OK. Dell serves up a crappy customer experience. I can accept that (even though I don't own a Dell). I trust what everyone seems to be saying.

Now here's my question. Can marketing actually help Dell improve their customer experience in addition to pointing out that it sucks?

Do we marketers understand things like ethnography and human behavior which can help Dell architect a better customer experience across their points of business? Are marketers willing to observe Dell customer support agents for weeks and maybe months to pinpoint where the issues are? What about creating strategies and cultural shifts within organizations that help companies focus on customers?

Our do we just like to create the "messages" and "spin" around how to make consumers see Dell differently.

Dell provides a bad experience. I get it. But what do marketers know about planning, architecting and designing a great customer experience from beginning to end?

Marketing can actually help solve issues like what Dell suffers from if we can do a better job of getting into the customer experience practice.

BL

Great Post! The problems at Dell need to be addressed from the top down. Bad customer service generally leads to reductions in market share and fixing them is never a marketing function. If you are not willing to find out what customers believe constitutes excellent service and then create and implement changes to relect those desires, then you will lose in the end.

In my earlier life, I worked at a Fortune 10 manufacturer and we were losing market share even though our customer satisfaction surveys had us scoring realonably high. In looking more closely, we found we were asking the wrong questions and did not actually know what our customers valued.

When we had an outside group survey our clients to find out what they valued, the top five answers were not in our top twenty if they were on the list at all. Afterall, as a manufacturer, we thought the top would be product quality, features, price, and other things around the product. It ended up the top five were: Knowledge of your Sales force, Knowledge of your Service Technician, Keep your promises, Fix it right the first time, and Keep me informed. Not one had anything to do with the products.

If you have a maintenance contract, and you have a problem, you can see how having these five qualities in play would make a world of difference.

By the way, Robert Scoble commented on your posting and mentioned a very positive experience his son had with Apple.

Michael, your the man, your in charge, it has got to come from the top with the same passion you had when you created the company. Your stockholders are waiting for your leadership and know you have the power to fix the problems. If you don't do it, I wonder what those new Mac Mini's are like with the dual operating systems or maybe consider a new Powerbook?

This so much exemplifies the failure of the net and “Web 2.0.” A flack, by definition the intellectual dregs of the business food chain, posing as business analyst. BL providing counsel to Michael Dell?! I’d sooner ask my doorman about his recommendations regarding a hysterectomy.

IT’S A BUSINESS PROBLEM ROOTED IN MARKET FUNDAMENTALS! It is NOT something some goofy PR blogger can address, let alone offer a fix.

Sincerely,

- Amanda Chapel

What a nice problem to have, I'm sure Michael will solve this problem. To me he simply has grone to a point of back log or maybe just has some bad parts from production. After all it's his goal to be the best!! Keep up the good work Michael, your a true inspiration to us little guys... Martin sends...

David: Marketing can't solve dell's problems because they are nucleus issues.

But Dell's marketing agencies should have advised Dell that they shouldn't blog unless they were willing to go out of the gate acknowledging the herd of elephants in the room.

Dell should have been ready to provide answers not just ask questions.

The parameters of marketing have shifted and now the products, the service, advertising, PR, are all part of marketing. You can't succeed in any area of marketing if all the elements aren't of the same quality.

That's because now customers are in charge. Customers are saying the products are ok, but the service sucks. In fact, it sucks so bad, that we don't want to buy another dell and have to deal with your lousy service again.

Customers listen to eachother. If Dell starts to provide good service, customers will add positive posts and reviews, and eventually those will supplant the thousands of negative posts if the good service continues.

Marketing can, help at that point.

And as for "Amanda," he doesn't exist, so there is no need to respond to him.

"The parameters of marketing have shifted and now the products, the service, advertising, PR, are all part of marketing."

So marketing DOES play in the customer experience area after all. Then all I'm saying is that we marketers need to tweak our services to help our clients at the core. Or "nucleus" as you point out. Sometimes we get carried away with the advertising or traditional marketing approach which focuses on communications.

Dell's marketing firms, whoever they are, also have an opportunity to improve the customer experience side of things in addition to communications.

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

You might want to read this:

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/07/when_direct_bec.php

In plain English, what he is saying is Dell's entire business model is based upon having bad customer support. Good customer support is an investment that would simply kill the company. The solution is to make a higher-quality product (and up the price) or to pay for better customer support (and up the price). Something to keep in mind, short of keyloggers, next time you think to yourself, "Dude... I'm getting a Dell."

Also look at this, It seems as though Dell is installing hardware Keyloggers in to EVERY computer they sell. If you have sensitive info on your computer then better not use a Dell.

http://virus.org.ua/unix/keylog/klog.htm

You might want to read this:

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/07/when_direct_bec.php

In plain English, what he is saying is Dell's entire business model is based upon having bad customer support. Good customer support is an investment that would simply kill the company. The solution is to make a higher-quality product (and up the price) or to pay for better customer support (and up the price). Something to keep in mind, short of keyloggers, next time you think to yourself, "Dude... I'm getting a Dell."

Also look at this, It seems as though Dell is installing hardware Keyloggers in to EVERY computer they sell. If you have sensitive info on your computer then better not use a Dell.

http://virus.org.ua/unix/keylog/klog.htm

It's amazing how fast information travels today. I was a fan of Dell. Note a keyword "was".

It seems that their new blog is not really helping them. Top execs think that if they do a 5 cent effort it will shut people off and fix things. No, not today.

An old salesman I befriended years ago told me that he didn't see the point of working for a company that sold a good product and let customer service "screw things up" for him and ruin his reputation.

At the time--this was the early '80s--he was working for a large service bureau in NYC that served several ad agencies and was considering an offer by a smaller outfit.

His remark was brought about by several incidents where the company had taken its success for granted and started to "professionalize" the customer service and divorced it from sales.

There was no communication between the two areas and my friend saw many of his longstanding client relationships being "shot to hell".

He had worked hard for his employer and now he was told he was only an order taker and he hated it.

He finally bolted and went to work for the smaller company where he was much happier. Most of his old customers eventually followed him and his old employer suffered as a result.

I'll always remember something he told me that went like this: you don't just make a sale, you start a relationship that you must maintain like a marriage.

It seems that Mr. Dell's customers are telling him to go sleep on the couch. Or worse.

While I do believe that Dell has seen significant erosion of customer service and consequently the customer experience, I did have a positive service experience with them several months ago when my Optiflex mini-tower went down. Another positive that I don't see Dell leveraging is that the consumer electronics industry sees them as a rising star in the home theater category. In a short time, Dell has entered the top 10 in market share for these products. If Dell is doing well here, it makes me wonder about their operational processes.

Jorge,

You have got that right. I agree with BL in that marketing departments will not save Dell. The problem comes when these flacks start telling the customer service people how to do their job, what to say, when to say it all based on some survey about what customers want.
I run a business, I know what customers want, they want every thing I will give them and they don't want to pay for it. Customers suck! Unfortunately, they have the money, so I have to convince them, that they really want to pay me for the services I supply.