Michael Dell wants to be your friend
- Published September 12, 2008
- Technology
- 2 Comments
Michael Dell cares about you. OK, maybe not. But he does care about his company’s online reputation, so much so that he’s going all “Web 2.0″ to try and fix it.
The company has been logging on, reaching out to potential customers, and trying – sometimes awkwardly – to listen to them. And it’s using social media to do so. That’s right, Web 2.0 isn’t just for college sophomores anymore. Apparently you can use it to patch up a $37 billion PC business too. …
It has a squad of 42 employees who spend their workdays engaging with the communities on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. What is this Team Web 2.0 learning? One important nugget: that potential customers spend 99% of their time on the web doing research and just 1% actually buying. So the company has tried to dial down the hard sell and become – or at least appear to become – more helpful.
OK, Mike. You wanna be my friend? You want to “at least appear” to be more helpful? Then here’s a suggestion: hire qualified tech support staff at the Enterprise level. When I, as a network admin, call in to get a replacement part for a dead Latitude that’s still under warranty, just send me the part–the right part, please–without treating me like a 5-year-old. And don’t route my call to four different queues, all of which end up in Bangalore.
Is that too much to ask?
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate Dell (the company or the products–or the man for that matter), but I’ve seen the quality of their support decline rapidly over the last several years. When I worked at Microsoft, we dealt with Enterprise-level support engineers at Dell all the time, and they could always be counted on to deliver top-notch service. Nowadays, though, it’s sometimes painful calling in for support. Even after I’ve done the requisite troubleshooting on my end, they still sometimes refuse to admit that their hardware could be faulty.
And it’s not just me. The Unisys techs I talk to–the ones that Dell sends out to perform on-site service–admit they’re just as frustrated.
Write something about Dell online, and chances are the company will know about it in an hour or so. Dis the company in a blog or a Facebook group, and someone from a crack response team may even chime in, if only to let everyone know that Dell cares.
Really? OK, I look forward to it.
September 12, 2008, 8:51 am
I know how you feel, not only with tech support, but with any sort of call center. I’ve had jobs requiring periodic calls to “support” in India. It was just as frustrating from the employee side as it is as a consumer! It only around 2-3% of the time that they were actually helpful. Mostly they would tell me what I couldn’t do.
I’ve gotten to the point that I don’t even use tech support or customer services unless absolutely necessary. I’m self-taught in hardware replacement, etc., and when I don’t know how to fix a problem I research it online. Chances are somebody has had the exact same experience.
With replacing a laptop though… yeah, there’s no way around that.
My freshman year of college, I ordered a Dell XPS 400. I had it all of four months before the motherboard failed. It was two days before my finals started. The best Dell would do for me was to show up right before I left for the semester. I couldn’t even pay extra to get someone out sooner. That’s lousy customer service…
September 15, 2008, 8:11 am
Thanks for your post and while it took us awhile, we did find your post. I apologize for the poor customer experience issues you’ve experienced. We’re doing all we can to improve but sometimes those changes don’t come as quickly as any of us would like. If you still have issues that need resolution, e-mail me directly at bruce_eric_anderson@dell.com or DM me on Twitter.
Again, apologies for what you’ve gone through.
Bruce Eric Anderson (bruceericatdell on Twitter)