ALL: Dell Challenges IBM as Top Notebook Vendor in First Quarter 1998 Corporate Customer Satisfaction Ratings
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Compaq Notebook Quality and Service Drops Dramatically While Toshiba Shows Marginal Improvement
HAMPTON, NH - (May 1, 1998) Satisfaction among corporate notebook end users has declined over previous quarters in the areas of long-term reliability, technical support response, global services and support, and repair time. This is among the findings of Technology Business Research's fifth consecutive quarterly Corporate IT Buying Behavior and Customer Satisfaction Study. While two of the top tier vendors excel in these areas relative to the competition, these continue to be challenges that will shape the future of the notebook PC competitive landscape.
While IBM (NYSE: IBM) continues to excel in notebook customer satisfaction and loyalty, the gap is beginning to narrow as Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) edges up. IBM's customers in the sample scored their vendor significantly higher than the competition in virtually every attribute area, with the exception of total cost of ownership, volume discounts, and delivery time which were scored on an equivalent plane. There were no weaknesses. In contrast to the previous quarter, IBM gained customer satisfaction points for price/performance, yet lost points for long-term reliability/durability.
The most improved vendor in the top tier for notebooks is Dell, whose customer satisfaction scores increased significantly over the previous quarter in long-term reliability/durability, total cost of ownership and delivery. There were no areas of decline. Dell's major strengths against the competition include availability, long-term reliability/durability, technical support response, repair time, overall hardware quality, price/performance, and total cost of ownership. Dell ranks right up there alongside IBM for customer loyalty, 8% higher than Compaq's loyalty rating and 11% higher than that for Toshiba. There is increasing evidence that Dell is making inroads into the corporate environment with its notebooks: among the 15% of companies who recently switched notebook vendors, one-third of them added Dell as their vendor.
Customer satisfaction scores for Compaq (NYSE: CPQ) declined substantially over the previous quarter, particularly in the services areas (technical support response, global service/support, and repair time). Compaq's major weaknesses against the competition are for product design, technical support response, global services/support, repair time, overall hardware quality, and price/performance. Among the 15% of respondent companies who have switched from one major notebook vendor to another in the past 12 months, 44% of them replaced Compaq as their vendor, due primarily to poor service, poor reliability, and price issues.
While Toshiba continues to suffer from lower than average customer satisfaction scores for technical support response, global service/support, repair time, and total cost of ownership, the vendor did manage to show some improvement. Toshiba gained points among its customers in the sample over the previous quarter for on-time reliable delivery, availability, and price/performance. While price/performance represents an improvement, it still ranks among Toshiba's weaknesses against the competition.
The first quarter 1998 study was performed with the cooperation of 200 respondents with buying authority at the corporate or divisional level for large U.S. corporations. These respondents, primarily MIS Directors, are responsible for the purchase or lease of 500 systems or more annually. The sample represents an installed base of nearly two million desktops, Intel Servers and notebook PCs.
TBR specializes in the competitive analysis of the major players in the global computing market and is well known in the industry for its Computer Business Quarterly (CBQ), which provides insights into vendors' quarterly financial performance, implementation of business/market/product strategies and corporate dynamics.
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