How Dell Is Dealing With “Service Sucks” Comments on Facebook
Unlike some top internet retailers, Dell, which has over 530,000 fans and is listed as #3 on Internet Retailer’s Top 500 , is definitely into Facebook. Judging from the level of activity and the quality of such custom pages as their “splash” and “video,” they’ve obviously poured good time and money into the efforts. With good reason to0; have you ever owned a Dell? If you have (like the author of this article has), you probably know how it feels to deal with a repair problem, right? You dial the number and after eons of waiting, someone (who often has an accent too thick to comprehend, from an offshore call center) begins running through basic diagnostics. Then after half an hour or so, you realize ‘this is like asking a fish to roof your house.’ You hang up and hope the problem resolves itself or take it to the local PC repair geeks and pay for what Dell should have had fixed in the first place.
Now, instead of building a grudge against companies like Dell with no place to vent, you can confront them publicly with your complaints and concerns. This movement has been dubbed “Social Media as Customer Service.” Looking at Dell’s Facebook page, it appears they are ardent believers of the cause. Instead of deleting negative comments like some social media managers scurry to do, Dell is not only leaving them up, but actually responding to them.
Exhibit A.
Exhibit B.
But is responding enough to bring peace to the customer? It’s really hard to tell without asking, so this is what we posted on Dell’s Facebook wall on April 25, 2011:
Hi, I’m writing a blog titled “How Dell Is Dealing With “Service Sucks” Comments on Facebook” ….can you respond with how your “Social as Customer Service” campaign is working and whether customers seemed satisfied with the help they receive here (or is social proving to be no more helpful than a phone line?)
If we hear anything back, we’ll definitely include their quote, but for now it seems they are making a step in the right directly with using “Social as Customer Service.” And even if they’re not successful in helping customers directly solve their problems (unless they have IT on the social marketing staff working behind the scenes) at least they’re making the process transparent, which customers will appreciate (even if it does lose them some business at first from would-be shoppers seeing the negative comments).
For more information on how Dell is using “Social as Customer Service,” read “Dell China Is Listening to You on Chinese Social Media.”
Links to the Complete Four-part Series:
1) Analyzing Amazon’s Presence on Facebook
2) What Staples is Sticking to Facebook
3) How Dell Is Dealing With “Service Sucks” Comments on Facebook
4) Is Apple Having a Brand Identity Crises on Facebook?
It doesn’t really make much difference in terms of a satisfactory resolve of my issues with my computer, whether I complain on FaceBook or call Dell’s customer service, hardware or software departments. The end result is the same old dissatisfaction and terrible people skills. My laptop was a year old in January 2011 and for about half of that time my computer has not worked like a brand new computer, should. It seems like Dell’s solution to a lot of things is to tell the customer, me, that my hard drive is corrupt or my user account is corrupt, there is no removal or repair tool for whatever problem I’ve presented them with. Software has not bothered to tell me that they are not trained in hardware and have put me through the gears with them working on aspects of my OS that they knew nothing about. The last time I called Dell software, I was on the phone with them and they remotely in my computer from approximately 8am and didn’t finish with them until 1am! (I burnt out the batteries in my home phone!) But that was not the end of it, they still had to call me back to finish!! In the mean time I researched the issues they said could not be fixed and I had no problem finding the right tool, but by that time it was too late, they had transferred all my files to the new user account they created and in the process messed up my files, lost a lot of them, and never asked me pertinent questions as they proceeded to make major changes to my OS.
I have also asked Dell numerous times to delete my old ‘billing’ address and to update my billing and delivery address info in their system and apparently Dell doesn’t have that feature in their system!
I have sent emails as well explaining to them that they are compromising my safety by continuously sending invoices with all my personal info to my old address were a neighbor put me through identity theft with one of the phone companies. I told Dell that I went to a lot of trouble to protect my new address etc., from these known felons. (I had the police and the fraud department involved at the old address.)
But Dell doesn’t care. The last time I ordered ink from them, they sent out a billing invoice to the old address, again!
Now my computer is not working that great again and I’ll be damned if I call Dell Hell for help. I have no more confidence in their ability to resolve my issues without it turning into another nightmare experience.
The difference between a company like Dell and some other large manufactures, is that when I have had a problem and have called the other companies’ 800 numbers, they all have replaced the defective appliances, (all being just under 2 years old.) Those other companies, like Sunbeam, Black and Decker etc., now have me as a loyal customer for ever! They didn’t act cheap and stupid like Dell. They also did not make me, the customer feel like a piece of crap and that it must be my fault that the appliance isn’t working properly. They also didn’t make me take apart the appliance and pay them for the opportunity to fix it myself.
Dell charges a lot for horrible service on defective products and for my time and labor to redo or undo all of their mistakes, etc.
All these Dell people who send their little messages to people like me who complain on their FaceBook page, are of no help at all. They all just say they are sorry that I have had so much problems with my computer.
I am not doing their work anymore and I am never ever buying anything that has Dell’s logo on it. I am so disgusted with the shoddy work and all the time I’ve spent dealing with a bum computer, that is only a year old.
Dell has a way with words…they tell me that they are sorry that I lost most of my data on my system. But in actuality it was Dell who lost my data on my system.
L.M.,
I think your feelings speak for how we all feel when there is “talk” but little (or none at all) “action”. Your case is a good example of how a poor response will impact a customers buying behavior and serves as a good lesson to businesses & owners alike.
Thanks for sharing your story.
Kurt
Dell Spain. In March last year I bought the “Inspiron Zino HD with graphics”. After two weeks, it starting crashing. One month exchanging emails, and using me as their technician, they came to the conclusion it was the hard disk. I constantly told them, that it this was my main tool for my job (I am a freelance translator), and I needed a reliable PC. One month repairing, I get the PC, and it worked 4 days, and started to crash again. The only solution they gave me was another repair. I told them I did not want more repairs. I wanted my money back, as I was losing jobs because of this. This never happened, so I had to buy a new PC. Bought an HP, which works beautifully. I have the case in a consumer association and in December, we decided to give them a second chance and gave my PC for repair. Again they changed the HD but “DON’T MISS THIS ONE”. I sent a PC with 1 TB, and I got back a 500 GB HD. I will let you all know how this story ends. DELL IS NOT TRUSTWORTHY
We have bought 5 Dell computers in the past. The XPS9100 we recently bought has had problems from day 1 and customer service has been a nightmare.
Jonathan,
You are incorrect about Dell not deleting negative comments. They don’t delete ALL negative comments, but they do delete them — just look at some of the comments that state that people’s comments were deleted.
Anyway, my issue with Dell lasted almost two years, and ended up with me having to take them to small claims court. They refused to do the right thing (and the legal thing, based on California consumer protection laws) numerous times, even when I got the Better Business Bureau involved. Their customer service, all the way up to the executive level is atrocious and a complete joke. So saying “sorry” on Facebook doesn’t mean much if they can’t resolve the issue correctly.