It is often difficult to qualify the value of blogging but here are some quotes from Dell who started to engage with boggers after it suffered terrible negative publicity over poor customer service. It was accused of ignoring peoples issues, being difficult to talk to and evasive in giving direct and honest answers. Frustrated customers started blogging about their unhappiness and some posted videos of batteries overheating and catching fire. Something Dell’s customer support teams did not respond to over the phone, e-mail or letter.

Here are some quotes from Dell2Dell, their company blog started in mid 2006 and how they see the situation

I can't speak for Apple, but I can give you Dell’s perspective. Media coverage isn’t the real issue—it’s really about our customers’ experience when they deal with Dell. No question that incidents of poor customer service resulted in bad PR for us. And it wasn't just Jeff Jarvis. Could we have handled that situation better than we did? You bet. For us, there wasn't an arbitrary tipping point—things were bad so we've tried to fix them and will continue to do so. In several of her posts, Laura has outlined Dell's ongoing efforts and investments to improve our customers’ experience when they need to contact us.

Beyond that, we've created a team to find customers needing assistance in the blogosphere, entered Second Life, recently re-vamped the Dell Community Forum and have plans to offer more options for customers to provide feedback at CES and beyond. 

This is the issue Dell was (is) facing. Look at what a customer blogger said they see as the potential negative impact if Dell did not listen. See how they have articulated the challenges companies face with social media and small interconnect worlds.

Me? If I am unhappy with dell and shop elsewhere, Dell will miss selling me probably 5 more computers in my lifetime, add in 5 for my wife too... (we won't calculate friends who learn of our nightmares and also choose not to shop Dell, the figures are too hard to quantify here), so no big deal in the grand scheme of things, BUT if they also lose (for example) my daughter, her friends, their friends, etc. they stand to lose a further 12 sales (for each person based on a purchase of one computer every 5 years) in their lifetime! On Facebook alone she has 162 friends! This should be setting off alarm bells across the board.

A popular video on youtube at the moment which is a parody of a well known pop song and is aimed at Dell has attracted 225,000 viewers. The video is also available at a number of other sites for which I don't have figures but it is easy to see the damage being done to Dell's reputation just from this one. Ouch.

So what does Dell think has been the value of them blogging and starting to use the blogosphere as a natural extension of customer service?

“…I can share with you that since we began entering conversations last August, the negative tonality of blog commentary on Dell has been reduced by slightly more than 50 percent. Is this improvement attributable entirely to our proactive blog outreach? Of course not. But we know it’s the right thing to do and that it’s making a difference.”

Disclosure: I have bought PC’s and desktops from a number of vendors over the years including Dell and Apple. I currently use a Dell laptop.