CHAPTER 7How Dell Learned to SMaC-U into Social Success

The employees of Dell, Inc. have a long history of using the web as a strategic business tool. The brand was an early pioneer in e-commerce, first opening its doors to cyberspace in 1996. Even early on, the customer experience was central to the brand’s philosophy, as evidenced by the first-of-its-kind program to allow customers to custom configure their own PCs online. Adopting the social web as a tool for doing better business has always been a natural fit for the brand, whether for assisting customers or for managing the company’s supply chain and inventory.

To the employees at Dell, a social brand maintains social media as a core competency across the business and engages its customers ...

Get The Social Employee: How Great Companies Make Social Media Work now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.