I was reading Ambrose’s post on his Dell customer service experience and it echos the thousands of very public cries of anguish that are happening out there in customer land.
When I was at code camp I looked up into the audience and noticed that overwhelmingly Dell was the laptop of choice for developers that attended. It will be interesting next year to see how many people are still using them.
The Dell that I have now may well be my last Dell. The machine itself is great (its got a few quirks that I haven’t quite worked out yet), but everytime I ring Dell I feel like I’m talking to a machine that doesn’t really understand or appreciate my needs.
I’m not alone. Dell may find themselves with a wave of customers leaving them unless they start getting localised support staff. First it will be the advanced user base, then they’ll start convincing their family and friends not to buy from Dell and finally the general consensus will be that Dell is no good and they will start loosing corporate clients - which is where it will really hurt them.
It’ll take a while, but once it pronounced enough for them to notice it may be too late. Its one of those frog in the pot things.