There is no other way to say it: Dell (DELL) is in trouble. With its core strategy being cost efficiency, and others now able to match that, they have developed another problem - poor customer service.
Let me say first of all that this isn't necessarily an employee issue but a strategy issue. Reports are that some of Dell's call centers have as few as 500 employees working them, which would make it overwhelmed every single day. They got away with it in the past because they were so cost efficient; now they can't.
What's being done about it? They brought Richard L. (Dick) Hunter in to be head of the customer service department. He oversaw the legendary Dell assembly plants for eight years.
One of the changes he is implementing is to take a strategy he used on the plant floor and apply it to the call center. He wants to put in place a system where any time a worker gets in trouble helping a customer, they will raise a red flag and a supervisor will come to help out. Hunter said in the call center, "why not do the same?"
Another problem is that many center reps are trained to specialize, which allows them to deal with only one type of problem. This is one of the reasons so many calls are transferred to others until they find who has the expertise in the area. Hunter says that almost 45% of calls to Dell result in a transfer.
In an almost suicidal decision last year, Dell took the toll-free service number off of its Web site, something Hunter says "falls into the stupid category." A couple of weeks ago they reinstated the number onto the site.
The next thing Hunter plans on doing is to cross-train the employees for different types of the computer models they sell so that the great majority of calls can be handled on the first try.
To me it's a healthy sign to see Dell investing in customer service and not worrying about the next quarters numbers.
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