CAP Days Germany: Five lessons from listening to our customers

I recently had the opportunity to engage in open discussion with 10 influential German customers and bloggers at the Customer Advisory Panel (CAP) Days (#DellCAP) event in Frankfurt, Germany. The CAP Days program focuses on gaining valuable insights from our most vocal, social media savvy customers and implementing meaningful changes across the business. The program kicked off in the U.S., with subsequent programs in China and Jan. 20 in Germany, where we spent an entire day discussing their experiences and perceptions of Dell.

Here are a few things from the conversations that stood out to me:

  1. Our customers seem to have lost the emotional connection to Dell. They no longer understand the benefit of our direct relationships with our customers.
  2. We have reliable products and good support (if they pick the right support option!), but our advertising is misguided and an annoyance to some of our customers.
  3. Listening can be incredibly powerful. It’s unusual that a company the size of Dell listens to customers in such an open forum. Customers had never experienced such open dialogue with a global company.
  4. Customers do care about Dell, and they are spending their own time helping other customers and defending Dell online.
  5. We must deliver a better customer experience. There are millions of customers out there who will be loyal to Dell and buy more if we up our game and deliver the best Customer Experience!

Graphic Meeting Notes were captured in English and German languages (click on the images below to see larger versions.

German:

Graphic-recording-CAP-Germany-German

Here it is in English:

Graphic-recording-CAP-Germany-English

For more on this event, check out the professional photos of the event by attendee Mario Andreya and here is an overview video:

Dell CAP Days really sparked a lot of great discussions with our customers and bloggers. We are committed to addressing the feedback we receive during these events. With more in-person events planned across countries we serve in 2011, we will continue to not only capture the candid discussion, but feed it back into our organization to develop real solutions.

About the Author: Michael Buck