Dell complaints

BeenThereDoneThat · conscientious beginner Joined: 18 Jan 2008 Posts: 2

All you XPS owners out there, get ready to be pestered to death with sales pitches from Dell XPS support reps. It is now mandatory for XPS reps to ask for you to buy something, mostly warranty extensions. As you know, Dell has North American support centers for XPS and Optiplex support because the people who buy these systems have MONEY. But it costs a lot more to support a real English speaking call center with people who can really understand than one in India or the Phillipines. So get ready to listen to sales pitches ad nauseum.

Also, expect the personal XPS service to go downhill fast. No more Mr Nice Guy. EXPIRED WARRANTY? Pay up or get lost. Simple question but expired warraty? Pay up. Call is over 35 minutes? Expect to get dumped. Dell wants average handle time on a call of 35 minutes. That means every call over 35 minutes has to make up time with another call being that much less. Agents will hate reinstalls or putting in drivers because those calls go over the average. Expect a lot more grief and a lot less satisfaction. Machine generally screwed up? Don't expect a lot of personal service on this one. You will get some long running test to do and a hang up. Expect to call back a few times at 35 minutes each and hope for a miracle. Virus? thats your problem. Good Luck!!!

GripeIsMe · Regular Hater Joined: 15 Jun 2007 Posts: 35

And you Jerks at Dell wonder why they are closing down call centers quicker than you can say "my name is george" Try hiking up your drawers and go on site and explain to the PEOPLE who keep yer ass in business that you must call some one in a land 12,000 miles away who does not speaka my language....But what the hell...I do not care either. I will have my job alot longer than you for sure.

>>Machine generally screwed up? Don't expect a lot of personal service on this one. You will get some long running test to do and a hang up.>>

Fatty01 · Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 12:26 pm Post subject: Re: XPS agents sell, sell, sell

HellResident · Dances with Hate Joined: 20 Nov 2005 Posts: 125

That was pretty much the key if you worked for dell, be at least good enough to make the numbers look good. As long as you could do that you could get away with just about anything . Try as I might I couldnt do badly enough to drop under their thresholds for them to bother with me.

HellResident

ScaryGodFather · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 11:46 am Post subject:

I have been able to "look good" so far where the numbers were concerned, but with Total Solutions, I may have met my match. I am a technical person not a salesperson. I have tried sales in the past and failed miserably at it. I was hired by Dell for my technical skills, not my ability to sell anything. I recently sold someone SpySweeper, not truly believing it was what she needed (I would rather have told her about, and helped her find, Spybot for free), but because we have to sell to do well on the stank rank, I sold my soul. I can solve the issues in the 70%-80% mark on a regular basis, and have consistently been in the under 40 mark for average minutes per resolution - acceptable stats in the grand scheme of resolution and speed. But hitting the Total Solutions requirements? Not my strong suit... and I hate pestering people for money.

So, Fatty01, regardless of the cost to Dell to operate the call centre, the fact is that we were hired for certain skills, then we were told one thing, and then forced into doing something else. "No, we will never require you to sell! It's a 'nice-to-have' feature!"... "No, sales will never be a metric! It's just good for the customer to have options!"

Great, when they want options, I am all over it. When their computer is toast and I am trying to convince them to buy an external backup drive they no longer need because they have already lost all of their data - and that they can get for $100 cheaper elsewhere - I can't possibly feel good about myself.

I understand the idea about "the bottom line" and making money in a cost-center situation, but there are some things some people are simply not good at. Sure, I can dance, but only when I want to scare little children and old people, or attempt to hurt myself and others around me. If they wanted people who could dance, they would not have hired me in the first place, but now they want me to learn, and if I can't, I go on a PIP? My skills were good enough for you before, but now - I am Dell's bane because I am not a good salesman. Lovely!

At this point, I have given up. I am no longer making total solutions, and if they want to let me go because of it, so be it - I despise going into work now anyway. I lost the feeling of enjoying my work about 8 months ago - before that, I always told people that working for Dell was the most fun I had ever been paid for. That's not even close to the truth anymore... Especially with the stress of not knowing wtf is going on from day to day...

Foamy · Regular Hater Joined: 29 Feb 2008 Posts: 12

Fatty01 · Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 10:24 pm Post subject:

ScaryGodFather · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 6:36 am Post subject:

Again, I understand your perspective, and I agree that sales are a necessity to the bottom line of the business. But you need to have the right people doing sales just like you have the right people doing the tech work. Get a non-technical salesman doing technical work, and people are going to be reinstalling Windows every day, constantly, and never getting anything actually fixed. Sure, they can learn - eventually! But when it is served to them as "Do this, and learn how to do it properly, right now!", it certainly becomes a little much. Consider that some of the techs have years of experience in a technical background, just as a salesman may have years in sales. These are not overnight skills that you just instantly pick up and are good at - at least, not everyone.

Sure, food on the table, pay the salary, pay the hydro in that giant building that is 90% empty at night - all of these things need to get money from somewhere. But what's the total cost? You lose good techs who are unhappy with their place in the company, they leave and you replace them with so-so techs who can sell instead. Great bottom line, not-so-great customer support. You have to draw a line somewhere, and the balance right now is not in favour of the customer, it's in favour of the bottom line.

OK, so it's a fine line, however you want to look at it. I guess my point for me is that I don't want to do something that I am not happy doing. Sell my soul to put food on the table? No thanks. Why should I do that when I was much happier getting the same money picking up garbage and sweeping floors? I came to Dell because of the work, the people and the feeling that I was doing something good to help people. And that made me happier than picking up garbage, by far. The pendulum has swung way back the other way now.

incident_man · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 12:08 pm Post subject:

There is no point doing something you're not happy with, especially when you can make the same or more doing something else. The main reasons why I stayed at DHell for as long as I did was the people I worked with (the other agents, not the managers), the benefits, pay, and the sense of helping the customer. I started out in sales and it became apparent to me rather quickly that the only successful sales people were ones that were rather creative with the truth, so to speak. I got tired of that and switched to customer service. It was a pay cut, but I was a lot happier. When it came down to a choice between metrics and the customer experience, though, the customer experience always won; I didn't do it for DHell's reputation, I did it because it was the right thing to do. There were quite a few of us who felt the same way, but no matter how many customers we "saved," DHell still closed us down. It goes to show that, to DHell, the customer experience doesn't matter all that much.
_________________
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

jack_lloyd · Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 12:59 am Post subject:

Zippy · Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 7:58 am Post subject:

I'm in agreement with Foamy and ScaryGodfather here. I was hired as a technician. I was given the same rhetoric about customer experience and that there would be no sales envolved. Now I feel like a piece of scum looking for ways into my clients wallet on every call. I will only sell the things the customer really needs. Vista really doesn't run that good with 1GB of RAM or IF they want to extend their warranty. I look at it this way, if the customer initiates a conversion about buying something, I say, Well your in luck, I can help with that. However there will be no more checking order details looking for Dell printers so I can sell them an ink cartridge. Micheal Dell can sell the rest of that shit outta the trunk of his car for all I care. Geez they were pushing Turbo Tax for a week, I wanted to barf

Fatty01 · Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 6:50 pm Post subject:

biff's buddy · Hates with a Vengance Joined: 02 Mar 2008 Posts: 63

Fatty01 · Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 6:59 pm Post subject:

ScaryGodFather · Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 1:37 pm Post subject: