Everyone has their own ways of explaining success. We are talking about company prosperity here. At the startup of a company, it is especially difficult to understand what it really takes to be successful. We, as entrepreneurs need to keep a close eye on all the paths of potential success.
Each and every company understands that providing quality products and/or services is a must, in theory. You cannot survive without it, that’s definitely a fact. No matter what your strategies are, you have to follow the basics.
With that said, I’d like to share a personal experience with you. That experience engraved the importance of customer service and support in my mindset. The one thing that can make or break your business.
No introduction is needed for this company; it sells by its brand name. We know it as Dell. It’s a fortune 500 company with a very consistent approach and continuous improvement. Without any biased statement, I’ve been a long time Dell lover, because they target different markets with different features, prices and their products are durable.
So what’s my experience with them? Glad, you asked. Some months ago, I bought a Dell N5010 laptop. It was Dell’s latest release back then. I loved the specs as it perfectly matched my needs and the price was reasonable, too; compared to other available options.
Unfortunately, the hard disk crashed in the first 15 days. The shop keeper was a nice person but he wasn’t very interested in working very hard to solve this matter. Instead, he asked me to directly claim for warranty. I went to the distributor, basically to the head office of guys who handle Dell’s and many others warranty.
From my perspective, it was very genuine of me to ask for a unit replacement. To my surprise, the distributor instantly said “This is not possible sir, if you would have come the same day, I’d have considered replacing the unit. We are sorry”.
Long story short, it was an extremely disappointing incident. That was when I decided to take the next step and contact the higher ups at Dell. Just like you, my options were limited. I visited Dell.com to see if it has a contact option but no luck there.
As an IT guy, I tried finding files, documents which contained contact info of Dell’s representatives. I found a dozen of files and a few email addresses with detailed contact information. I sent an email to all of them regarding this problem. Most of them replied, but most of them had no authority and were not able to come to any sort of solution.
It was really shocking and exciting to see most people had replied. The email addresses included the head of Navy Direct Govt’s purchase, head of US sales and so forth. Fortunately, a guy namely Kevin Brown, Director Worldwide Procurement at Dell replied positively and forwarded my request to the related authority. This was the major U-turn in reaching solution.
Mr. John Naughton who leads Dell’s quality organization contacted me in no time and assigned me a specialist who handles such unusual cases. He helped me throughout all the problems quickly and efficiently.
The next email I received was from Mr. Kenny Wong (Hun Pheng Wong – Sr. Technical Support Specialist), asking me to share my case in detail. He personally called me to attempt to solve the issue ASAP. We discussed everything via email back and forth and he was very keen to handle all the problems for me and provide me with the very best solution.
Finally, my unit was replaced from the same distributor and the same guys who had turned me away previously, treated me completely differently. I don’t blame them because they had no control, though the response could have been better.
So what’s the learning curve here? I don’t value the distributor as much as my respect for Dell has increased. How Dell did it? With their unmatched support system, they turned a negative situation into a positive experience I will never forget.
A few days earlier, my new laptop hard disk crashed again. I don’t know why but the only answer I can give is it’s an electronic item, maybe that’s why! – I’ve had other Dell 1564 laptop, Dell SW2009 LCD and more Dell items. Each one of them is working nicely.
On contacting John, he assigned Mary Lim, Dell Executive Customer Care Team to my case. She is a great person, highly responsive and handles everything for you smoothly.
Within 2 days, my laptop was back with me. All the problems are solved and things are working perfectly. They directly replaced it with a new hard disk.
This isn’t a paid review, not at all; but it’s an outcome of their impression over me and my intention to help starters to understand the emphasis of service and support. It’s all about winning customers. Word of mouth works so fast, social networks and social media are certainly the best examples of this.
If you keep winning new customers as your goal, you’re on the right track. It pays in the long run.
