The Buzz Bin

This week’s Buzz Bin interview features Direct2Dell’s Lionel Menchaca. Lionel Menchaca is a 14-year Dell veteran and chief blogger at Direct2Dell. He also helps to coordinate other Dell digital media properties — like the Dell Community Forum, IdeaStorm and StudioDell – across the company (full bio at the end). Lionel was direct about past and current naked conversation on Direct2Dell, and gave some substantive answers about Dell’s next social media steps with the blog and abroad.

BB: How has Direct2Dell impacted the company?

LM: I think Direct2Dell has helped humanize Dell as a company by giving customers and other interested folks people from the business to interact with. It has really given our customers a voice and us an opportunity to interact directly with customers — both on issues we have in the hopper and what they want to talk about. Direct2Dell opened up opportunities for other ways to engage the community, like IdeaStorm.

IdeaStorm really caught on because it empowers people to not only to share their ideas on how Dell can improve as a company, but also to vote on the ideas that are most important to them. We use Ideas in Action to communicate details on customer ideas we’ve implemented and I often link to ideas and updates from IdeaStorm because I think closing the loop (listening to customers’ feedback and actually doing something with it) is the most important aspect of digital media for us.

BB: Have comments changed the way Dell has approached any initiatives?

LM: Sure, the XPS 700 Motherboard Exchange Program and offering Ubuntu Linux on desktops initially in the United States, and now in parts of Europe are examples of user feedback leading to change within the company. I think Dell’s market leadership today in offering expanded Linux offerings is a direct result of the blog and IdeaStorm.

BB: The video post of the laptop burning (battery issues) won Direct2Dell praise across the blogosphere. Can you tell us some more about that decision?

LM: From the beginning lots of people who support our digital media initiatives have been committed to doing things the right way. I linked to the Engadget post during the first week of the blog. Honestly, it wasn’t a popular decision within Dell as a company.

It was our way of showing that we were blogging for the right reasons — to address negative issues head on, to serve our customers, and to hopefully teach them something in the process. In the case of the battery recall, the blog served as an immediate and direct way for us to get information about the recall of Sony batteries to our customers and Direct2Dell was a critical element in our communications around that issue.

BB: Naked conversation seems to be an ethos on DirectDell. Can you discuss?

LM: A few months before we launched the blog in July 2006, we started monitoring the blogosphere to find customers who needed assistance with their Dell hardware and then began connecting them with Dell support representatives, a team known as Dell Customer Advocates.

From that outreach, it was clear that there were lots of negative comments out there. It was also obvious that these conversations were happening and would happen with or without us. So from the start, we entered conversations because of listening and by visiting and conversing with customers, offering to help.

That outreach became the foundation for Direct2Dell — and it’s where Direct2Dell’s foundation came from. We understood it was “naked” and would include good and bad and that we had to deal with that head on.

BB: What’s next for Direct2Dell?

LM: Several things:

1) Expanding into more languages beyond the current English, Spanish, Mandarin and imminently Norwegian.

2) We are adding resources to the moderation function to post comments sooner and so I can focus on conversing with commenters and new posts, rather than approving comments.

3) Group blogs; The Direct2Dell community has various interests — sometimes competing interests who do not want to hear about things other parts of the community are interested in. What we have done with Linux is a good example. Major initiatives are posted on Direct2Dell but more regular postings about Linux can be found in the Direct2Dell Linux section with its own RSS feeds so the community is getting more regular and in-depth information. Direct2Dell will be a central hub with various communities as a part of the whole.

BB: Will you incorporate more video and audio into the blog?

LM: We’ve done a fair amount with video in the form of vlogs on Direct2Dell and more recently with StudioDell. Direct2Dell vlogs tend to be informal unscripted videos to hopefully give our customers insight into technologies, or products and services. StudioDell videos, by comparison, tend to be educational and topical. We’d like to continue to have customers share more video StudioDell, including ones about great things they are doing with their Dell hardware.

BB: Will Direct2Dell talk more about issues facing the larger industry, or is it going to remain company specific?

LM: The most prominent examples of some industry-focused content has been our posts regarding the environment. Every once in a while, I try to weigh in on a topic that people are discussing in the blogosphere, like I did with the social media press release or Scoble’s view about media coverage for Apple versus Dell.

Much of the content is Dell-centric because many people in the community want to know what Dell is doing on certain fronts. They sometimes relate to larger industry issues, but from a Dell perspective. It really depends how the community and conversations evolve.

BB: How about Michael Dell? He is referred to a lot, but will we see his voice more frequently?

LM: In the past, we’ve posted videos of Michael at speaking engagements or vlogs (things like OracleWorld, CES 2007, Austin Game Conference, Google Zeitgeist and more). We’ll continue to do more of this in the future.

BB: What’s Dell’s approach to creating a community through other social networks?

LM: This will continue to be a key area of focus in the future. Today, we offer customers multiple ways to have conversations with us.

We currently are interacting and building communities, or being in touch with communities, through the Dell Community Forums, IdeaStorm, Direct2Dell, StudioDell, Second Life, as well as the conversations Dell bloggers are having across he blogosphere. I think our focus right now is to strengthen/broaden our current initiatives and integrate across these communities, while recognizing that our customers are members of numerous communities and that we should “fit in” and be in touch wherever it makes sense.

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Lionel Menchaca is a 14-year Dell veteran and chief blogger at Direct2Dell. He also helps to coordinate other Dell digital media properties — like the Dell Community Forum, IdeaStorm and StudioDell — across the company. These initiatives have one thing in common: to provide Dell’s customers new and innovative ways to interact with the company. Lionel also serves as a technologist to help Dell define new software to monitor and engage in conversations in the blogosphere.

An avid fan of all things electronic a die-hard Dallas Cowboys fan, his early career included a stint at quality assurance and tech support for game developer Origin Systems and hardware/advanced operating systems support at Dell.

Lionel earned a degree in archaeological studies from University of Texas. He lives in Round Rock, Texas, with his wife, Aileen, and two children, Louis and Mia.

Technorati Tags: Direct2Dell, StudioDell, IdeaStorm, Michael Dell, Lionel Menchaca, Dell, Naked Conversation