Good morning Sig, with all this technology you would think a computer company like Dell could help their customers more with tech support <ggg>. The latest survey in PCWORLD pretty much confirms my 'service adventures with Dell' this year. The company continues on it's downward service slope with some 'fair' grades this year. It does look like IBM is doing better though. It's a long article with a bunch of charts, so I'll simply post an excerpt from the beginning of it, of course they start right off with Dell <ggg>. Text can be found at pcworld.com.
Best regards,
John
You Call This Service?
30,000 readers speak out: PC support remains shaky, and reliability is slipping. And the best-backed computer may not be a PC.
Brad Grimes
From the December 2002 issue of PC World magazine
Posted Thursday, October 31, 2002
Tom Chimner is an engineer at Eaton Corporation in Southfield, Michigan. He uses Dell PCs at work and at home, but admits he's had problems getting good service. "When my home PC's CD/DVD-ROM drive stopped working," Chimner explains, "I called tech support and waited on hold for 30 minutes." A technician read Dell's knowledge base and suggested installing an antivirus program (which his PC already had) and cleaning the drive's optical reader. Chimner followed the tech's suggestions, but the drive still failed to work. "At one point the rep told me to reformat my hard drive, which I didn't want to do," recalls Chimner.
After weeks of back and forth, Dell finally sent a tech to his house to install a new drive--that fixed the problem. "Getting a replacement may not have happened if I hadn't been persistent," he says.
Chimner is not the only customer at odds with a PC maker. Our most recent survey of 29,593 subscribers reveals growing frustration with computer service. Last year, PC World readers told us they were unhappy with technical support. This year's survey shows little--if any--improvement. Dell, for example, tumbled in service overall--especially in hold times. The other big news: Apple rated higher than any other computer maker.
Overall, just half the people reported hold times of 5 minutes or less; fewer people said their problems were resolved within five days; and in a new measure, only 53 percent said their problem was resolved the first time they called tech support.
Survey respondents also indicated that PC reliability may be slipping, which could prompt more calls to tech support. Customers of several companies, including Dell, Gateway, MicronPC, and the now-merged Hewlett-Packard/Compaq, gave their vendors lower reliability marks than in last year's results. The most notable worsening is in the percentage of PCs with a problem. For example, in our last survey, Dell received a Good overall score in the notebook category; this year it dropped to Fair. Meanwhile, 43 percent of MicronPC desktop users reported a problem in the past; this time it was 56 percent. Last year 40 percent of IBM notebook users reported a problem; this year 47 percent did.
What's going on? To find out, we visited call centers and interviewed support technicians from various companies. The quality of these centers affects customer satisfaction, but some factors are out of technicians' hands. Cutthroat competition and a sluggish economy have forced companies to watch what they spend. Though PC makers insist they're investing heavily in service and support, they may not be investing as much as they did in years past. "In a market driven by prices, it's not surprising that companies are getting low marks for service," says Rob Enderle, research fellow at Giga Information Group. "PC makers are under severe cost constraints. They may be spending on service, but they can't overspend."
Nearly every vendor we spoke to has shifted its support emphasis from short hold times to resolving problems on the first call. Companies have discovered that it costs more to field follow-up calls from customers than it does to take the time to solve their problems on the first try. Technicians like the change because they are not under as much pressure to push people off the phone. Getting problems solved on the first call also means fewer hassles for PC users. But callers may wait on hold a few more minutes before they get through.
Dell's Fall From Grace
In years past, Dell consistently led the pack in reliability and service ratings. But this time around, Dell users didn't give the company top marks. Most notably, owners of Dell desktops and notebooks are likely to wait on hold longer than they used to. Just 42 percent of Dell desktop PC owners report a hold time of 5 minutes or less--one of the worst scores earned by any PC vendor.
Arthur Corbin, a salesman in San Rafael, California, has used Dell PCs since the days of the Intel 486 processor. In the past, he says, Dell's phone lines were answered by "trained, knowledgeable, techie types who knew PCs." But recently, he says, things have changed. When he had problems with his Dell, "support was about 50 percent helpful," and getting prompt service was difficult.
"One support rep wanted to wipe out my hard disk and reinstall Windows 98," says Corbin. "The tech realized it wasn't the solution, but by then we were halfway through the process, so it was too late to go back. Even though it corrected the problem, wiping out the hard drive was unnecessary."
Dell doesn't dispute the criticism. The company recognizes that its service has struggled, and says it is fixing the problems. "Our sales grew well beyond our plan," says Rick Chase, Dell's vice president of technical support. "We got caught with inadequate resources, and it affected things like hold times."
Timothy McLendon, a veteran technician at Service Zone, a facility in Lake City, Florida, that handles calls for Dell, says one problem is rapid turnover of staff: The average tenure there is three months. Many reps are males between 18 and 25 who view this as their first job on the way to some other technical career, says McLendon. In the first two months, he says, many reps raise their hands, on average, once every three calls to ask for help.
"On a scale of one to ten, the technical skills here are about a five," says McLendon. "In many cases they're lower than that. Reps get two weeks of training, but there's no way they can learn everything about all of Dell's systems in that time. Adequate training may require two months."
John Bray, executive vice president of administration at Service Zone, would not comment on McLendon's statement or confirm whether the company supplies support for Dell, owing to confidentiality clauses in Service Zone's contracts.
In April 2001, Dell opened a call center in Bangalore, India, to field the volume of calls. Depending on the number of calls coming in and the availability of technicians, calls may be routed from North America to one of several distant facilities, including the Bangalore center. Though some survey respondents complained about difficulty comprehending technicians with strong accents, Dell says the level of technical expertise is outstanding.
Giga Information Group's Enderle understands the move. "You can probably find better English speakers in India who are more competent with computers," he says. "If Dell makes a move like this, other companies will consider doing it." |
