Mr. Auster writes today, commenting upon a story in the New York Times on the troubles of Dell in regards to computer sales. In brief, the Times believes that Dell has stuck to its old business model for too long.
Mr. Auster disagrees, saying that Dell strayed from its path of world-beating customer and technical support. He highlights "the world's worst customer and tech support",
provided by frequently incompetent or barely competent, passive Indians who do not speak English that is readily understood by Americans; who follow scripts instead of their own intelligence and knowledge; who substitute excessive and irritating politeness for actual response to a customer's problems; and who are mired in an unresponsive and unaccountable bureaucracy.
I dissent from Mr. Auster and his correspondent, Chris L. I have had a Dell computer since 2004, and it has been a very good instrument. I've had to call them on several occasions regarding hardware maintenance or replacement (mostly fans) and I haven't had any real trouble with their Indo-Pakistani staffs.
This is one of these things that confuses me about the issue. All I ever hear is that the Indo-Pakistani replacements are barely literate, yet I've always gotten people who I can understand and who wind up, after some cajoling and back-and-forth, generally providing a fix to the problem I'm calling about. In fact, I don't mind talking to a pleasant chap on the phone from Bangalore or whatever.
I thought about it, and my good fortune in technical support has not been due to some status of mine as a highly-educated, cosmopolitan transational elite. I speak English, with a vestigial ability to comprehend some Spanish, a couple words of French, and whatever German I could pick up from World War II movies and games. I've never been east of Western Europe, and I don't live in some multi-cultural hellhole of diversity, so my exposure to vastly different cultures is minimal to nil. (I also don't see that as a terrible thing, just one that I intend to tamper with at my leisure and on my own dime; no Federal program or NGO necessary.)
So why do I have good luck with these people? I think a lot of it comes down to temperament. I deliberately try to remain calm and placid when dealing with these folks, and I think it helps. I don't mind asking them to repeat themselves---"Wait, I didn't hear you clearly"---when I don't understand what they say, and I don't mind if they ask me to repeat themselves.
As for the supposed passivity of these folks, is that a bad thing? Maybe I'm betraying the ol' Type A personality, but if they're passive, that ought to mean that I can direct them as I see fit, ideally to a favorable resolution of whatever problem I'm having. Passive tech support means, at least to me, that I can get further than I would if I had to deal with some hostile greaser from New Jersey who'd say, "Tough" when the call turned complicated.
I think the better view is provided by that Indian living in the West, who complains about Dell living for the next quarter's profit report. If I read the Times article right, that's been Dell policy since Day One, but there are ways to do that, and there are ways to muck it up. It appears that Dell managed to find the latter with its corporate choices, and thus is reaping the negative results. It's a topic for another piece that I'll never write, but the over-emphasis on This Quarter Is All That Matters can't be helped by the presence of economists and financial analysts sticking their noses everywhere, constantly demanding higher profits, lower costs, and growth, and everything-else-be-damned-so-long-as-there's-GROWTH. Hello, Jim Kramer and Larry Kudlow.
Enh. I doubt anything I've hammered out here would dissuade Mr. Auster or his correspondents, so let me leave you with a valuable maxim that kind of guides my dealings with Indo-Pakistani technical support: "Politeness helps". Outsourcing is a dastardly thing and I don't care for it (or the exporting of our industry to Red China) but that doesn't confer upon the citizen a license to be rude and hostile to some poor sap on the other end of the line in God-only-knows-where, India.
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NB: I am not encouraged by the account of Michael Dell wanting to "turbocharge growth" by acquiring small companies. You could ask the shade of Stuart Saunders whether buying up small companies like Executive Jet did much for the growth of the Penn Central Company.
Posted by Country Pundit at September 9, 2007 01:04 PM | TrackBack