Study: Dell customer rating plunges, Apple leads pack

[Renew Deal]

Respondents complained about the quality of Dell's customer service rather than its products

By Tom Krazit, IDG News Service
August 15, 2005

U.S. consumers lambasted Dell (Profile, Products, Articles) Inc. for poor customer service in a survey conducted last quarter, sending the world's largest PC vendor into a virtual tie with the rest of the PC market behind the industry-leading efforts of Apple Computer (Profile, Products, Articles) Inc.

For the second year in a row, Apple received the best rating from PC buyers in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), said David Van Amburg, general manager of the ACSI. The University of Michigan compiles the ACSI in numerous product categories by randomly calling U.S. residents and surveying their buying habits, he said.

Apple received a score of 81, compared to an industry average score of 74, in results released Tuesday. The Cupertino, California, company's focus on product innovation and customer service has won it a cadre of famously loyal customers unlike any other PC vendor, Van Amburg said. Apple also received a score of 81 in 2004.

Dell, on the other hand, earned a score of 74, down from a score of 79 the previous year. Survey respondents complained mostly about the quality of Dell's customer service, not its products, Van Amburg said. The ACSI doesn't ask specific questions about the type of problems customers are having with a company, but customers were clearly more frustrated with the Round Rock, Texas, company than last year, he said.
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http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/08/15/HNcustomerratings_1.html?source=NLC-TB2005-08-16

Take my word for it. Dell support sucks. This article is dead on.

[noahmijo]

1. Well what do you expect? they are hardcore Repug donors

You expect any kind of business ethics from repug donors?

[napi21]

2. Hmmm. Wonder if this will force Dell to bring back the support jobs to

the US? That's the complaint I hear ALL THE TIME from Dell owners! All their support is outsourced, and they can't even understand what the tech is saying!!! When it hits them in the pocketbook, I bet they'll pay attention!!!!

[screembloodymurder]

10. You got it.

Computer support is too technical for the average customer even w/o language barriers.

[The Straight Story]

3. And rethugs got more votes then dems

so what :)

Honestly though, not a big dell fan. I use mainly Sun systems at home (couple e450s and 280r and a 420r).

Hopefully this will not degrade into an apple vs windows war, but if it does - go solaris 10 :)

Customer service seems, to me, to suck across the board of late. The only way it seems you get what you pay for is if you are in a red light district, know what i mean vern :)

[acmejack]

4. Dell went over the edge with profit at any cost.

The famous "Dell Model". Dell crapped all over it's tech support people before they outsourced, getting rid of them "through attrition". Saved them a lot of money on lay offs. There was a time when Dell tech support was the industry standard, but since they weren't a profit center they had to go. Mikey only has how many billions?

[fedsron2us]

5. My office installed new Dell PCs a little over a year ago

and they have nearly all proved to be complete clunkers. Over 50 % of the hard drives crashed within 9 months and a significant number of other machines have had to have their motherboards replaced. My own machine has had to be rebuilt twice. It is noticeable that their new kit is a lot more unreliable than some of the older Dell PCs which despite their lower specification appear to be far more robust. After my recent experience I would never contemplate buying one of their machines.

[Robert Oak]

6. get what you pay for

while Apple continues to innovate as Dell chases the cheapest buck
especially for their employees...

what a suprise, Dell's product is shit while Apple just keeps becoming increasingly cooler.

Dell's support is not only shit, their computers are shit.
They constantly sell them with only 128MB RAM, which basically won't
run propertly a lot of programs (and despite what symantic says...that's Norton Anti-virus).

What bs is that to require a 100 dollar memory upgrade. Then they charge expensive shipping.

[dannynyc]

7. I've had it with Dell support

I just spent several days installing new PC's in the office of a client. He bought HP instead of Dell because of the support issue.

I can't say Dell's problem is outsourcing desktop support. My issue is the tech support staff can't answer questions that don't follow a specific script.

I've used Dell support for many years. The first question the support person asks (after telling me how they're going to provide me with outstanding service - which, like the pResident, is all talk, no action) is the unique identifier number on the PC. The tech support people use this to get a record of the history of the PC. Then, they ask questions that contradict the configuration of the machine. Why bother looking up the machine configuration if you don't use it during the call?

With all the changes at HP, I'm not sure their service will be better, but, it's not Dell.

[AX10]

8. Dell is a Rethug supporter. What else did you expect...

from the Bush mob?

[Elwood P Dowd]

9. Apple is batting 100% with me

In the 7 years since I purchased my first Apple, I have NEVER had a problem with the computers or a problem with customer service.

[Robert Oak]

11. if those foreigners are "so much better in math & science"

how come the entire corporation turns to shit the minute they offshore
outsource the work?

Dell and HP are prime examples of how to ruin a corporation in 3 easy
steps:
1. Treat your employees like dirt
2. outsource to the cheapest labor market
3. increase your advertising with white people pretending to be tech support in the ads to hide the fact that you just fired all of the competent Americans.

[sendero]

13. The problem is not just..

.. that they outsource the tech support, the problem is they try to do it with a "script" (what we used to call an "expert system") that works great if your problem happens to be in the database.

If it doesn't, the person at the other end is lost because he/she probably doesn't really know that much about computers.

Use to be, if you wanted to be a computer tech support person, you had to know your stuff and you got paid for knowing it. Now, most "tech support" people at a lot of companies are nothing more than a human VRU.

[Robert Oak]

12. apple may lead pack

but they too outsourced tech support and people are bitching their heads off about it. Not wise since the main reason Apple is alive is due to their loyal customer base.

[Dark]

14. I've been having trouble with my Dell laptop.

I've spoken to 3 or 4 people. None of them were American.

It sucked. I constantly had to ask people to repeat themselves.

[MazeRat7]

15. Plunge ? How do you figure ?

From this limited study I see the following:

The article clearly states that the Industry Average = 74
Apple earned an 81. (no change from the previous year)
Dell earned a 74. (this was a down trend by 5).

So bottom line, Dell's rating dropped 5%. However, Dells US market share is somewhere south of 30% and Apples is somewhere south of 4%. Too bad the article didn't show how it weighted its numbers to accommodate for the difference.

Even if they did take into account the market share difference, this is not "plunge"... a down tick perhaps.... but not a plunge.

Sorry to rain on your parade. *grin

MZr7