I visited Dell headquarters a few months ago for the Dell Customer Advisory Panel (Dell CAP Days), where a group of us were able to provide candid feedback on Dell products, as well as the brand and customer experience.
Artist Sunni Brown was on hand to create a graphic summary of the discussions that day.
I was excited to see that the Dell team is addressing the issues brought up back then. They just shared a progress report, based on feedback in the areas of support, brand & corporate responsibility, and Dell.com.
Support
We heard: Offended by up sell while trying to get support.
Dell: We’re increasing audits of support agents and call monitoring to ensure agents are following guidelines for initiative.We heard: I would consider paying a premium for better built in support.
Dell: Your Tech Team (YTT) is a support option available. YTT plans increased marketing to make support option advantages more widely known to customers.We heard: Language and cultural barriers are difficult, agents do not show empathy.
Dell: Developing voice lab for agent communications skills. Existing people/culture programs to focus on language and rapport building.We heard: Support agents rely too much on scripts, stay on script.
Dell: Increased training will be included in the support culture training indicated above.We heard: Too many dropped calls and unnecessary transfers.
Dell: Continued merge of service and support queue, reducing the amount of inner queue transfers.We heard: Foreign support should use birth name not alias.
Dell: Foreign support agents currently using real names on calls and within social media outreach.We heard: Dell should have a better relationship with Microsoft for dealing with support issues.
Dell: Dell has dedicated product group resources who work directly with Microsoft, sharing top call driver in order to provide better solutions.Brand / Corporate Responsibility
We heard: Why didn’t we know that Dell is listening?
Dell: We’ve increased on communications around our listening efforts. You can find a summary of various Dell listening efforts here. Also, our very own CAP Day Two attendee Susan Beebe now serves as one of Dell’s CLO’s (Chief Listening Officer) on the Social Media Ground Control team.We heard: Why don’t we hear more about the good work Dell is doing around the world?
Dell: Dell has put a new Communications team together whose sole focus is to tell you about our Goodwill Reconnect and Bamboo Packaging programs that help our planet and communities around the world.We heard: Stop selling and start educating.
Dell: Soon we will be implementing new functionality on dell.com that will allow you to learn about products and services from people just like you. That’s all we can say right now. More to come on this as well.Dell.com
We heard: Make it easier to find the system or accessories that will meet a specific set of needs.
Dell: The new Tag Team application on Facebook allows you to browse reviews and products by usage scenario in a tag cloud.We heard: Excessive proactive chat pop-ups and technical issues.
Dell: These are now streamlined for each web session. Also, we uncovered technical issues in our online chat service when many customers reported they were not able to chat with us on Dell.com. Based on this feedback, Dell IT and our chat platform vendor were able to deploy a patch to fix this, and reports of customers unable to chat have virtually disappeared.We heard: Providing website feedback is difficult.
Dell: We have redesigned the online feedback experience to make it more user-friendly for customers. The customer is notified and thanked when any errors are pointed out and fixed. The other actionable customer feedback is routed to the relevant team who acts and responds to the issue. We also archive all non-actionable feedback.
It’s great to see that Dell was listening, and that Dell CAP Days was not just some social media window dressing. Follow the #DellCAP hashtag on Twitter to stay up on future progress from Dell.
Photos: Dell Customer Advisory Panel
{ 4 comments }
Also see the following entry in Dell’s support forum:
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/software-os/f/3524/p/19365733/19825271.aspx#19825271
When I noticed that my XPS laptop was not successfully getting Windows updates (and, in fact, had not done so ever since I purchased it earlier this year), I contacted Dell Support (via phone) for assistance.
After collecting computer and personal information, the rep asked what the problem was. She decided it was a software issue and asked if I wanted her to connect me to software support. I did, and she did. Very quickly, the connection was made and the software support fellow asked if I had received a case number for the call. I had not, so we went through the whole information swap once again. With that out of the way, he asked what the problem was, and I told him. After asking a few more questions, he told me that the problem was a very strange one, and that there were several options that we could take — including the possibility of reinstalling the OS or even purchasing another OS(???). He then stopped and asked if I had been informed that software questions were fee-based. I informed him that my laptop is under warranty until 2012, but he said that since the hardware was apparently working just fine, this was software-related, and that I would have to pay a fee if we went any further. I then told him that I had no intention whatsoever to pay a fee to correct a problem that came with the computer when I purchased it. Our conversation ended abruptly thereafter.
Finding no assistance through Dell, I was suddenly on my own, but after doing some Google searches I finally rooted out what the cause of the problem actually was… Apparently there is a bug in Dell’s image for my laptop setup (and quite a few others, as well) which sets a system policy that points to a specific IP address (172.23.49.241) for Windows Updates. Deletion of the policy’s key in the registry resolved the problem in a hurry. (See the following link for more details: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_update/0x80072ee2-error-code-when-attempting-to-use-wu/61cb6c1d-e57e-4e5d-a6d1-ce1a193406c9 )
Sad that Dell themselves weren’t more willing to resolve their own screw-up, isn’t it? Thank goodness for Google search, though!
Still not listening well enough. 6/29/2011
Purchased a Dell XPS 17 icore 7 (top line of consumer products at the time) in March. Hard drive crashed (disk read error, pres crtl+alt+del to rerecovery) in June. They shipped and installed via a tech a new hard drive and system (a/k/a mother) board. No software was on the “new” hard drive. After much frustration and hours on phone, new hard drive was shipped. It was also not loaded despite various assurances that it would be. Tech support, hardware spport, employee purchase plan support, no help! Hard to understand and trying to be friendly but no resolution. After 15+ years as a Dell customer and encouraging my non-tech savy parents to buy as well, I will not be purchasing aain. No one cared (or maybe they just have no power to do anything) about making it right for me as their customer. VERY disappointed.
I lived in Austin, Texas. Thanks for the tough questions on customer service and how Dell can better utilized their agents to better service their clients. Sounds like basic marketing and caring about the customers needs. I think your blog is very informative.
Comments on this entry are closed.
{ 9 trackbacks }