Computer manufacturer Dell is to focus on customer satisfaction, which it admitted on Wednesday it “had not done perfectly in the past”. The company is investing USD 150m in customer relationships this year, said chairman Michael Dell in New York on Tuesday. He hopes the business plan, called Dell 2.0, will reverse the flagging fortunes of the biggest computer maker in the world. Recent woes have included a poor quarterly earnings report and exploding laptop batteries.
…can we at least, for the love of God, stop calling *everything* that’s “new”, 2.0? Please? Damn.
Yes, I agree. It was fun when Garbage did it 8 years ago [1], but it got redundant when we started calling the web 2.0 (as if one day the web went through a massive change or more of that nonsense).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_2.0
Yes they are way behind the times. Even if they called it “Dell 2006” it would still smell a bit stale. I’m assuming “Dell Lion” would be dismissed out of hand.
“Dell Landscape” – now THAT’s the ticket.
Yeah, the whole 2.0 thing would be great if it was buried. I think that Garbage 2.0 album being eight years old illustrates that point fairly well. It is even worse than Intel and their use of ‘extreme’ in their proccessor names (e.g. Core 2 Extreme X6800).
In any event, maybe Dell can turn things around.
If DELL wants to focus on customer satisfaction, they can start by returning all the American support rep. jobs they outsourced to India. I’m sorry, but that had to be said.
If DELL wants to focus on customer satisfaction, they can start by returning all the American support rep. jobs they outsourced to India. I’m sorry, but that had to be said.
Exactly. Nothing against our Indian friends, but when I need tech support, I don’t wanna talk to some guy named Habib with a bad English accent.
In regards to the whole 2.0 thing, maybe we should wait for version 2.01, when they work all the bugs out
Habib? Thats arabic, you’re thinking of Ramash Patel
Oh, experienced it really badly, and worse, when they’re told to put on a fake accent to sound ‘local’ – if they *must* outsource, could they please just use their normal accent.
Oh, and here is something funny, call centre companies in India have dropped several American companies because they started demanding even lower costs.
It reminds me of what a Union official said in Australia; stop cost cucting to the point that it destroys peoples lifes; be happy that you make several billion per year, be happy that you’re growing at a modest rate; let your employees be humans rather than robots, and treat them with respect.
Personally, this is not only for Dell, but companies over all; mellow out, allow your employees to actually live like you humans, and you know, if every business treated their employees with respect and dgnity, it’ll come back to them in retaining staff thus lowering their costs, as well as employees who feel more confident in their job, thus pushing up spending on goods and services, which boosts the over all economy.
I manage people, and it sounds corny, but talk to your employee’s, ask how things are, take a genuine interest in how things are, whether they’re got any problems that you might be able to help out with; chat to customers, learn about their needs.
The sad part about this; speakers make MILLIONS off this kind of advice, with companies sending their management staff to learn what I would regard basic human interaction and management skills that any personw should already have.
As for their products; nothing but problems; they cocked up my last computer order with them; my brothers Dell Dimension 8400 has caused him nothing but problems either – with that legacy, I decided to sell up my iMac and upgraded to a very nice and stable Toshiba.
Yes, this Toshiba cost more than a comparable Dell or HP/Compaq, but slightly cheaper than an Apple; I’ve yet to have a single problem with it; the underlying message to Dell is this; there will come a point where all the price cutting in the world won’t make up for a shoddy product; produce a good quality product, at a reasonable price, and people will purchase it – there will always be cheapskates, but for the vast majority, they want value for money in the form of a stable, reliable and dependable machine.
PS: As a side issue, it is probably the best move I’ve made by replacing my desktop with a laptop – and with the growth of the number of laptops shipments, this trend throughout the industry will continue.
Edited 2006-09-14 08:40
Yeah, I’d rather talk to some girl named Racheal with a super thick Southern accent I can barely understand. They just need to move all the call centers to California where they have no accents.
I’d wait until at least a full point release, x.1
If DELL wants to focus on customer satisfaction, they can start by returning all the American support rep. jobs they outsourced to India.
Out of curiosity, when you’re on a tech support call with someone in India, do you tell them, “Forget it. I’m just going to ask random unemployed Americans if they know the answer?” If you’ve ever called a random unemployed American, could they, for instance, walk you through updating PERC firmware?
How much extra are you willing to pay for computer equipment so that Americans can follow call scripts?
And they’re packed in as much as the fire code will allow; it’s not a sexy job. Lamenting the “loss” of menial computer labor is fashionable, but soon you’ll be like those who lament the loss of U.S. shirt factories. Or traveling knife-sharpeners. Or any other outdated jobs. We (in the U.S.) have a steady head start on the rest of the world. We churn lower jobs out so we can focus on more advanced tasks. That’s the way it is.
And why in the hell would anyone talk to any tech support for all but critical server issues (and those go to Texas, which at times has just as much a language barrier)? On the rare times I get shuffled a Dell workstation call, it goes like this (and they’re almost always about bad hard drives): “It’s broken. I can hear the arms scraping. There’s no troubleshooting involved here; I can hear the physical damage. If I wanted to spend all day talking to tech support, I’d have bought an IBM.” And it’s about then that Dell agrees and starts the process to replace the drive. Easy. They’re commodity parts; replace them. I’m not troubleshooting; I have better things to do.
What dell needs to do is stop selling substandard equipment, such as their ever fabulous inspiron 51xx series laptops which will last about a year if your lucky and take extra special care of it.
As for tech support, try upgrading that PERC firmware when you can only understand maybe 3 out of 15 words in a sentence. Your concentrating more on trying to figure out what the hell they are saying than you are the actual problem at hand.
Couldn’t be told better. That is why I do not buy DELL.
future recalls of defective batteries?
is there another recall luming?
its nice to say you are commiting a phantom 150 million, into customer satisfaction, it sure gives them a lot of flexibility into what the money is actually spend, of course most people will forget to check in 6 months where the money actually went.
I only have one dell product (24″ lcd monitor) but when it went faulty after a year my dealings with their indian tech support were great. In about 10minutes I had them sending me a new monitor which I received the next day.
I love my 24″ LCD (1920×1200, it’s like having a big TV on your desk), but I dread anything going wrong with it… several friends of mine have sworn off Dell because of their bad customer service.
That said, the sales folks I’ve talked to have all been great, and the one service call I had (RAM recall on an Inspiron 7000 laptop way back in 2000) was great… they sent a tech to my house to replace the possibly-faulty RAM at no charge.
With any luck, their “new” customer focus will be in place long before I need to call them for anything.
– chrish
I’ve sworn off Dell due to their horrible hardware, but I do dread calling their customer support.
If you want to see poor service: try getting a replacement case. A customer I had wanted her cd-rom fixed and wanted her case replaced because the side was scratched up pretty bad.
I call Dell and tell them I need to buy a new case, because the case I have is very scratched up. They tell me “Sorry, we can’t do that because people could use it to build a counterfit computer and claim it’s a Dell”.
ok
Me: “Well can I send you the original case to prove that we own that computer?”
Dell: “Sorry we can’t do that.”
Me: “Can you just send the case side that needs replacing?”
Dell: “I’m sorry we don’t sell the cases or the case parts, except for the front panel because people can use the cases it to built a counterfit PC.”
Me: “Can I talk to your manager?”
(gets manager)
Me: “I need to either purchase a case side, or an entire case, whichever to you is more convenient. I will send you the original case to prove that we have the computer. I, myself, am doing this as a service to a customer of mine and it is critical I get this case fixed.”
Dell Manager: “I’m sorry sir, our policy’s prohibit sale of the computer cases for reason of potential counterfitting. It’s our policy.”
Me: “So you’re telling me you’re not going to replace this case? Does that sound reasonable to you?”
Dell Manager: “I’m sorry sir. If you need a new case, I would recommend looking for one on Ebay.”
After the call, I did end up buying another case off of ebay for $60, and it had scratches on the side!!!
The experience left a bad taste in my mouth, and I’ve been looking at other computer sales ever since.
Edited 2006-09-14 00:25
I can’t see a fault with Dell’s decision here. It’s a computer, I can understand the cd-rom needing fixing, but a case replacement due to scratches?
#1 – Anybody petty enough to be worried about a computer case being scratched shouldn’t be scratching it in the first place. You’d almost have to TRY to scratch it.
#2 – Why should Dell spend the man-hours to do a special return process verifying you sent them a legit Dell case before shipping out a replacement? That’s a lot of man-hour time wasted for a cheap part. It’s not a normal return for them, you were asking for exceptions to the normal rules, and they denied it. It was actually pretty nice of the guy to suggest eBay, I’m surprised he even did that much.
All in all, it sounds like you got treated quite fairly. I’ve dealt with Dell for clients before, and my conversations were NOWHERE near as productive as yours. Most of mine ended in utter frustration at not being able to understand who I was talking to, or having the tech support guy continually tell me I am wrong about something factual. If you want to complain (and concerning Dell’s support – there is a TON to complain about) – at least complain for a valid reason. Not bending over backwards and replacing your scratched, cheap case isn’t exactly what I’d call bad CS, it’s what I’d call being intelligent.
(in response to ormandj)First of all, the case was damaged being transported via a van(I’m told that it fell over; I myself didn’t witness how the scratches happened). The majority of case damage comes as the result of transportation. Was it an avoidable accident? Sure. That’s not the point.
Dell should be spending the man hours to send me the case because it’s their job to “support the customer”. The client specifically requested that the case be repaired. It’s not costing Dell anything: I offered to pay for the new case!
I disagree with you and think they should have gotten off their rears. In my opinion, they were hiding unreasonably behind a policy to avoid doing the work. How hard can it be to ship a case? You go to the line they’re built take it off the line, package it and send it. It’s no harder than any other replacement part they send(yes, they do send replacement parts, notably for internal parts).
The fact that he mentioned Ebay proved that their policies were totally innefective, in that if someone wanted to make a rip off Dell, they can just make one with parts off Ebay! Not to mention this supports the hypothesis that they were hiding lazily behind a poorly worked out policy. There is no rationale behind their actions other than laziness.
Edited 2006-09-14 03:09
First and the fatal nail in the coffin, outsource the Tech Support to India or some other 3rd world country. Dell brought back support after a disaster of trying this chicanery that FAILED bigtime!
Say you a person who is NOT computer literate has a problem, then they have to deal with a ‘canned solution & language barrier’…. This adds to the frustration and causes low customer morale thus leading to more problems.
Outsourcing/Offshoring is just a way of a Big Corp to get bonuses for the CEO’s nothing more, meanwhile the tax base errodes and people who are EDUCATED with DEGREES are on the street with family’s they can’t feed.
The biggest FARCE of all time, but America is slipping down the notches everyday, pretty soon the debt vs. income will collapse.
Most people are not aware that the Dell Corporation in their quest for efficiency have only one person working in their Little Rock customer service office. This person on the average handles over 71,000 calls per day. Not everyday is a good day for Dick which over time has started to impact customer satisfaction ratings. In all fairness I should clarify that Dick doesn’t actually talk to 71,000 customers a day for 63% of the callers are endlessly routed from phone message machine to the following phone message machine depending on the perceived notion that selecting a certain number will actually produce a desired result. The other 37% as you probably already guessed are on hold, which is a perfectly normal relationship between a corporation and an individual. The 1% of the caller that actually touch Dicks world are treated to Dicks savant ability to speak over 300 different languages. Dick is actually the crowning achievement of Michael Dells corporate tower of Babel.
In closing, the word from John Dvorak of PC magazine is that the $150 million will be spent on an intrusion countermeasure electronics device, better known as ICE, that will listen and record any angry or violent comments directed at the Dell Corporation from any of the callers that have been placed on hold. Singing along with Barry Manilow also counts. This information will then be ferreted to the U.S. investigative bureau of potential terrorist individuals.
Maybe they could stop making proprietary crap and actually build computers that follow industry standards, open on the normal side, could take a standard ATX mainboard and power supply, include all the internal ports you might actually WANT, even on the bargain basement models (like AGP or PCIx16)
Maybe even stop doing the goofy plasticine flip the DRIVES around (oh, that’s a good idea) to open the case manufacturing that makes the old Packard Bells look good? (ooh, cheap shot)…
Easiest way to get better customer satisfaction is to pull out of India and have customer support in the United States.