Call Centers – Dell Case Study

Call centers. Everyone hates dealing with call centers right?

I have personally visited few big call centers myself such as, IBM, HP, Dell and few other smaller ones and today i would like to share my personal experience with the call centers in Dell (Penang) specifically. Dell Penang call center handles MY,SG, AN & NZ tech support and its a pretty big tean

The article below is taken from WIRED magazine ( sorry, i dont have a scanner) and its somewhat true to the extent for larger call centers with toll free numbers. My personal experience in Dell was that the while the company wanted to provide an avenue for customers to fix their problem, they also wanted to reduce the number of people managing the calls and also the numbers of calls coming in. So guess what they did?

1) They actually REMOVED the toll free line number from the invoices that went out with the pc/notebooks that you buy. Now isnt that SLY ? While i was still with Dell, i had to go through multiple directors/managers and also tons of heated arguements to get this damn thing fixed. In the end, i lost the battle and all the directors agreed that they dont want to bear the extra cost or inbound calls when the tech support toll free number is reinserted back into the invoice. (Dont believe me? go and see your invoice. is that toll free number tech support or just a normal toll free number?)

2) The toll free number is located deep inside Dell’s services page. Even when DO find it, the numbers are not updated or wrong.  Yep, this one also took me weeks to fix a simple problem. The call centers managers were reluctant for us to put up the number where people can see them and also in updating the damn numbers. (Dont believe me? Go to dell website now and TRY to locate the numbers)

2) Everyone handles multiple calls at a time. (read article below)

So you must be thinking, WHY THE HELL would they do that?  Well, Dell actually measures customer satisfaction levels( CSAT for short) from the call centers too, so with fewer calls, they get better scores. The managers can also report themselves as better managers as they dont have so many inbound calls or the need to hire more headcount. Pretty good isn’t it?

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In fairness, Dell have a very good no nonsense replacement/returns policies and also in honoring price mistakes. Since Dell started to measure the customer satisfaction levels among all frontline depts, i believe they work harder in pleasing customers and up to some point, i believe customers took advantage of Dell. I know for a fact a lot of customer would purchase a Dell product and only to find it to perform below expectations and Dell would,in most cases accept the product to be returned in exchange for a refund or upgrade to a better product. I dare say DELL have the best return/exchange policy compared to HP,Acer,etc..etc….  Dont believe me? Try returning YOUR ACER laptop and let me know what happens!

Price errors also happens a lot in Dell, mostly due to “clerical” mistakes. Just google dell price error and you can see a long list of stories around the world and Dell, for the most part will honor it, especially when the orders are already placed and the media caught whiff of the story.

So, sorry to divert but there you have it. The next time you call Dell tech support, you should know what to expect and do read my previous post on trouble with customer with service agents and how to get service reps to help you . Im very sure they will help cos after all, those guys who work in call centers dont always get happy calls everyday…..

Anyone of you who have a story on dell customer service support feel free to comment on this post! TQ!

“Perfect” hifi = the finale

Well guys, i havent got any replies from perfect hifi and i think that pretty much says about their level of responsiveness and being upfront.I guess in a scenario where your customers are calling you and the public are demanding an answer, is one of the worst PR nightmare.HOWEVER! with every PR nightmare there is always an opportunity to gain the understanding of your customers and the public if you handled it well. let me share two cases