Customer Services & Support

A little more than three years ago, Dell created the Enterprise Technology Center, informally known as Dell TechCenter. It has grown from it's very meager beginnings to a site boasting regular members from more than 140 countries -- large enterprise customers, small and medium-sized business and even public institutions. I recently sat down with the team behind the TechCenter to get a sense of what they do and how they are a big resource for our data center customers.

The team is made up of Scott Hanson (@dellservergeek), Kong Yang (@kongy_dell) and Jeff Sullivan (@SANpenguin) a team whose sole focus is helping customers figure out the "what if" scenarios for their PowerEdge servers, Dell|EMC, PowerVault and EqualLogic storage systems, and the myriad applications of those systems including systems management, virtualization, operating systems, de-duplication, among many other topics.

Dell TechCenter is a community that discusses data center issues from a technical perspective. You will not find any PR/marketing types in their lab (aside from when I was there to interview them :)) -- these guys have pocket protectors and propellers on their heads. You won't find glossy brochures on their site. You won't find them linking to news releases. What you'll find is great technical content to help you get more out of your data center.

These guys were recently out at vmworld 2009 and were geeking out with all their virtualization colleagues. In fact, just before they left, @dellservergeek had a group of us over to his house to hang out with the whole TechCenter team along with @virtualtodd, @gabvirtualworld and @B_renda, @dennismsmith (who is the guy behind our break-fix oriented data center community forums) and @lionelatdell, among others.

Let's hear them describe what they do.

If you haven't been to the TechCenter, give it a try. Here are the various coordinates at which you can find these guys and their work:  

• Dell Enterprise Technology Center, aka Dell TechCenter, community site

• Dell TechCenter Blog

• Dell TechCenter Delicious Links

• Dell TechCenter group on LinkedIn

• And soon, we'll have a fan page on Facebook

I invite you to come on to the Dell TechCenter site, look around and let us know what you think.

Last month, we introduced a new ordering option for U.S.-based small and medium business customers called Fast Track for Business. It’s clear that many of our customers (not just small and medium business ones) need systems need them right away. That’s why we’ve expanded the Fast Track option for some consumer systems for customers in the United States. Fast Track is a way for Dell to offer great deals on some of our most popular configurations. The Fast Track program also means that when you order one of these configurations, it will be shipped to you by the next business day. 

Lots of customers have already ordered Fast Track systems. If you’re one of those, we’d love for you to share your opinion and review your system online. 

To do that, click on the links below. They will take you to the product details page where you can write reviews for Fast Track Systems.  In order to write a review, click the Write a Review link in the middle of the product page. From there you can enter Your Account details (the same one you used for placing your order). 

• Mini 10v netbook
• Inspiron 13 laptop
• Inspiron 15 laptop
• Inspiron 537 desktop

And don’t forget we’ve got a contest running until September 4, with a chance to win a $500 Dell gift card. Be sure to share any pictures or videos for a chance for your review to be featured on our site as a customer spotlight!  

Since I blogged about our Driver Download Manager functionality last week, some customers like mattroberts, nigel1999 and terryko and others made it clear they did not want to have to download an app to get driver downloads. To be clear, the Driver Download Manager was meant to be optional.

Customers like kittykat21589 rightly pointed out there was a bug in our opt out functionality. Yesterday we made a configuration change on the site to fix this. The opt out to download via Browser without the Driver Download Manager is now working correctly. We apologize for any frustration this has caused and will be closely monitoring the site over the coming days to ensure it continues to work as expected.

Here's the option you should see the next time you download a file from support.dell.com:

And for Firefox users like keepsloanweird who reported that the Driver Download Manager app doesn't work properly, take a look at my comment for clarification. The short answer is that the app requires both Microsoft .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1 and the Microsoft .NET Assistant 1.1 to be installed.

It was never our intention to force users to install and use the Driver Download Manager. Although some of you may choose not to use the Driver Download Manager I would hope that at some stage you may give it a try to see the benefits it can provide.

Thanks again to our customers for the direct and honest feedback. If you have more to share on the topic, let me know with a comment below.

Today we're unveiling a new solution we feel is pretty special and embodies everything we wanted to achieve when we decided to restructure the way Public Sector customers' needs are addressed by Dell.  At the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) International Policing Exhibition and Summer Conference (ACPO-APA) we'll be announcing the Dell Digital Forensics Solution - a collaboration between customers and specialist partners to help solve one of the biggest challenges facing police and security forces today - managing digital evidence.

The amount of digital evidence that needs to be reviewed is growing at a huge rate, and this is putting forensic experts under pressure to analyse data quickly and accurately to help secure arrests and convictions.  It makes perfect sense that this is happening, when you consider how entwined in our lives digital devices are - why would criminals be any different? In the UK you have 28 days in which to get your case together before a suspect must be released, which isn't a lot of time to look through what might be terabytes of data in a single case.  The average backlog of data awaiting forensic analysis in the UK is 18-24 months across the 43 police constabularies, according to comments made by the Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit at InfoSec.

Working with support from AccessData, EMC, Intel, Oracle, Symantec, VEGA and others, Dell has developed a new data centre approach to digital forensics that simplifies the entire process, improves the efficiency of sharing and administering data across analyst teams, and supports strict evidence handling guidelines.  This is very different to the way many systems work now, where data is analysed in isolation on a workstation with little protection from malicious code and no ability for analysts to collaborate on the same evidence. We've taken our experience in servers, the cloud and high performance computing, and created a solution which we believe will transform the way digital evidence is processed, leading to quicker forensic analysis and criminal convictions.

Our mission at Dell is to ensure that we combine our 25-year history of driving affordable, accessible IT with an intimate understanding of what different parts of the public sector need to deliver solutions that are green, simplified and secure.  By simplify we mean cut costs and conquer complexity, ultimately leading to customers reclaiming time, money and people. The Digital Forensics solution really embodies this, and through our partner network we've been able to bring best of breed and insight to the project, to produce something that really is greater than the sum of its parts.

There's any number of studies that show that consumers trust product opinions from friends, family members and other customers more than they trust what a company says about its own products.. Since 2006, we've added the Ratings and Reviews functionality in multiple countries and added the ability to share them in other social media sites. Many customers have told us that these reviews are helpful during the shopping process.

Since the early days, we've amassed thousands of reviews written by people around the world, sharing thoughts about what was great, what wasn't ideal and so on.   We appreciate those who take the time to write reviews, and want to encourage more people to submit new ones. So if you're one of our customers who have read reviews or used them to compare products, we're hoping you will take that next step and write one! Now it's the right time to finally grab the old pen and paper (or keyboard in this case) and put your words to use for a chance to win.  Share your opinions on anything and everything from the Studio 17 to the Wasabi Photo Printer or even non-Dell products that we sell through the Electronics and Accessories area on Dell.com.  Give us your thoughts, photos or submit a video review for all of the dell community to see.  

From July 2 - September 4, everyone that submits a review will be entered for a chance to win one of three $500 gift cards.  Write as many reviews as you want on each Dell product you own to increase your chance to win.  And remember, when you're writing your review, think about all the things you wanted to know about the product and tell people how you use your product in real life.  

To rate a product, you can visit www.dell.com/ratings or go to any of our product pages and sign in to write a review.  Dell uses your reviews in action across all of Dell.com.  The most useful reviews are selected to be Customer Spotlight Reviews  which many customers have told us help them when they are making up their minds on what to buy.  We want to put you and your review in the spotlight! Share your pictures, your stories, your thoughts with the community not only just for a chance to win but for a chance to be heard by all at the Dell community!

For more information, check out our official rules for our Ratings & Reviews Sweepstakes.