Dell listens to customers this time (1 Viewer)

[Patrick_S]

I recently heard an interesting trivia question....

What country has the highest NUMBER of English-speaking people.

Answer: India

Actually I'd be willing to wager money that India is not the correct answer.

I have a friend in the state department who studies vital statistics of other countries and last year he used this question at a party and the answer was China.

Of course things could have changed since then but I doubt it.

 

[Danny Tse]

When I was working as a CSR for GTE Wireless' (now Verizon) call center, several customers told me I sounded Dutch....I have never even been to Europe and I am Chinese!!

OTOH, chatting with Barry Bonds on the phone was cool.

 

[Edwin-S]

deleted

 

[Jeff_HR]

I can't say that PAYING thru the nose for the "privilege" of speaking to an English speaking Dell Support person is my idea of "Listening to Their Customers”!! :frowning:

My last two contacts with Dell Support were ABSOLUTE nightmares because of support persons who were not able to speak understandable English or to deviate ONE IOTA from their script. And as a result of Dell’s decision to charge $$$ to let us have "privilege" of speaking to an English speaking Dell Support person, I will NEVER buying another Dell product again!

 

[Francois Caron]

I have such a hatred of call centers, that I now consider all my computer related purchased as "disposable." As soon as it breaks, I throw it out. Even if it's still under warranty, I might still throw it out. I simply can't stand the aggravation of dealing with someone who's in a communications position, but can't communicate!

I've even met one Indian fellow who now lives in the Montreal area, who is thoroughly pissed off that his home country has become a nation of code and support "coolies". India has one of the best and toughest university education systems in the world. But instead of pursuing life changing projects such as an anti-drought infrastructure one individual has designed, these same hyper-brained graduates go off and work for foreign companies, leaving their own country in a pathetic state.

It's extremely frustrating hearing stories like this one. You have one of the youngest democracies in the world simply incapable of improving themselves, its inhabitants more interested in a quick buck than working on a nationwide long term improvement program.

 

[Eric_L]

Hmmm. I can't help buy wonder about all the folks here who complain about offshore service. How many of those same people would be willing to spend 25% more or so for their computers for the benefit of domestic service? If two similar items were side-by-side but one said service was overseas and the other, higher priced by 25%, said it was domestic which would you buy?

I suspect most consumers would make their decisions the same way we blame managers for making theirs - by price alone.

It really is not fair to blame managers for doing exactly what most consumers do. Fact is - labor is cheaper overseas and the vast majority of people - managers or consumers - are motivated solely by price.

It is a sad fact that few people realize the importance of support and service until AFTER they have made their decision to buy (based on price!) Everyone expects Ritz service for Motel6 prices. It is funny to watch them throw tantrums when they don't get it.

The reality is - if you want good service you have to pay for it. If your sole motivation is price you will get exactly what you pay for.

Now - as far as I know there is not a Ritz type manufacturer of computer equipment... Maybe on a local concierge bass there is - but since most people are solely motivated by price-point of their computer purchases I would not expect there to be many successful hi-end pc concierge-type businesses. I wonder if one could be viable?

 

[Carlo_M]

Just a funny aside, I have a friend at work who is Indian, has been in the states for a while but still has a heavy accent.

He and I were getting coffee the other day and talking about computers, when he goes off about an experience he had calling Dell's customer service and says the CSR's Indian accent was so thick, even *he* couldn't understand it!

I just about fell on the floor laughing.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

How many of those same people would be willing to spend 25% more or so for their computers for the benefit of domestic service?

This is a false choice.

Repeated internal studies by the companies themselves and by outside research groups have shown conclusively that the actual savings from moving such jobs overseas are a fraction of what was anticipated, and in some cases there are no savings at all. This is because foreign call center workers are far less productive than their U.S. counterparts, and generate far less revenue from ancillary sales.

You can pay an overseas tech $5 an hour and an American one $20 an hour, but what good does that really do you if the former handles four calls an hour to the latter's fifteen, and costs you sales and customers, to boot? Now add in the fact that the foreign call center worker will generate far more repeat calls for the same issue, because the problem wasn't actually fixed, and the "savings" largely evaporate.

The American contract call-center where I worked stressed "first call fixes". Techs who consistently solved problems with no call-backs for the same issue within 30 days were rewarded, while techs who had calls come back later got to have a chat with their supervisors, sometimes took a pay cut and went back through training gor a week or were ultimately fired. Many off-shore call centers stress call volume (precisely because the langauge issue makes calls take longer) and therefore techs are tempted to rush through calls, rigidly stick to scripts and end each call as quickly as possible. (Having a user reformat his hard drive on the feeblest pretext is one standard ploy, since it gets the caller off the line, occupies him for several hours and will fix most problems - execpt data loss which these techs often fail to warn users against. )

At this point it would probably cost the companies a bit to move their operations back to American soil - although not very much if the continue to outsource rather than run them in-house - but nothing like enough to add 25% or even 5% to the average price of a new PC. (As I noted in an answer I posted to this thread neary six years ago, one American computer manufactuer actually turned a profit by contracting their customer service operation to the outfit I worked for, thanks to upgrades and peripheral sales.)

Regards,

Joe

 

[Jeff_HR]

I don't BUY whole computers from Dell or any other outfit! I buy the parts individually & have my "TRUSTED" local Computer Shop assemble it. (NOT BB or CC) Consequently I have purchased some of those individual parts, in the past, from Dell. NO MORE!!!!!!!Any company that I deal with that decides to follow this model for support will not get any more $$$$ from me!

I'll still attempt to find a "good" price, but not if I'll have to deal with a situation like Dell has instituted.

 

[ThomasC]

This is why I chose Crutchfield when I bought my HDTV and car audio equipment. Yeah, I paid more compared to the competition, but I've called them a few times on separate occasions and never had to wait more than two minutes to speak to a rep with "no accent."

 

[MarkHastings]

If you guys want to blame anyone, stop blaming the computer companies and start blaming the dumbass morons who inundate the tech support centers with stupid questions...enough so that it's ridiculous for comapnies to keep up with the demand and have to try and figure out ways out dealing with it.

I don't know about Joseph's claim that it's more expensive to keep tech support here, but I always agreed with Eric's theory that systems would be more expensive if not for outsourcing. If that wasn't the case, then why are companies outsourcing to India? Are they really that dumb (if it's cheaper to keep it here)??

Joseph, does your theory only hold up when you're talking about a smaller percentage of calls as compared to the onslaught of calls that Dell receives on a daily basis? I would imagine that there's a point where the demand would be increasingly expensive to keep in the US.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

It depends greatly on how you define "English". As a legacy of colonial rule, a hefty percentage of educated Indians are fluent in the Queen's English in addition to Hindi. Once you move east of the South Asian peninsula, however, the English borrows more and more from the regional languages. The official language of East Asian city-state Singapore is English, for example, and government paperwork would be easily comprehended by anybody here. Speak to someone on the street though, and you're more likely to run into Singlish—a creole variant that borrows heavily from the languages of the main ethnic groups in Singapore: Malay, Teochew, Cantonese, Tamil, Bengali and Punjabi among others with American, Australian and Kiwi slang thrown in. The syntax is closer to Cantonese than English. It sprung up as a more universal second language for the various ethnic groups when communicating with locals from other ethnic groups. The multicultural nature of Singapore is increasingly turning out children whose parents are from different ethnic groups and thus speak Singlish as a first language.

Now back to the question of who has the most English speakers: The United States, as the third most populous nation on the earth, has far and away the largest population fluent in English—well over 250 million people. India is a distant second, with roughly 90 million fluent in English. China is way down the list, well below the Philippines, Canada and even Australia.

The rub comes when you expand the field to include English users—those who interface with English as part of the daily lives. Under this classification, the three most populous countries in the world are neck-in-neck. Because such a classification is nebulous at best, the numbers are rough estimates. The United States probably comes in third, somewhere in the vicinity of 305 million users of English. Both India and China have around 350 million users of English, albeit with the number in China growing more rapidly than the number in India. If India doesn't have the highest usage of English in the world, it did until recently. And if it does still have the highest usage of English in the world, it won't for long.

 

[teapot2001]

Several months ago, I had a problem with my laptop's screen. I told the call center person it seemed more like a video card problem than the screen itself. But they insisted on sending a new screen for the tech support guy to install. I used the chat room so had no problem talking to the person.

The tech support guy comes and replaces the screen with the new one, but it still wasn't displaying anything. He calls Dell himself and has to talk to this Indian person, and the tech support guy was frustrated that the Indian person was going through the script. The tech support guy agreed with me that it seemed like a video card issue, and he kept telling the call center person that, but the call center person made him go through all the steps to diagnose the problem. Tech support guy said that usually he can call into Texas with better service, but since it was a Saturday, they were closed in Texas. So finally, call center person agrees to send a video card, plus new memory cards and a new motherboard just in case the video card doesn't work.

A few weeks pass by, because the items were on backorder. I called them to see why they were on backorder and which specific items were, but they couldn't tell me at all. I didn't care about the memory card or motherboard much; I just wanted the video card to be replaced to see if that was the problem. Finally, they ship all the parts and the same tech support guy comes back. He replaces the video card and everything is fine now. Shortly after I go to work, and turn on my laptop. Nothing.

I talk to Dell and they tell me to ship them the laptop. A week or two later, I get it back and it's been working fine ever since. They only changed the video card.

So, it took about a month and a half for them to fix my problem. I think they wasted more money going through all of that just to change the video card.

~T

 

[Jeff_HR]

:frowning:

A great example!

Frankly I'd rather have computer parts (Or any other product or service) that are sold by a company with a commitment to good & decent customer service. I'll pay more for it overall, even though I'd still try to find the "best price". I'm just so tired of these companies trying to do this on the cheap. If a company can't provide reasonably decent service, then DON'T EVEN TRY TO!!! Use the the $$$$$$$ that used to be spent on customer service to improve the quality of the product or service being provided. In that situation, hopefully an independent 3rd party company might step into the breach to provide after purchase service.

Is what I've said reasonable, or am I just spitting into a Hurricane force wind here??!!?? :frowning:

 

[MarkHastings]

Thi, I had a similar experience with a tech going through the "steps" to diagnose my CD drive issues. I told him I had done everything I could and it appeared to be the CD drive that was the problem.

But of course, I totally understand why a tech person wouldn't believe the caller on the other end. When I give tech support to people, I've had SO many people try to tell me that there was something wrong with a particular peripheral, but in reality it was something else causing the peripheral to act up, so I tend to cut the tech support people some slack.

Again, it's not THEIR fault, it's the fault of every moron who calls in with a stupid question that has brought us to this point.

Anyways, the tech guy could tell that I knew what I was talking about and we both humored each other as he went through each 'step' of his script. Basically the conversation went like this: "Ok, I want you to disconnect the CD drive and reboot" - So I immediately said "OK, I just did that" , then he laughed and said "Ok, next I want you shut down, plug the drive back in and start it up", to which I again said "OK". - He needed to go through all of these steps in order to get to the "Replace CD drive" step, which we got to rather quickly after I just said "that didn't work" to everything he told me to do.

Again, I try not to get too angry with these guys because they aren't the ones to be angry with here (and neither should I be angry with Dell).

I just wish there weren't so many idiots inundating the tech centers to the point where people with REAL problems have a hard time getting through all the red tape.

Jeff, get angry at the people with stupid issues because they are the ones that created this horrible tech center experience.

I'm just so tired of these companies trying to do this on the cheap. If a company can't provide reasonably decent service, then DON'T EVEN TRY TO!!! Use the the $$$$$$$ that used to be spent on customer service to improve the quality of the product or service being provided. In that situation, hopefully an independent 3rd party company might step into the breach to provide after purchase service.

Is what I've said reasonable, or am I just spitting into a Hurricane force wind here??!!??

Jeff, yes, unfortunately you are spitting into the wind. Dell systems are cheap and in order to keep them cheap, they find the cheapest way to handle tech support. No one likes paying for tech support and I'll be damned if I had to pay!! As frustrating as tech support is, I'll deal with it if it means cheaper systems.

This is similar to the "Mom and Pop" vs. "Wal-Mart" arguments. I might get better service at the Mom and Pop stores, but I tend to go to Wal-Mart because I can get products at siginificantly lower prices and they're not closed late at night or on Sundays.

I don't want to build my own system, so I like ordering from Dell. You can't have "Cheap Systems/Great service", so I ask, what's worse; "Expensive systems/Excellent Service" - or - "Cheap systems/Poor Service"?

Considering I know how to fix most problems, I'd rather go with the cheap system and take my chances with their poor service.

If you don't like it, then go someplace else. But don't get angry at people for eating McDonald's burgers when Kobe Beef burgers are so much better. I don't think most people eat at McDonald's for the "quality"