Ultimate Customer Service

We lease our company laptops from Dell Computer and have been very happy with them; as of until last week. Jan Resch, Next Step’s VP of Finance and HR got a semi-harassing call from a Dell customer service about our monthly lease bill.

He asked why it hadn’t been paid yet and wanted her to pay it over the phone to avoid collections. Collections?!

Here’s the rub; it wasn’t even due yet! The rep called on the 11th and the bill was due on the 15th. Also keep in mind; we have never been late with Dell. Our credit is perfect with them. Jan told the pit bull that the check was in the mail and she would not make the payment over the phone.

You would think that was the end of the story, right? Wrong. He called again this Monday, the 16th. Apparently, the check did not arrive yet. Maybe the Rochester to Austin route is slow lately?

This type of behavior led me to believe that either Dell is desperate for money or they have a really bad customer service rep. My hunch was the latter.

I am friends with Verne Harnish, the founder of EO – Entrepreneurs Organization (http://www.eonetwork.org/) and he now runs Gazelles (http://www.gazelles.com/). Michael Dell was one of the first EO members and Verne has remained friends with him.

Verne has always talked about how Michael is obsessive about customer service so I thought I would share this story with him. I encouraged him to pass on the experience to Michael himself because I thought he’d like to know. Most good entrepreneurs want to know about the good, bad and the ugly.

This type of feedback is always good to hear because a company can spend all the marketing dollars in the world, but it only takes one bad service experience to wipe out millions dollars worth of advertising.

So I shared my story with Verne yesterday. Guess what? This afternoon, I got a call from a woman named Carrie Perkins. She told me that Michael Dell heard my story and wanted her to call me as soon as possible.

*tear*

Ok, I’ll continue. Yes, I was touched, amazed, thrilled and many, many other awesome adjectives.

Carrie was a true pro. She has my account pulled up on her computer and could see that I have been a good customer for years. She could also see who this “harassing” rep was.

I had Jan come in and re-tell the experience. Carrie listened intently, made no excuses and apologized many times. She explained that this was not their policy and that this will be a “training experience” for the customer service rep in question. I hope “training experience” is not internal lingo for a firing because I believe everyone deserves a second chance!

Carrie continued to wow us and left us with her e-mail address and direct phone line. She said we can call her anytime about anything and she’ll get right back to us.

Talk about turning a negative into a positive.

Carrie, please know that I love you.

And I am love with Dell Computers again too.