has a good explanation of how bloggers become influential and has some interesting data to show why Jeff Jarvis caused Dell problems. The paper concludes that through his efforts and power of a blogger, he has now become THE source for information on Dell’s Customer Service; so much so that Dell has no choice to consider him in any effort it makes to improve or change customer service. Now, that’s real power!