A few months ago, I told you the sad tale of how I went from a Dell brand advocate to a very dissatisfied customer. A couple of weeks ago, Dell asked me to participate in a Dell Customer Advisory Panel (CAP) at the home office in Austin TX. I am on my way there. I wanted to give my readers a chance to participate in CAP remotely by sending me their suggestions on how Dell can reclaim OUR trust and improve its products and services.
I have three main beefs with Dell. Briefly, they are:
- Their products are unreliable: Out of five laptops I've purchased in the past two years, two were stolen and the other three had major flaws in hardware within an average of six months after purchase.
- Dell's decision to outsource its main customer service function to India is not working for me and thousands of other Dell customers.
- Dell's widely hailed social media effort has some major flaws when it comes to helping people who are having problems.
I have some suggestions on how Dell can improve its products and service. I hope they are truly open to listening to me and my fellow Dell customers. I have my doubts. I talked to two of my Tweeps in the last week who told me that Dell separated its CAP Days group into "complainers" (Tuesday) and "fans" Thursday, complete with a welcome Tweetup Wednesday night. Alas, my Dell plane ticket whisks me home a few hours before the Tweetup. Boo Hoo. I guess the complainers will all miss out on the fun.
I do give Dell credit for at least have the courage to invite me down to talk. I hope it helps to actually meet me face to face, so they can see I am a real person, not just a whiner.
I will probably not live tweet or blog the events on Tuesday, but will try to hop on and update my blog or Tweet periodically. Please leave your suggestions on how to help Dell improve in the comments section of this post. You can bet I will include them and Dell with most certainly be reading them as well.
Stay dry, Iowa.
The PR Princess, In Transit
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