Your Electronic Life - What Do You Do When Stuff Goes Wrong?
June 4, 2008
Have you tried to get customer service on electronics lately? It’s phone tree hell! But why? One part of the explanation is that people are willingly or unwillingly not buying better service.
The basic problem is that so many people pretend they are buying a simple commodity, it will never break until you are ready to throw it out, and that low price is therefore the only determining factor. That’s OK if everything works fine. But computers, cell phones and the newer HDTVs (or even VCRs) are not quite as simple as toasters (or tires). And their complexities mean there are a lot more ways to break or, at least, not work correctly. Let’s discuss computers, and one vendor in particular: Dell.
What Happened When Dell Went “Gold”?
Dell has relatively cheap prices for their computers. Their much complained-about recently poor service has eaten into their overall reputation. Service is an area in which it is hard to win back customers once the word goes out! So how did this come about?
Because the buyers were too cheap!
With a $50 lower price for a Dell computer with regular service, Dell can sell a computer at a price point that gets Dell more customers than their competitors.
The current solution to poor Dell service, as recommended by Dell people (not necessarily the company line, but the line by individual Dell employees) is to buy the Gold service level, with its much faster Gold communication line for guaranteed faster and better response. It adds another $50 to the price of the computer. So why don’t they sell a computer with adequate service to start with?
Think of the price differences between the computer with regular support and the one with the Gold support and look at how insurance is sold. With insurance, you can either pay low prices with high deductibles or pay higher prices with lower deductibles.
Applying this to Dell computer support, the lower price buys the regular support and you then spend hours on the phone waiting for help or you might send it to the local shop). With the more expensive Gold support, you spend very little time in the phone queue.
The reality in either case is that now the user spends quite a bit of their time doing Dell’s work (unless you take it to the local shop). The time the user spends is analogous to the deductible on insurance purchase mentioned above. That never gets factored into the original purchasing equation.
Toasters, Tires and Computers - Interaction Problems
Part of the problem is one of complexity - there are a lot of different kinds of interactions which can occur with a computer - internal (hardware and software) and external (more hardware and software!). If your tires or toaster had this many types of interactions, you’d have as complex a problem to resolve its troubles too.
Tires only have to fit onto a very standard rim and grip a poorly defined road surface with some reasonable ability. And they are not usually pushed to where their deficiencies are noticeable.
Toasters are something we complain about in terms of not toasting well, but they have only a very limited fare to deal with (inputs of electricity, a trigger to start the toasting action, a “doneness” setting and sensor of some sort, and untoasted bread) and outputs of toasted bread, or toaster strudels, or….
Computers can have many very large differences to deal with in both hardware and software. Unlike a toaster, the content of what you insert into the computer is vastly more important than the content of bread slices.
False Economy
The problem is that most of the public will buy anything that is perceived as “a little cheaper” but “otherwise as good” (that old “commodity” think, again).
Ask yourself “What did you do the last time you wanted to buy a computer, or something else reasonably complex?” Did you go to a local store stocked with your item so you could look at it and then go online and buy it?
If someone does this, it could be considered as cheating that store out of a sale after they helped to decide what they would buy. Later they may find themselves wondering why that local computer, camera, book or whatever store is no longer around to service their needs. And now they have to buy their service from some faceless web entity.
They decided what was financially viable by how they purchased.
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In regards to the “False Economy”:
People do not support their local businesses (especially when it comes to tech. related items) I have found. They would rather buy from a faceless company (Dell for example) and save $50, than spend that little bit of extra money and buy their items from a local business. Then they have the nerve to complain about not getting an English-speaking support person when something breaks.
With Wal-Mart on every block, it is very hard for local companies to keep customers coming to them. One way that local companies can do this is by keeping their customer support in top notch, workin order.
Personally, I would rather spend that little bit of extra money at a local store and have the piece-of-mind that I can actually talk to someone (and in the small-town cases, someone you know personally) about my problem and receive a heartfelt response.
People are bringing this upon themselves. By wanting to save a little bit of extra money (that you will end up spending double or triple that amount when you have to buy a replacement product or pay for extra support) on an item, they are only hurting themselves.
On the other hand, I see where a lot of local businesses are pricing themselves right out of the market. Let’s face it, there is no good reason to charge someone $50 or even $100 an hour in tech. work (especially in the hardware field). A lot of businesses don’t understand that if they would drop their prices even by a quarter of the amount they currently charge, they will lose a little bit of money on each individual sale; but they will gain that back (and then some) by having multiple sales. If you couple low prices and excellent customer support, then you have a winning combination that simply cannot be beaten by any “faceless” corporation.
It’s a vicious cycle.