The DOBlog

Category: Business

A top level category for posts on business issues such as Web2.0 tools and trends, customer service issues etc.

  • What the Dell… an actual response… from a human!!

    What are the odds?

    In the week that scientists tell us they have discovered a planet that might support alien life, I got a response from a live person in Dell. And not in their off-shored outsourced Call Centre neither… this one was from ‘Dell Central’. Rick (for that is his name) reached out to me from Round Rock Texas as that is his job – he is part of an Internet Outreach team. I’m impressed – it took 3 days for Rick to respond to me but I’m still waiting for Samuel (the phone support supervisor I eventually got to speak to last week) to get back to me after a week.

    They never write, they never call… don’t they love me anymore? 🙁

    Also, there is the small matter that Dell have not responded to my “Unresolved Issue” report (via Dell Support on-line) which was raised on the 13th of April – that’s 13 elapsed days… If I hadn’t heard from Rick I’d have started to think they just didn’t care, that they had my money and that was all that mattered. But Rick has, thus far, restored my faith somewhat. At least he was proactive in reaching out to me.

    Dell Wars Part IV – A New Hope (?)

    I’ve taken Rick up on his invitation to contact him about my issues. Hopefully he’ll have read the various blog posts here under Dell Hell and will be up to speed on the issues I’m having. I’ll keep my readers posted on how this Soap Opera plays out… of course, a soap opera is usually a work of fiction – this is a painful case of fact.

  • Another example of Dell not connecting the dots

    The Register has this story about a fault in Dell Laptops.

    What is interesting about the problem is that it seems to expose some ‘failures’ in the passing of information internally within Dell, not least about their Direct2Dell website.

    Some interesting comments are made about UK trading standards. I’m hoping to have a post up soon analysing the legal aspects of my (on-going and still unresolved) issues with Dell.

  • Ding Dong Dell

    Deary me. Life with Dell just gets better and better. Not 2 hours after I finish writing up my experiences for the IAIDQ Q2 Newsletter then I find myself on the phone to a nice guy from Dell who is asking me about my DVD drive issues (phone call at 15:25 today approx).

    I had a feeling of dé ja vú, partly because I spoke to the same guy (or a sound-alike colleague) last Tuesday about that issue and agreed that it was resolved to my satisfaction. On Tuesday I tried to get a word in about my ongoing graphics card issue but was politely told to ‘send a email’.

    Today however I was transferred to the supervisor, whose name I took to be Samuel. Nice guy. very focussed on finding out my issues. He went into some detail explaining how ATI graphics cards take additional memory from the main system RAM as required so while it might be 128MB it can take extra from the system… then he realised I’d ordered 256MB dedicated video RAM and he became even more helpful and looked into it further.

    45 seconds later he came back to me to confirm that Customer Service had sent me a 128MB graphics card in error and that he would follow up and take care of it and would call me back on Monday.

    Now… what could be the root cause for someone in a call centre selecting the wrong thing from a list? Could it be that the systems and processes that exist for Dell service are not supportive of the staff’s best efforts to do their job right? If the system relies on a pick list or an alphabetic search then it is possible that this is a source of error in the process.

    All I know is that I have yet to talk to a Customer Service rep in Dell who sounds like they have a lot of pride in their work anymore. Samuel was the exception in recent times. Lucy (the tech support person I dealt with on day 1 about my DVD issues) was bright and perky but as a former call centre jockey myself I could sense an underlying tone of “we’ve been dropped in it again, why do I bother”.

    My experience is that Dell Customer service staff are all nice people who are trying to do the best job they can under pressure. I’ve been there myself as a call centre agent and supervisor – I know how it feels when the sytems don’t work, the data is wrong and the customer is furious at you – the representative of the behemoth. It is not a nice place to be in and it makes it hard to take pride in your work and be proud of who you work for. As a result, when you do spot the easy idea to help make things better you think “why should I bother? management don’t”

    My experience of errors and cockups from Dell suggests that the systems and processes that these people have to support them are letting them down. Poor quality processes, poor quality information and an increasing worry about the bottom line and profitability all weighs heavily on morale and pride. More importantly it drains money out of the organisation.

    I look forward to Monday. I may be naive but I am putting my trust in Samuel to follow through on his promise to sort this problem out. He sounded a bit shocked when he came back after looking at my customer service history. If they get it right this time then I might refrain from putting all of this into a conference presentation on the costs and impacts of poor Information Quality.

    Then again, maybe not. I could fill 3 hours at this stage.

    Current estimated cost of rework to deliver the laptop I ordered (ignoring warranty replacement of a defective dvd drive) is approx 44% of the purchase price of the laptop. No wonder margins are slipping in Dell.

  • Dell Hell

    Right… just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water….

    Regular readers of the DoBlog will know that I recently bought a world of pain and torment a laptop from Dell.

    The very first problem I had was with the graphics card – it was not what I had ordered. After a litany of screw-ups Dell eventually got me, a technician and a replacement graphics card in the same point in space.

    I thought that battle was over.

    Stone me but I was wrong. While doing some diagnostics this morning after replacing the defective DVD Drive I noticed that the base score in Windows Vista hadn’t changed since the new graphics card was installed. So I took a look at the bios and saw that the ‘new’ graphics card was a 128MB model x1400 ATI Radeon Mobility… exactly what the technician took away with him when he replaced the original erroneous part. I was… I’d like to say shocked but the feeling was more like the dismay a parent feels when their child brings home an F in fingerpainting.

    I have discussed the issue with my Samoan Attorney and he advises me that

    1. I should have listened to him and bought a Mac. (But he’s a lawyer so not to be trusted) 😉
    2. I should gather my emails, my original order specification and all my blog posts and put them in a registered letter to the head of Dell in Ireland. (there goes my weekend)
    3. I should tag all of my posts here with “Dell Hell” as there are pixie minions in Dell watching for these things and ready to leap in to action to put things right

    That’s a bit like shutting the door when the horse has bolted (hang on, where have I used that phrase recently?)

    Surely the appropriate response is not to firefight (which is what this team appear to be about) but to prevent the occurence of the problems in the first place? At this point, any profit margin Dell had (including the cost of the finance package I used to fund the purchase of a laptop of a given specification) has evaporated. Putting additional cost into the supply chain by employing people to inspect the defects out does not make sustainable sense.

    My recommendations for Dell, based on my experience:

    1. Imrpove your processes. They are deficient. If a product can ship that does not meet the ordered specficiation then there is a weakness in your processes
    2. Break down barriers between areas so that your actual root causes can be addressed
    3. Improve the quality of your information. Everything I have experienced has been due to poor quality information within the supply chain, from the incorrect card being shipped, to a desktop card being shipped to replace that, to the incorrect replacement card being shipped. There were attributes of all of those things (number of MB of RAM, type of card vs type of machine it would go into etc.) that could have prevented me having any problem but at the very least would have triggered a different flow of events and a different outcome for me the customer.
    4. Create a constancy of purpose about improving quality and building quality in from the point of order capture (where the defects might first arise) through to the manufacturing process and onwards to the customer service processes (which can’t seem to operate with the fact that a person may be located at more than one address, particularly if they have a laptop)

    The courier who delivered my replacement DVD drive today told me that he dreads doing deliveries for Dell as there is always a very high chance there will be some information wrong on the delivery notes. For example he had some packages for delivery in a rural part of my area (non-unique addresses) so he required a telephone number. The phone numbers had been mis-transcribed and as a result were not numbers in the area he was delivering to. Some of them were office numbers of the people in question – who had requested delivery to an alternate address.

    For any Dell person who might happen upon this post, here is a link to the rest of my posts on this.

    Another question raises its head now that I have a broken and unusable DVD drive that needs to be disposed of, that of the WEEE regulations. Dell have provided me with no means of returning the faulty component (nor did they do so for the graphics card that was taken out originally). As these components can contain hazardous material they fall under the remit of the WEEE regulations and, according to my Samoan Attorney, Dell should provide me with a means of returning said components to them for disposal (or for reuse in other machines in the case of the non-faulty but just incorrect graphics card).

    Despite repeated requests to Dell support by email no-one has given me any information. Indeed, the email from Dell re: the DVD-Rom specifically told me that “you do not have to return the old drive to Dell”. Sounds like a potential breach of EU law there…

  • Oh Dell (the return)

    The DVD drive on my Dell laptop failed (again) over the weekend so I requested a replacement as per their warranty.

    The technician requested my address and an alternate delivery address and also asked for details of my availablility over the 48hr period from Tuesday.

    I provided my home address (Wexford) and the address of the office building I work in in Dublin. I also SPECIFICALLY stated that I would not be available to accept deliveries at the Wexford address until Friday and that if the drive was being delivered on Thursday it should be delivered to my office.

    Guess where it went to.

    Courier will deliver it again tomorrow (Friday). From my conversation with him on the phone it seems that this is a regular occurence in Dell.

    They had a perfectly sound process to gather information to meet the expectation of their customer. However somewhere along the line they managed to screw it up and ignore important pieces of information.

    Why waste my time asking for an alternate delivery address and details of my availability when they will be ignored?

    Dell…. oh dear.

  • Oh D(H)ell… a slight reprise

    got this email from Dell yesterday

    Dear Valued Customer,

    Thank you for contacting Dell Customer Care on 27/03/2007 with a question or need for Dell. We appreciate the opportunity to assist you and are interested in your feedback concerning our performance.

    Dell has asked TNS Prognostics, a customer satisfaction research company in the IT industry, to help us conduct a survey regarding your experience. To help ensure we are providing expert assistance, please provide your feedback in this brief survey. This survey should take approximately 5 – 7 minutes to complete.

    To complete the survey, please click on the Web address below. If that does not work, copy and paste the entire Web address into the address field of your browser.

    https://dell.prognostics.com/s.asp?ID=F3FA3D808C094F2EB997744E7861C2C5

    If you are an AOL user, please click on the following link:

    {Link to AOL version of survey removed by me}

    NOTE: Some e-mail programs may split the above URL onto two lines. If you are prompted for a PIN, please cut and paste the following into provided space:
    {pin for survey removed by me}

    We look forward to your feedback.

    Yours sincerely,

    Dell Support Team

    All fine and dandy except that I didn’t contact them on the 27th of March. On the 27th of March I had the visit from their techie who installed my graphics card and then getting an update call from tech support about my DVD drive issues (which I’d fixed myself).

    Needless to say I’ll be scoring them quite low on the quality of their products. I pity Lucy (my erstwhile Tech support maven) and her colleagues who seem to be left as much at sixes and sevens as customers.

    All I’ve previously posted still stands. And I will be filling out the survey… oh yes… I will.

  • Some good quality experiences

    I recently bought a case for my PDA from the lovely people at Proporta. Unfortunately, a few days after getting the case the belt clip disintegrated with the hinge part simply snapping off. I was dismayed.

    By co-incidence that day I received an email from one of Proporta’s customer service people following up on my order. I responded to the email and explained the situation. By return of email I was assured that some replacement belt clips were on the way and I am expecting them soon.

    Proporta have asked me if they can quote my feedback to them in their testimonials… and I say definitely they can as their process seems to be very customer focussed with a quick turn around on issues. I can’t help contrasting that with my experiences with Dell.

    The cost to Proporta of replacing the belt-clip is probably a lot less than the likely referrals or follow on sales that they will get as a result of the positive feedback (and link from this blog). I am likely to buy from them again myself.

    Good quality, be it in products or service, promotes growth and profitability. Well done Proporta.

  • Oh D(h)ell… an update

    Dell Technician came to my office today. This was after a techie had called to my home last Thursday. When I was in London presenting at an Information Quality conference (does 2 speaking slots count as a keynote?).

    The fact that I was going to be away had been clearly communicated to Dell’s support people on Tuesday of last week. But a technician called to my (empty) home all the same. Even if my cat had been inclined to let him in (for only the cat was in residence), the laptop was with me because my presentations were on it.

    So a technician called to me today. He rang me and (shock) double checked where he was to go (my home or my office). Luckily I had beene expecting him and had the graphics card with me.

    So at this count, the cost to Dell of finishing (please note FINISHING, not FIXING) my laptop is at least the cost of 2 technician call outs and the cost of a graphics card. I gave Seamus (for that was his name) the 128MB card to take away as in my office, like many others, there is a resident technology guru/’liberator’ who would gladly have taken it home to put in an old machine of his. That has saved Dell a few euros.

    I will be packaging up the Desktop card and posting it to Dell at the weekend – increasing the cost to me of this laptop by the cost of that postage. However it is the honest and ethical thing to do, particularly as they have not given me any indication as to what the process is for returning things they sent me in error.

    What else would I do with a desktop graphics card in a house where my wife and I both have laptops?

    What else indeed?

    And I’ve also sorted out my DVD drive issues (on my own). As I had diagnosed back in the beginning, the culprit was the Roxio driver that Windows Vista was surpressing due to incompatibility. I uninstalled all of Roxio (for now) and everything worked fine again. I found on the Roxio site’s discussion forum that the real culprit is the Roxio “drag to CD” utility.

  • Oh (d)Hell, here we go again…

    So, prompt and efficient, Dell Post-Sales Customer Support shipped me the graphics card for my laptop -the one they should have put in while it was still in the factory. It arrived this morning at 11:00am as promised. It was shipped from their factory in Limerick – a city and County I know well. About 20 minutes before the courier arrived I’d had a call from my support team contact in Dell to set up the technician appointment to come out and finish building my laptop.

    The sun was shining. My dentist hadn’t come over all Marathon Man on me. I am starting a short holiday with my wife… all was well with the world.

    Until I opened the package. To find that it included a graphics card, which I assume is a 256MB card. So far so good…

    … it is a card for a Desktop machine not a laptop. It will not fit the computer I have. It is as useful to me as a chocolate fireguard, an ice teapot or a kosher sausage roll. I expect a technician to call me soon to confirm their appointment. I will only be able to confirm my disappointment.

    So what information might Dell in Limerick have had available to them to ship the correct thing?

    1. They might have had the asset tag of the laptop, from which the model and configuration details could be determined.
    2. They should have had the model of the laptop
    3. Perhaps they had details of the complaint, including the original order number and my customer number

    Any of those items of data would have enabled someone picking the components out of the storage bin to say “We want a graphics card (check) for an Inspiron Laptop (oh… wrong thing)”.

    If that information was not available to the people in Limerick, then it is inevitable that a mix up would happen. In this Information Age almost all processes that we run in business or that we encounter in life require complete, consistent, accurate and timely information to run as we expect. At assembly, there was information available that my laptop should have had 256MB video RAM. The quality failure in that instance was that that information was not referred to to make sure that the real world thing that it described met that expectation.

    Once the support people understood the problem, a graphics card was dispatched to fix the issue. However, due either to unavailable information (did the request to ship the replacement card specify the model of the card and that it was for a laptop?) inaccurate or inconsistent information (does the pick-list master data show that the desktop card I’ve received is the correct card for my laptop?), or inaccurate interpretation of the information, I wound up with the wrong card – a solution to my problem that does not solve the problem.

    This is a significant cost issue for Dell. It has to be. So far, to get my laptop to the specification I actually ordered it, they’ve incurred the cost of an additional graphics card (estimate €100) plus the cost of the courier (estimate €30 for overnight delivery) plus the cost of the support call center person (estimate €10 so far) plus the cost of the technician (estimate €120 based on ex-warranty call out charges) and so far it has cost Dell an additional €260 (my estimate) to perpetuate a screw up. If Dell can ship me the correct graphics card before the technician arrives then their cost will only be around €390.

    To put that in perspective… that is 25.2% of the cost of the laptop I purchased so unless Dell are operating at 30% margins on their business (in which case they have some leg room their competitors don’t or their machines are over-priced) they have lost money on my purchase. A fortnight in and already I’m a below-zero customer in terms of my lifetime value to Dell (and that’s before you factor in that I might not buy another Dell given the difficulties I’m having).

    Even with the cost of finance over 3 years to me (god bless the never-never finance), Dell are just about breaking even on me as a customer. Based on my estimates of course. And assuming they get it right before the technician arrives to try and fit a square peg (desktop graphics card) in a round hole (laptop). If Dell’s costs for hardware are 50% of retail, they are still looking at around 20% ‘evaporation’ of their margins… that is an unsustainable business overhead that seems to be accepted as the ‘cost of doing business’.

    Assuming Dell shipped 1000 laptops last week and 10% of them were mis-assembled and have had similar issues with replacement components, Dell could be burning 100 X €390 = €39,000 a week in avoidable scrap and rework. That equates, in my industry, to around 40 to 45 full-time-equivalent staff in ‘clerical’ roles. The cost of non-quality is easy to measure. That’s a direct cost to the Business that is avoidable. It’s just harder to measure than headcount and not as easy to cut. You can’t fire your data.

    The root cause of all of this cost is the quality of information and the quality of the culture in which that information is used… if the metric for assembly teams is how fast something is shipped versus how quickly the right thing is shipped then corners will get cut at 16:45 on a Friday to get that product boxed and out to shipping before the shift ends. If the customer complaint follow ups don’t have sufficient information about the product that is being complained about then screw ups are perpetuated.

    Dell are feeling the analysts pinch on the short term numbers (quarter on quarter growth and profits). In my opinion, it is time to bite the bullet and look at the root causes of their information supply chain problems before they cut head count – because who knows what other information ills headcount might be masking. They need to build quality in, both in terms of the product and in terms of their information management. They need to do it now. Cutting headcount will fix the bottom line. For now. Fixing these fundamentals fixes the bottom line for ever – while increasing efficiency and (perhaps) avoiding the need to prune back headcount as aggressively as currently forecast.

    The management approaches needed aren’t rocket science and they aren’t an unproven quantity. Neither is the failure of a business because it costs them their profit margin to inspect defects out of a product after it has shipped. Hopefully some Dell manager will happen across this blog post and might put the simple Excel spreadsheet together that shows the true cost to Dell of non-quality information and poor management of information. Perhaps that might prompt some thinking about how best to meet market analyst expectations in a sustainable way.

    Failing that, Dell will inevitably enter a head-count reduction death-spiral of managing by the easy numbers which is difficult – if not impossible – to pull out of.

  • Dell and their cost base

    Some jitters amongst the Celtic Tiger cubs this week as a number of hi-tech firms trimmed back the tent a little here. In net terms, it is no real issue as there is a skills shortage in the types of job that have been pruned.

    One organisation rumoured to be looking at pruning their Irish operations is Dell. As I type this I’ve been on the phone to Dell (both Tech support and Customer Service) for 90 minutes.

    Dell Tech Support (hi Lucy – if you are reading this) were brilliant. Issue couldn’t be resolved without internet access or a boot CD (neither of which I remembered to pack this morning) but a call back for Wednesday has been arranged. I suspect that this call will happen as promised.

    Dell Customer Service was a different story. Transferred in from Tech support… explained issue (wrong graphics card installed in the laptop) for 10 minutes to be told that I need to contact Tech support. Explained that I had been transferred from there. Was told that I was through to the pre-sales/pre-delivery customer service team and I needed to get on to the post-deliver Customer service team. Nice Indian lady transferred me. Was on hold for 10 minutes. Call eventually answered… by the Indian lady who had originally transferred me. When I gave my customer reference number the call ‘mysteriously’ dropped.

    In fairness, I was phoned back a few minutes later with an apology for dropping the call and was transferred through to the right department – after another 15 minutes on hold. They dealt with my no-brain query very efficiently – new graphics card to be sent out to me, and could I install it myself? Could I b*ggery (despite my experience and qualifications in techie things the lawyer lizard hind brain told me that self-install was the path to invalid warranty). So a technician is being dispatched to install the card. Hopefully the technician will arrive after the card and before I toddle off on a long weekend break with the missus.

    So, here’s a suggestion for Michael Dell and his team to help address their cost issues and resource issues that analysts are pointing to:

    1. Build quality in. Make sure that products shipped match the order. That will reduce the instances of calls into Customer Service/Tech support. Have a QA checker check the order against the manfactured good to make sure that no errors exist. This avoids having the CUSTOMER do it for you when the product arrives and would reduce the number of calls to yoru Customer Support line.
    2. Break down barriers – why the (d)hell do you need two categories of Customer Service team? Wizard based work flow etc. would allow staff to be equally competent across both your presales and post sales Customer Service. This would reduce the numbers of staff you would need as your Call Centre could be truly blended.
    3. Invest in training. CSRs should never have to tell a customer that they “haven’t been trained in that”. Either through on-going training and/or wizard based Knowledge management the CSR should have the skill to address the issue
    4. Address Information qualtiy issues – my Dell order has TWO order numbers. This caused unnecessary confusion with the Customer Support people. It is probably the root cause for the error in the build.
    5. Analyse common causes of tech support or Customer Service calls. The impression I got today was that there are a lot of issues with Roxio Software running on Vista. Perhaps a test of software that will be bundled with laptops is in order so only software that works with the OS is shipped – again reducing likelihood of calls to Customer Support/Tech Support in the first month.

    Toyota is rapidly overtaking General Motors by following these type of quality principles. Far from being a fad, management of quality and management of information quality is just a bloody good way to run your business. While GM are shutting factories, Toyota are opening more.

    Go figure.

    Dell – don’t do the easy number cuts… tackle the real issues of quality.

    ####A slight aside###
    During the course of the call I was asked if I’d like to install the replacement graphics card myself. Here’s an idea for Dell. Sack your assembly people. All of them. Send the customer a box full of components and a nice user friendly assembly guide, like you get with furniture from Argos. That would reduce head-count and would put the onus for quality of assembly on the customer. Of course, it would induce people to go and buy Acer or Apple instead, but them’s the breaks.