Services

• Wal-Mart to Test Solution Station Concept with Support from Dell

  Mon. Jul. 14, 2008
  by Downs Deering, Director—Retail Services

  You may recall that in April, Lionel blogged about our intent to develop premium services and services in retail. Well, today we have a little more information to share—specifically a concept Wal-Mart will begin testing in select stores called Solution Station by Dell.

  These services are designed to make it easier and more affordable for people to set up and use digital lifestyle technology. Beginning this month, Wal-Mart will be testing Solution Station by Dell services in about a dozen Dallas-area Wal-Mart stores.

  These services will be available on Dell and other branded systems and include things like home television installation, PC set-up, wireless network set-up, computer upgrades, services designed to protect computers and in-home training. Wal-Mart customers in the test locations can also sign up for basic computer support and repair for their laptops and desktops.

  We'll keep you posted as we explore different ways to support our retail partners in the marketplace.
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• New Premium Service for U.S. Consumers: Your Tech Team

  Tue. Jul. 01, 2008
  by Laura Bosworth, Director - WW Customer Experience

  Last year, we experimented with a new type of service. Lionel blogged about it back in April It was provided to about 30,000 customers in the New York City area. The idea was to provide a more personalized support experience to them by designating a team of highly skilled technicians they could call anytime. It was very successful, running about 90% customer satisfaction, as the technicians are more familiar with their circumstances, require fewer explanations and are able to solve a broad-range of issues beyond just the basic warranty.

  This week we are launching the new premium warranty service called “Your Tech Team” modeled on our experiment. The new service will be an option for customers in the United States who purchase a system directly from Dell—it’s not available to customers who buy from retail. The service will cover all Dell-branded devices under warranty in your house-hold, gets you rapid access to specialists, allows you to schedule calls with your favorite technicians, and if you desire, can provide technical support options well-beyond what is covered under your warranty without needing to transfer you to a different group.

  Your Tech Team costs $99 and provides hardware warranty support for your new system and all other systems in your household (that are still under warranty). Other technical support options, like performance tuning, wireless network set-up and anti-virus support are available for a fee but can be purchased while you are on the call with your favorite technician.

  At this point, households are determined by billing address. This means if your daughter is away at college, but you bought her an Inspiron and it is still under warranty, she can call Your Tech Team  directly. If her system is out of warranty, you would need to purchase an extended warranty for her system before she is covered

  Finally, there is one other piece of information you’ll want to know about Your Tech Team—the agents are based in North America. Now, I know this can be controversial for some people but we have 2 critical customer needs to meet that are in direct conflict with each other. First and foremost, customers want low prices. We see time and time again, that when we increase prices to cover certain costs we drop in sales. We also have a great deal of research that corroborates that PC decision making is largely influenced by price and customers expect low prices from Dell. On the other hand, we must balance that with many suggestions that we provide North American support. Dell’s philosophy is all about providing customer choice and this service is no exception, rather than adding cost to every system for something that many people aren’t interested in, we will make it optional.

  Your Tech Team is not just about North American support, it is a different offering focused on your relationship with our technicians and ultimately it is about giving our customers the choice to prioritize what matters most to them.
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• Windy City Recycling

  Tue. Jun. 24, 2008
  by Joe Strathmann, Sr. Mgr.—Asset Recovery Services

  Yesterday, I was in Chicago to speak at the Electronics Recycling Conference hosted by Recycling Today.  It was a good gathering of professionals and influencers there to discuss and learn about the latest electronics recycling efforts.

  My panel was looking at approaches by some of the large OEMs to implement customer recycling programs for electronics and I was joined by representatives from Sony, Panasonic and Waste Management.

  Any gathering like this is a good chance to talk about Dell’s commitment to offer recycling services for the products we make.  We’re want to remind customers and industry alike, that we will recycle anything with the Dell brand on it for free at any time, other brands of equipment for free with purchase of new Dell. Our home pick-up program will come to consumer’s homes to pick up the used equipment.  In short, we’re making it free and convenient for consumers to do the right thing.  The results are showing, a few weeks ago we announced that we recovered 102 million pounds of used products from customers globally in 2007 for responsible recycling.

  I also had a chance to speak on our work with Goodwill on the Reconnect program.  This unique partnership is bringing free recycling to more U.S. consumers every day and helping support Goodwill’s job training and community building missions at the same time.  Just last week Reconnect expanded to cover Western New York State and you’ll be seeing this program expand more this year.

  We know it’s critical to make recycling free and convenient for consumers to take part. And we’ll continue to find ways to partner with stakeholders and policy makers, as well as with customers, to help raise consumer awareness about the importance of recycling used electronics.
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• Dell Service Options for Business Customers

  Tue. Jun. 24, 2008
  by Katie MacDonald, Program Manager

  Over the last year, Dell has worked to expand its global service programs focused on our corporate business customers.  Since I get a lot of questions about these services, I thought it might be helpful to outline them:

   

  • Pro Support  We introduced ProSupport earlier this year, ProSupport aims to customize service options for small and medium, public and large business clients by offering different levels of warranty support.  The Pro Support motto is: “Beyond One-Size Fits-All", and with its Fast-Track Dispatch model, certified Dell IT technicians can get their parts quickly from one of Dell's hundreds of 4-hour warranty part dispatch centers.

  •  Partner Direct is a program focused on our global reseller partners, also provides service support for in warranty clients, as well as IT consulting and Dell product sales via the Channel partners. It’s been live in the United States for just over six months, and less than that in other countries. PartnerDirect is now available in each of Dell’s main regions—the Americas, EMEA and APJ. To date, more than 16,000 partners have registered via PartnerDirect globally.

   

  In addition to these offerings, we continue to offer existing programs like Warranty Parts Direct (WPD) is a his service meant for Dell customers who use a  help desk for service dispatch, provide self maintenance or for customers who want to appoint a service provider to maintain their Dell branded hardware.
  
  Programs for established companies are one thing, but, what about partnering with smaller IT vendors, who may or may not have an existing relationship with Dell?  What about extending Dell service offerings to out-of-warranty systems?  
  
  Those are two of the reasons we rolled out the Service Partner Program (SPP Long before we finalized that program, we asked for feedback from ISPs. Two of the needs we heard most often were 1) getting a part fast – and, 2) getting a part at a reasonable price.
  
  That feedback helped shape the Service Partner Program.  Now, technicians can order parts up until 7 p.m. CST with the option for Next-Business-Day delivery upon request.  We also did our homework to make sure our pricing was competitive with other options you have from our competitors. SPP aims to engage the independent service providers and help them improve their own business efficiencies by proving that we stand by our certified parts and warranties and stand by the technicians who are in the field working on our products every day.  

   

  How else can we improve SPP, or any of the service programs that I mention in this post?

   

   
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• Providing Mission-Critical Assistance to ProSupport Customers in Earthquake Disaster Areas

  Mon. Jun. 09, 2008
  by Wendy Wong, Manager—China Command Center

  It was an ordinary Monday afternoon, and a new week had just begun in western China. At about 2:28 p.m. on Monday, May 12th (6:28 a.m. GMT) an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.0, capable of causing major damage, hit China. Over 1.3 billion people were impacted by this devastating earthquake that caused homes to crumble and massive panic to ensue. In the turn of a hand, the earth was moving, mountains were shaking, and buildings were falling. There was no time to run for help. Many lives silently fell into the ruins. People from all over the world mourned and paid attention to the area of Sichuan. Dell's services team quickly reacted out of compassion  to help mitigate service delivery delays in the disaster areas affected by the tragedy.

  Dell's Global Command Center in Xiamen acted as the emergency command post by escalating and coordinating resources during the critical situation. At 3:01 pm, the first communication was broadcast out by the Command Center to all Dell teams when the earthquake hit Wenchuan. All impacted teams immediately responded and a corresponding message was sent at 3:10 pm to Dell global related functional teams. At 4:30pm, the Command Center coordinated and led the first initial meeting with all the Dell services teams from technical support, the services operations, logistics, and every Dell service provider to discuss and deploy support resolution strategies. Updates from CCTV News streamed into the center in order to capture new, impacted areas. At 5:50pm, the initial action plan was issued and published.

  For 2 weeks, the command center scheduled crisis management meetings with representatives from every service delivery team to update all open dispatches and support cases in order to prioritize and escalate appropriately. The coordination and 24/7 efforts of all the teams from the technical support staff at the frontline to the onsite technician and parts delivery couriers who made contact with the customers was remarkable and unprecedented. Prioritized response went to rescue departments such as government, transportation, medical, earthquake bureau, telecom, water & electricity supply. Real-time tracking procedures were implemented for every service order which were on hold due to road damage by earthquake or governmental transportation control. The logistics department provided daily status of closed highways, railways & flights. Once the transportation systems were back online, spare parts fulfillment resumed to the affected areas. Logistics arranged for backup parts inventory while the Technical Support staff continually communicated with Dell customers to make them aware of the situation and provide the updated status on their parts and technician. During the period time when the Chengdu Airport was shut down, spare parts were transported to Chongqing to solve service delay issues caused by part shortages. This allowed for restored equipment to rescue teams. When a Dell Technical Account Manager (TAM) was informed that the Sichuan Police Department needed a technical support team to help the Police Bureau at understaffed cities, the TAM offered his contacts to the Police Department to ensure the promptest response was available.

  On the evening of May 14th, the Sichuan Police Bureau contacted Dell's Support hotlines to report a downed mission critical server needed for information regarding earthquake rescue information. Despite the fact the system was out of warranty, Dell's mission critical team of technical engineers supported the customer with professionalism and urgency to get the critical server back-up as soon as possible. In addition to finding the technical solution, the Dell team had to brave aftershocks in Chengdu city, but stayed onsite to complete the work at hand.

  Regardless of the insurmountable number of open technical support cases and dispatches, the Dell teams worked around the clock to complete the work at hand and get them all closed within 2 weeks. So many heroic stories occurred in the wake of the China earthquake, and at the heart of each support case was Dell’s determination and selflessness for ProSupport customers. In fact, one customer was quoted as saying "Dell - what an excellent service!"
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• Michael Dell Discussion with Reporters from APJ

  Fri. Jun. 06, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  Earlier this week, Dell hosted a group of thirteen reporters who represented several countries in Asia for two days at Dell's campus in Round Rock, Texas. During their time here, these reporters met with several Dell executives to discuss Dell's 5 key growth areas in more detail. This event culminated in a group discussion with Michael Dell.I wanted to take some time to recap that discussion.

  One of the things Michael talked about was growth in Asia Pacific and Japan, but also other places outside the U.S. He made the point that Q1 was the first time in Dell's history that revenue from outside the United States surpassed revenue from the U.S. He also reiterated that global growth was led by Brazil, Russia, India and China where Dell saw a 73% year-over-year increase in terms of unit shipments. Dell grew 2x faster than the Lenovo in China and 6x HP in India. Because of that strong global growth outside the U.S., Michael said that we will continue to invest heavily in countries like China, India and other emerging markets to facilitate continued growth.

  Michael also said that retail in the global consumer space is a huge opportunity moving forward—Dell currently offers products in 13,000 retail locations. The channel is another big growth opportunity: Dell currently has about 16,000 channel partners and that business is currently at a $12B run rate. 

  When asked what type products from Dell would serve the next billion people coming online, Michael made the point that these new users don't think in terms of the type of the device they will use—instead, they think about connecting to the Internet. We're focused on developing products in emerging countries like the Dell 500 laptop for China and India and beyond and the upcoming mini laptop. He also said that more products coming in the second half of the year.

  When Michael was asked about the mobile phone space, he suggested that would be a better question for next year. Before then, Dell will focus on big growth opportunities like consumer and commercial laptop and desktop sales—both through retail and the channel. He also mentioned that there's opportunity for a range of smaller devices between 9-inch ones like the upcoming mini notebook, and smaller ones.

  From a technology perspective, Michael was asked about progress in input devices. The multitouch functionality that Windows 7 will bring is good for some activities, though it will enhance what we're already used to with keyboard and mouse, instead of replacing them. Same goes for voice recognition.

  And speaking of Windows 7, when asked if many corporate customers will wait for it before upgrading from Windows XP, Michael made the point that it's hard to say with certainty since there are lots of variables. Still, things like the recent availability of Vista SP1, the major progress that has been made with Vista driver compatibility and because Windows 7 will be based on the Vista driver framework, it seems like more companies will upgrade to Vista before Windows 7 comes out.

   
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• Dell's New Service Partner Program - FAQ

  Wed. May. 28, 2008
  by Katie MacDonald, Program Manager

  We recenty introduced the Dell Service Partner Program (SPP) for independent service providers who manage local or regional computer repair needs.  These are smaller service provider businesses - sometimes just one employee big.  And, like larger, multi-national computer repair companies, Dell Service Partners provide essential consulting and repair to their customers, so we're here to provide support that will help them answer a customer's needs fast. 

  In an effort to offer more benefits to these smaller service provider businesses, including discounts and training programs, Dell has created the Service Partner Program because we know your business succeeds when you offer value, efficiency and reliable service to your customers.  When their computer breaks, you are there to fix it fast, so Dell wants to back you up on your customers' needs.

  Before I jump into the FAQ, you can also find more details about the Service Partner Program at www.dell.com/servicepartner.

  Who can join the SPP?

  Service Providers in the United States are eligible to join the Dell Service Partner Program.  We plan to offer the Service Partner Program globally at a future date. 

  What type of discounts can I get as a member of SPP?

  • Discounts on Replacement Parts = 7% for telephone orders when you call this toll-free number 1-888-925-4528.  We will offer online discounts in the future. 
  • Discounts on Service Warranties = 10% when you call 1-877-277-9723.
  • Discounts though Dell’s Employee Purchase Program (EPP) = up to 12% on laptops and desktops.

  How do I get these discounts?

  By calling our toll-free, Dell Service Partner sales representatives, you can opt-in to receive discounts on Parts, Warranties or EPP system purchases.  Tell our sales reps that you would like to be a member of the Service Partner Program by providing your email and receive information on future promotions at Dell.  

  What if I need a part late in the day or the Next Business Day for my customer?

  You need a part, Dell has it for you.  Order parts as late as 7 p.m. CST M-F when you call our parts sales queue for your order.  This beats most industry shipping cut-off times that range from noon to 4 p.m. CST. 

  Dell also reminds everyone that Next-Business-Day delivery (NBD) is always an option when you call one of our parts sales representatives. Our prices for NBD are also some of the best across all computer vendors and our competitors. 

  Can I give Dell feedback on the Service Partner Program or Dell products and services?

  Yes.  We hope that our customers and partners continue to provide ideas or suggestions about how we can improve things.  You can give your feedback here here on Direct2Dell  or at IdeaStorm.  We've implemented programs based on suggestions from businesses and customers, including Dell's participation in Red Campaign.

  I think Dell products and services are great, but sometimes I feel I need more training on how to best use them for my customers?

  Dell offers some great training for service providers, technicians and anyone interested in knowing more about how to get the most from our products. 
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• More on Upcoming Premium Services for Dell Consumers

  Wed. May. 07, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  Since I blogged about some of what’s coming from a customer service perspective, I’ve received inquiries and questions from folks. And last week, I saw Ben Worthen’s post questioning the strategy behind our forthcoming premium services for home users. In a nutshell, I agree with the comment that Dell's Harjit Kaur left on Ben’s post.

  It’s not about where folks are located. The point of the forthcoming service is that it’s a dedicated team of people who will provide support to all family members and the Dell products they own which are still under warranty. For families that call in for support more than average, having a centralized support team that can handle a variety of issues generally means less explanation of the issue and less transfers to other departments. The fact is that it is a different (and more expensive) service model than we’ve ever offered to all customers. That’s one of the reasons why we piloted it in New York first. It’s  a new way of providing support that has proven to be effective.  For many customers though, this service may be overkill. That’s why we’re making it an optional one. 

  In the future, we'll also have some new retail integration services for consumers. Those services will cover both Dell and other-branded components and devices.  It will encompass things like TV installation, home theater setup, technology integration and more. In other words, making Dell systems work with all kinds of digital home devices. Maybe that means I won't have to program my Dad's all-in-one remote after all.

  It's also worth noting that any customer worldwide can reach out to us on our sites like the Dell Community Forum, Direct2Dell and IdeaStorm, or they can also reach out to us in their own blogs, or other social media tools they use. In terms of social media, we make an effort to support customers based on where they are located. Lots more to talk about there soon.

  Bottom line, as all of these services (and new service models) evolve, I'll make sure we share more information here and on other Dell blogs in the growing Direct2Dell family.
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• Dell & the BMW Sauber Formula 1 Team

  Mon. May. 05, 2008
  by Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger

  For many fans, Formula 1 racing is a global phenomenon. Dell is an official partner of the BMW Sauber F1 Racing Team that is led by drivers Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld.

  With the 2008 season still in the early stages, the BMW Sauber team is in second place overall. Take a look at the official Formula 1 site for all kinds of information and click here for more about all the driving teams in competition.

  Over at the Inside IT blog, Brett McAnally blogged on this topic, and focused much of it on the Latitude D830 notebooks that the team uses in the pits. The reality is that the BMW Sauber team uses all kinds of Dell technology to drive their mobile pit system, including servers workstations, laptops and Dell flat panels. We'll be providing updates as the season progresses at www.dell.com/F1.

  And besides the BMW Sauber team, it looks like some other F1 crews use Latitude notebooks in their pits as well.

  
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• Channel Partnerships Increase with Community

  Wed. Apr. 23, 2008
  by Amie Paxton, Channel Community Manager

  Since Michael discussed our channel strategy with Ed Moltzen back in May, there have been lots of questions about how we work with partners. There have also been questions, concerns and general confusion about our PartnerDirect program.

  When our PartnerDirect program launched last December, some thought Dell underestimated the importance of maintaining channel relationships. Truth is that Dell is more committed to the channel than ever before. Lots of people here understand how important our partner relationships are now and will be in the future. In my role as the Channel Community Manager, I will work to facilitate discussions between our channel partners and the Dell teams.

  With that, I wanted to shed some light on several initiatives that I hope will help connect our partners to Dell's channel teams worldwide.

  • Our Channel Blog - Yesterday, Colin Steele reacted to news that we had plans to launch a channel blog soon, and I thought this would be a good time to tell you a little more about it. The blog will be a place where you can tell us what you think. I'll also aim to get partners to post on the Channel Blog from time to time. Ideally the new blog will further connect our small business and channel partner communities-something that both the VAR Guy and Josh Clifford called us out on.
  • PartnerDirect Forum -This discussion forum gives partners an opportunity to interact with each other, learn more about PartnerDirect and share ideas about improving the program.
  • External Conversations- Our team will talk with partners where those conversations are happening.

  I look forward to being a part of the channel team, and I'm excited about introducing your voices within the walls of Dell. More coming soon.
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