DELL, one of the largest PC computer-hardware companies , has really understood how important it is to communicate and interact with customers.
First of all I am a very satisfied DELL user, except for some problems with my Inspiron 9100, and I think that the DELL support has been great. But having good stuff to sell an providing satisfactory support is not everything. To be able to stay on top you have to evolve and get with the trends and listen to your customers/community.
DELL has lost marketshare, to HP, and revenues and the management has changed. To get back on track DELL has launched DELL 2.0.
The DELL corporate blog - Direct2Dell - is one great way to start communicating with their customers, and DELL has taken this communication even one step further with DELL IdeaStorm.
IdeaStorm is a, web 2.0 stylish, community where you can post your ideas on how DELL should evolve and be better, about 3.000 ideas has been posted so far. You can promote and comment on ideas you think are great and hope for DELL to notice them and hopefully implement them. DELL has already taken some ideas into consideration which can be found here - Ideas in Action.
I hope other companies will take after this. I remember Microsoft had something similar for the Windows Server program (https://www.windowsserverfeedback.com/), but that’s offline now.
Do you know of any other similar community approaches?