Dell has tested the waters of User Innovation Communities (UIC's), which serve the same purpose as Communispace's online communities. These communities allow users to aid Dell in research and development and to interact with users. When companies effectively use UIC's, they use crowdsourcing to gain great insight into the minds of customers. Dell did not effectively use their UIC so confusion occurred. They wanted to use their UIC to go with Michael Dell's vision of listening to customers to guide innovation. Dell didn't know how to manage their UIC so there were inefficiencies.
Dell had trouble understanding that they must take UIC customers very seriously. They also struggled with the multitudes of ideas which ended up crowding out good ideas. Ideas often came from individual problems that users faced and therefore the customers made the ideas too vague for Dell to actually implement. More detailed responses to problems that more than one person faced would have made it easier for Dell to understand how to integrate some of these ideas. Users made it difficult for Dell to see good ideas by posting too many ideas that Dell wasn't interested in addressing and posting duplicate ideas. Ideas get split because users are too lazy to do searches, so they often keep posting the same ideas. The same ideas being posted separates the voting for that particular idea. I can relate to this because when I go on a message board, I find it much easier to make a new post than to search the forums for someone who had a similar question or comment. Dell didn't share all of their processes for implanting ideas with the users because Dell didn't want competitors to find out what they were attempting to do.
Dell made the mistake of not focusing solely on keeping the community happy. A community is not going to work if you tell the users that you're listening but do not demonstrate that to them. Dell did not know how to understand the ideas, pick out the good ones, protect them from competitors, and chiefly to keep the UIC users happy. Insuring the UIC users are happy is more important than keeping regular Dell customers happy because the community users have more of a voice. These challenges demonstrate that running a UIC can be difficult. Maybe Dell would have benefited from letting experts like Communispace run their community instead of trying to implant it internally when they obviously lacked knowledge.
The writers of the Dell case posed some excellent ideas that I believe will help Dell turn around their community and insure that the users know how to give Dell what Dell wants and to be happy with continuing to contribute. Dell has to be less vague and needs to tell users what they expect. "Defining a clear process that defines for users how to identify and describe ideas," is an excellent idea that will eliminate ambiguity between the users and Dell. Concocting a user tool kit is an excellent idea. The toolkit will educate participants so they know actually what the purpose of the community is and how they can be valuable participants. This will inspire the community members to post good ideas in the right fashion because if people are spending their time in the community, they want to be heard. Engaging the lead users is another excellent idea. The users that are the most active are valuable users and Dell should pay special attention to them. If these users are neglected they will probably flame the community, tell people about how mad they are, and tweet negatively about Dell. Making sure these users are happy can only be beneficial to the UIC and Dell's marketing. Dell must also listen to the popular ideas. If an idea gets more votes than every other idea. Dell cannot ignore that idea because they do not like it. They must attempt to integrate it because of the popularity. If Dell neglects the most popular ideas than what is the point of listening at all? This behavior shows customers that Dell might be listening but if they are the ideas are going in one ear and out the other. I believe if Dell listens to these ideas presented in the case, they should see greater success with their UIC and better ideas shared between users and Dell. I liked reading this case and I would rate it a 9/10. Is it worth it for companies to build their own communities and have to go through trial and error or should companies rely on a third party that knows what they are doing?
I think you really hit the main question that I was thinking about when I read this article. Last week we read the Communispace article which is a good comparison to this one. Dell implemented for themselves what Communispace implements for other people. So the natural thing to wonder, which I actually asked the lady from Communispace about was if companies should do it in house or have it done by a third party. We can not be sure how much IdeaStorm cost Dell, but we know Communispace cost about $300,000 for 12 months. I will assume that the cost were probably similar. If that is the case I think Communispace would be a better option. They have experience and are set up to mitigate many of the problems that Dell faced. I think they also have the confidentiality component down, so in my opinion I think companies should use a third party.
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea of the toolkit and I think it would help focus the contributors. If they know what is expected of them and how they have the best chance of being heard, IdeaStorm would benefit greatly from the ideas that ensue. This would funnel through the "noise" of many many users just submitting every idea they some up with.
ReplyDelete