Why Global Sites Matter

re: Why Global Sites Matter

Mike B — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 07:46:12 GMT

I am planning on purchasing a Dell computer soon. I also know what it is like to have a person from India to speak to about problems that may be causing problems. First Dell trys to compete with other companys and by doing this they save money but miss out on a lot of people that they could have as customers. I am married to a person that has a Master in Computer tech from India. At first we could not understand each other well but in time it worked out well. She works for Dell and believe me the company is trying to do well. What they fail to do is train the people from India how to relate to US. We have so many things that we take for granted and they do not understand the common ways we do things. In time if they would bring the people here to US and train them and start a call center here they could pay them the same and train US people to do the job just as well as them. They are more qualified but fail to relate to US. We are already paying large amonts for things and customer service is more important then having a person not satisfied. Dell fails to see this. I hope that in tme they see that costomer service is just as important. They look at selling in other countries more then the home base that made them as big as they are. We in the US want satisfaction just as much and more then others. This is the way we live not getting 2nd hand talk that we can not understand. Dell wake up and train people here to have people that can relate to more then one part of the world. There are many people that can talk many languages and can relate to many countries and explain what is needed. Hire them it will save money in the long run. It is sad to see many costomers that have your product which is one of the best there is to tell you they will not use your product any more. One costomer can lose is so uncalled for when you can look at a few coments of others that care about your product. .

re: Why Global Sites Matter

JimmyG — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 05:27:14 GMT

The claim that Indian CSR is talented or technically capable is ignorant at best. After dealing with Dell CSR for three different issues in the last 4 months, and wasted my time, energy, and sanity on talks with Indian CSRs, I learned my lesson: if it's an Indian CSR, just hang up.

In all three cases, the Indian CSRs I talked to didn't know anything about computer hardware (in one case I had to explain what a CD-ROM is, and how it is different from a NIC, oh what a NIC is as well). In all three cases, I got them resolved by talking to U.S.-based CSRs.

Now, I have been buying Dell for home and work and friend for the last few years almost model by model from laptop to server / storage array. I have just begun to deal with Dell CSR in the last 4 months. I will no longer buy Dell personally or recommend Dell personally. At work, I will do my best to have my company buy HP from now on. My CSR experience between HP and Dell is night and day. I'd rather pay a bit more knowing that if things fail, I don't have to beg or shout or cry for repairs / replacements.

I strongly suggest this director call Dell CSR on a couple of real problems. Only then would he/she realize what a moron he/she was.

re: Why Global Sites Matter

what customer wants ? — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:07:09 GMT

Responding to Downs Deering's blog, this is what I feel. Has DELL mapped what the customer wants when they call DELL to the criteria of an agent. From what I feel, the company has internal metrics that measure the agents' availability and irrelavant metrics.
eg: if an agent supports corporate customers and gets an issue of HD making noise, he would have to replace all the Hard drives. His dispatch rate would go for a toss. Look at the customer now. He is happy because DELL identified his issue and fixed or did give a replacement. But look at the agent. He is given coaching on communication skills. How does that help ?
Solution:
Have 3 layers.
1) Identify the customers needs.
2)translate that to site metrics, not agent metrics.
3) drive the site metrics, not customer metrics. When you drive customer metrics, you have to compromise.

here are the details:
let us take monthly customer satisfaction metrics. compare it against other sites. look at the site having lower customer satisfaction rates and then look at the root cause. are they due to specific issues or a very generic issues like language barrier ? then work on them.

How is it dirrerent?
You are not driving customer metrics, but you are driving organization metric. This has to be a paradigm shift.

re: Why Global Sites Matter

RonnyO — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 00:25:35 GMT

Dell consumer support is horrible. I am a 20 year Dell customer and will NEVER BUY A DELL PRODUCT AGAIN. I've been all over the globe with these incompetent puppets. I finally had my issue "elevated" only to now be stuck with someone in Texas who has been totally unresponsive to my needs. I ordered a laptop in early July and have had 2 replacements sent and they still cant get it right nor give me a firm confirmation of when my 3rrd replacement will arrive. Not the same ole Dell I was used to dealing with.

re: Why Global Sites Matter

Dwayne — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 23:28:29 GMT

I just tried to order a $4,500 computer from dell and I had questions about leasing my computer through my business.. Four frustrating calls later in which we could not understand each other I opted to look elsewhere. I looked to alienware and read that they had been bought out by dell and looked no further. My next stop is Apple power mac.. Anyone who reads this post I want it known that I always praised dell to anyone who asked my advise.. Now I say look elsewhere and good luck :O)

re: Why Global Sites Matter

STEVEN PULLEY — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 21:16:44 GMT

Robert, my wife and I are almost in the same boat as you. In early June 2007, we ordered a Inspiron 1505 laptop so my wife could give her niece her current Dell laptop to use at college. The laptop arrived within 10 days of order and would not work detecting a wireless network. After 6 hours on the phone with Dell support, including online chat with our working laptop, and 4 hours with our cable company, Dell support had us open up the computer case (doesn't this void the warranty?) to reseat the wireless card. This did not work. So they had us go to a wi-fi hotspot to see if the laptop would detect it. After an hour at the restaurant, it did not work. Then we called Dell back and they wanted us to open up the case again in the restaurant. I about lost it. You do not open up a computer in a restaurant. So we finally got Dell to send a replacement wireless card. Several days later, it arrived. And it did not work either. After much haggling, Dell finally relented and said they would send a replacement computer.

It gets better. Meantime, we're going out of town when this computer is suppose to arrive so we had to call Dell and see if we could get the computer delivered to where we will be - they said that they could. Well, it never arrived. So the day we left to come back home, we had to call Dell and tell them to ship the computer back to the original address. They said that would not be a problem. Then Dell called and said that it was shipped to where we were at out of town and that it was refused. I called where we were at (my mother's by the way) and the computer never arrived there so Dell lied.

Finally, we had enough. My wife got ahold of Dell and told them to cancel this order and that we would pay off the account and close it and that I was in the process of e-mailing my corporate people who handle a multi-million dollar account with Dell and have them reconsider the account. I sent a well documented e-mail to my corporate people and cc'd two Dell personnel who handle my company's corporate account. Well, I guess I got the ball rolling somehow because now Dell is so nice and willing to help and are giving us the next model computer with a $300 discount and cancel the replacement 1505 computer.

But that's not all. Guess what happened? The day after we got my wife's upgraded order (which works fine with no problems), her original replacement arrived, the 1505. Now we are having problems with Dell taking this computer back. They said that UPS was aware of the shipment and after giving us a routing number, said that UPS would be over to pick it up. Well, that was 2 days ago and we are still waiting.

By law, since this computer was not ordered by us (remember, this order was cancelled), we could keep it without paying for it. And I found out that the replacement 1505 was shipped from Austin, Tx just a few days ago and was never in transit to where we were previously. So I caught Dell in another lie. But since we are honest, we are trying to have Dell take this computer back. And it seems like they do not want this computer back.

I have had nothing but problems with the Dell call center. My wife was ready to crawl through the phone at some of the people with whom she was dealing with. The language accent is definitely a problem but not the only problem. I have lived overseas in two different countries and I had to learn the local language. But when your customer is primarily English speaking, the customer would like to speak with someone without the muddled accent or dipthong. No, I do not speak the Queen's english myself but I do not have a problem in conveying my spoken words. Do I have to learn Hindi in order to be understood? God, I hope not. And just because you speak english doesn't mean that you understand it.

Just being lied to by the call center is enough for us to pay this account off for good and then close out the account. I still want my company to get another computer vendor. Anyone but Dell.

re: Why Global Sites Matter

Robert Schnitzer — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 03:55:12 GMT

I have purchased, or been responsible for the purchase of, over 100 Dell PCs and laptops. But no more. I have suffered through yet another round of time-consuming, frustrating, unintelligible interaction with the tech support staff in Asia, and I'm mad as hell and won't take it anymore.

I'd gladly pay $100-$200 extra per computer to have support that is both knowledgeable and native-English speaking. Every single person I know who has a computer complains about the horrible experiences we share in dealing with the techies in India and elsewhere.

My most recent disaster started with a hard drive crash. I could hear the "needle" scratching the "record", but still did 2 hours of diagnostics and testing on my own. Then I spent 2 hours more on the phone with an unintelligible tech rep, during which she made me do all the same things I'd already done on my own. She still wasn't convinced that it was a hard drive crash. Finally, I persuaded her to consult with someone else, and I eventually was sent a replacement drive.

The process for getting the old drive sent back to Dell for credit has required 2 more lengthy, frustrating calls to India, and the package is still sitting outside my front door, waiting for UPS to arrive.

Can you imagine how successful and profitable a computer company would be if it offered really useful, helpful, efficient and timely support?

re: Why Global Sites Matter

Super Human — Sat, 05 May 2007 04:49:37 GMT

Well hate can kill all logic ...without logic there is no discussion...without discussion ...only fools are left to shout ...If we leave emotion out of this whole conversation and talk with our heads I think we would be able to make some progress..

I am not sure what is the problem that we are discussing here ?

1) Is the problem that the call centers are in India ? or

2) Is the problem that you don't get the resolution when you call any call center in India

3) Or it doen't matter ..we don;t have any other burning issue and we need to create one to talk

Whatever it is ...all the logical people above didn't have any data to support what they were strongly propogating..

Were they getting better resolution when these call centers were based in US ? Did they get any better ownership ?

Well you can only make assumption..none of the people above have any data but their own stories to tell

But one thing ..does it make economic sense to Dell ..Yes ?...Are we in a Global economy ..Yes ?..Is Dell selling in India ...Yes ?...Does Dell currently manufacture in India ...No..well we could continue to debate ..the only reasoning I see behind opposing Global Call center is the lack of reasoning..

Do I need to say more !!!

re: Why Global Sites Matter

Right Thing — Fri, 04 May 2007 21:32:41 GMT

Hi All,

I totally agree with what Templeton Davis has to say. Are we ready to pay so much more just to have call centeres back here in USA? Makes no economic sense.I think it is nothing more than a dislike we have for the small developing countries like India, Phillipines, that makes us dislike the call centres being moved there. In that way we should stop importing more than 90 % of our clothes, crockery, utensils ,phones, petfood,linen,towels, shower curtains, etc, etc from China. Shouldnt we just manufacture them here, and give jobs to people?? And those will be better paying jobs than call center jobs, as most of them require special training or skills.

Let us not forget that it is a different world now. Things are much more global and companies can now choose to put up call centres, manufacturing units, tech support etc..according to what makes economic sense . And lets not forget it benefits us too. If the company spends less on the production etc... we get it cheaper!!

re: Why Global Sites Matter

Templeton Davis — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 22:11:57 GMT

I'm a Johnny-come-lately, but let me toss in some cans of worms. I've worked for the call center industry in the US.

All the problems people report from getting from India call centers (dropped calls, agents hanging up on customers, reading from scripts, incoherent accents, out and out fabrications to get people off the phone), those all happened just as often as they did before the mass migration of call centers overseas.

Ya know what? Most of the call center workers in the US are potato heads. You ever wonder where all the weirdos you see on the street find jobs? Yup, call centers. Call centers are the bottom-feeders of the computer industry in the US. They pay poor wages (in one place I worked, they paid less than pizza delivery), they take anyone who can muddle around a computer and often get only a few weeks training. Then they are put under large amounts of pressure to perform fast. Inept agents who never miss a day are retained over competent agents who get sick, even if they have good reasons (chronic medical problems), because it's the warm body that counts - that's what they get paid for.

Most people with skills get jobs elsewhere quickly, if for no other reason than to stop being treated like they are cattle. If you work in tech support for a long time, you get sneered at. Heck, I talked to one temp agency that considered me unemployable because I'd worked tech support.

Now let's look at the call centers in India. Now do you think that Indian agents are somehow less intelligent, that they won't grasp issues as well? The fact is, they usually have the same amount of technical ability that Americans do. And here's another interesting fact: In some call centers overseas, there's a high ratio of college-educated agents. Much higher than you see in call centers in the US. Why? Call center work overseas is often considered respectable. You work for a call center? Wow, you are doing well for yourself there.

As much as you want to take pride in your country, the fact is that companies can go overseas to get the same level of ineptitude as they get right here in the US of A for a much lower cost. And sometimes they can get better, because they can target a higher class of employee in India than they can here because a barely living wage here means you live like a king in India.

You want good ol' American know-how? Pony up the cash, monkeyboy. That's right, you have to pay for it. And be prepared to pay real money, money that fits a skilled American's skill set and their standard of living. But until you stop patting yourself on the back for finding that super deal and then kvetching about horrible support and bad PR, you are just a part of the problem.