Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research

Dell seems to have put a value on non-offshored service - $150 per year

Yesterday we had to contact Dell about a recent and somewhat large hardware purchase. The solution the sales person had recommended at the time of purchase was not compatible during the set up and installation. It was a Windows Vista/64 Bit compatibility issue, but I’ll skip the technical aspects. Suffice it to say that they had made the incorrect recommendation/assurance and I was looking for a workable solution or was ready to return a large order.

We first contacted customer support (about 5 minutes) who then transferred us to tech support (another 5 minutes). Before going into too much detail other than order number and service tag tech support gave us the sales pitch:

Dell (India): “…would you like to speak directly with a North American support person? If you want you can now purchase your own tech team. A North American will deal with you and your family for a year. The cost will be $150 per year. You can select your own Dell Support person to work with.”

ME: “Hmm, not sure. I just have a problem with my most recent order. I think I’ll pass for now.”

Dell (India): “I see your company is on our preferred vendor program list, so it will actually be just $5 for you.”

I was now sort of tempted to say yes. $5 to get my issue resolved quicker is tempting especially this time of year. But my tech person also on the phone shook his head (saying to me “We shouldn’t have to pay anything extra to get this taken care of”).

 ME: “I think I’ll pass for this time”

Dell (India): “Well customarily you will be put on hold for 30-45 minutes. And since your company is in the Dell preferred program it’s just $5…we find that a lot of people prefer to speak with a North American..”

Can you imagine? I’m already being told I’ll be put on hold for close to an hour. I haven’t even really gone into the problem. It’s a relatively small problem, and I may be returning over $3,000 worth of hardware if this doesn’t get resolved, which I haven’t told them yet.

ME: “Thanks, I think I’ll pass for this time” (already starting to think I would regret this decision).

Two escalations and about 40+ minutes on hold later we decide to hang up. We find the original sales person’s name and called back to his extension at Dell. He quickly takes care of our issue (<5 minutes).

So, not sure what I’ll do next time. Not sure about paying $150, as a % of total this is sort of high. But since we’re on the preferred customer list  $5 seems like a bargain to save 45 minutes and lots of aggravation an unnecessary explanations.

I’m curious, how they came up with the $150, and to know what others think about this. Wonder if there was any market research behind this, I assume/hope there was!

By the way, at my company, Anderson Analytics, we don’t charge anything extra and our clients will always work only with Americans. Perhaps the market research industry should start charging two price levels as well?

I’ll be writing more about the off-shore trend in marketing/market research and sharing some recent research we have done on this soon.

-Tom