Well, real in that it actually addresses one of the biggest concerns people have about Dell, and have had about Dell for at least the past 6 years. Granted it’s loaded with corporate apologism and condescension toward complaining customers, nonetheless it’s a start since it’s one of the first posts that seems to admit that not all is rosy in Round Rock.
The good news is that we know what we need to do. You’ve been telling us. Our number one priority is to get better at problem resolution. I can almost hear the collective “duh” out there as I write this. But this problem is complex, from finding the right products on the web, tracking orders before delivery and getting something corrected if it shows up wrong to getting the latest drivers and bios and replacing parts. We also spend a lot of time helping connect your PCs to other electronic devices you may own, keeping your computers virus-free or even helping you load new software. Many times we’re helping customers with stuff they didn’t even buy from Dell. And you want the dell dude (or dudette) that you talk/chat with to be friendly, patient, empathetic and, above all else, knowledgeable about you and your problem. Oh… and did I mention that you want it to be fast and easy?
Right. We got it. If we could wave our magic wand, it would already be done. But much too all our chagrin, it takes time. We are working on exactly these problems… and many more.
Right about now you’re thinking: “So, if you understand the problem so well… why do you even have it?” We ended up here because during the days of our rapid growth, each business segment (this is our Dell term to refer to the teams selling to corporations, small businesses, state and local government, etc.) listened to customers independently and tailored policies and services around its customers needs. For a while, it worked exceedingly well.
Now… To the uninitiated, this looks just like corporate-speak. Tip toe around the actual problem, then make an excuse for it. Later on in this post, we get the third phase, which is apologizing. I want to stay on this part of the post, though, because I think it’s critical to understanding how out of touch people up on the heirarchy at Dell are to what the real problem with their customer service department actually is.
The bolded line really aggravates me. It creates the impression that the problems Dell has with helping out its customers is the fault of its customers. See, Dell was so busy taking suggestions on how to act from its customers that it lost touch of what was good for the company, and each group developed differently. That’s at the core of it.
Does anyone actually believe that?
Let me be more specific. Does anyone believe that all the customer service problems at Dell happened because they were so busy implementing customer suggestions in different segments that they lost sight of their purpose, and became disjointed. I just want to know which segment requested the call centers be moved to India and Central America? I think if we want to figure out the problems Dell has had and the reputation it has lost, we need to start there.
The number one complaint anyone I know has about Dell is that, after waiting the equivalent of a dog’s age, you finally get a rep on the phone who not only doesn’t speak English natively, but they don’t understand it well and are so riveted to the script they read from, they’re utterly unable to help you. When they do speak, you as a customer cannot understand a word of it, and they get annoyed when you ask them to repeat themselves. What’s that you say? I’m racist / hateful? Screw you. Every single experience I’ve had with Dell as a customer has been exactly like that, except for the one time I called to cancel an order and got someone who sounded like she came from my neighborhood.
On the enterprise side, we used to have similar problems. Reps were from various countries around the world, call queues were huge because of their inability to handle them, and if you got them off their script, they barely knew enough english to muddle through the call before getting frustrated, hanging up on you, and pretending the call got disconnected. This was how it worked for a long time, but something changed.
The share price went down because the huge corporate clients started moving on to other manufacturers. Dell’s utterly inept policies made them reconsider keeping support in a country other than the US and it began its process of moving enterprise support back into the US and Canada to appease its enterprise clients. The difference was night and day, immediately noticeable, and reassuring.
My point is that the problem wasn’t started with customer requests, it was ended with them. Dell cut corners it shouldn’t have and got blitzed for it. The bad publicity cost share prices, and ultimately business. That’s how they learned. Dell isn’t where it is today because it listened to customer suggestions amongst its different segments and each grew independently. Dell is where it is today because it really has very little regard for the customer and a hell of a lot more regard for the bottom line. Business-wise, that helps profits. PR-wise, though, it creates a perception that customers are nothing more than an expense and are utterly unimportant.
It isn’t all bad news for Dell, though. Fixing the problem isn’t going to be free, and it isn’t going to involve customers. It’s going to involve understanding that people want to speak to someone who speaks English (or Spanish, or French; whatever their native language is), isn’t tied to a script, and actually gives solutions that are useable instead of “restore your computer to factory spec.” Formatting a hard drive is not technical support, no matter how often it’s used as a catch-all solution.
The problems at Dell run pretty deep, and if the most people like Laura Bosworth can do is deflect the problem and promise a better effort in the future, Dell is doomed.
[tags]dell, customer service[/tags]