Those that follow my blog will know that I am a real observer of the idea of Customer Experience and how it is executed by large organisations especially.
I thought I would post on the "online order hell" that I have been involved in for the last few weeks.
Note: this is a long post... stay focussed... it has a point that does relate to the title of the post...;-)
To take you back... as a background.
My home PC broke.... this is a HUGE deal in my house, as we have become a wee bit attached to the device. It was pretty old, so I took the opportunity to get a new one.
I originally decided that I was going to buy off Dell, as they had pretty much what I wanted. I noticed a quirk in their website that made it cheaper to buy the display separately from the core machine. Note: I hate this as it feels like they are trying to trap buyers into a bundled purchase...but I digress. My plan was to purchase the core machine the next day. I didn't get around to it and I happened to visit the site of a local company (www.quay.co.nz) that I have purchased my last 4 machines off about a week later. They had a great deal for the type of machine I wanted. It was a few hundred bucks cheaper, more powerful, and I thought "cool, lucky I didn't buy the whole thing of Dell".
I need to comment now that I had promised my son that the new device would be installed and ready for his mates to use in a sleepover 2 weeks after I placed the order off Dell.
2 weeks...Dell had promised 24 hours delivery...no problem.....
I expected the Dell display would be delivered pretty much the day I ordered the core machine. There was a few days delay as I tried the Internet payment, and they needed a couple of days to clear the payment. By then it was about 7 days after I had ordered it...but hey...I am a fair guy.
So anyway... the Quay computer was built and tested, and I picked it up 3 days after the order as they said I would.
MAJOR PROBLEM... I have no display. Here was me thinking that Dell would deliver it way quicker than 10 days....
Right... to the support channels...
I fired an email off from the website...got the auto-responses saying I would have a reply in 24 hours. No response after 48!
Now to the Phone. 4 calls to the call centre.... no reply. Cumulative total wait time about 3 hours.
Houston...we have a problem.
I fired off another email 24 hours before D-Day. My son was freaking out...as 12 year olds do. I had a brand new computer...but no screen....
No reply... I ended up going down to Quay and buying a new display that was cheaper than the Dell one, that they had in stock. I took it out of the store and back home...problem solved.... crisis averted...
I emailed Dell to say that I needed to stop the order, and checked the status. IT STILL HADN'T LEFT THE FACTORY! This was 11 days after order!
Nothing was said and two weeks later I had sort of forgotten to follow up.
Then we came home to a courier "card to call" that we found out was from Dell. For those of you that like stats... the 24 hour delivery promise that I bought on ended up being 504 hours. This is 2100% longer than they had promised.
2 more calls...2 more hours waiting and I was done in.
I NEEDED A NEW APPROACH.
I moaned about my #FAIL on twitter and had a bunch of support. Then I thought..."why don't I contact Dell via Twitter?"
A few clicks and a tweet later and I had a message off to @LionelatDell... that would be Lionel at Dell for those not on Twitter. 30 mins later I got this reply. "Sorry to see that we didn't get the delivery piece nailed... please DM me an order # or service tag #. Will see from there."
Wow! That sure as shit beat the "old" way.
Twitter delivered a MUCH Faster, and more personal, support response than the "old" channels.
Which got me thinking about the ROI. (Not my costs... they are my costs... and they are valuable, but not for this point)
IF I had twittered Dell first and had the response I was looking for.
Dell would have saved 3 emails @...say...$10/email.
Dell would have saved an order valued at $350.
That is $380 saved for...$..the cost of listening over Twitter. That has to be at least a 100-fold improvement over the cost..
This makes SO much sense it is stupid.....EVERY BUSINESS CAN NO LONGER CHOOSE TO IGNORE THIS!
Thanks to Lionel...I hope you answer my query....
QB.
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