It’s been a year since we started providing technical support via web chat for our US Business customers, specifically for desktops, notebooks, electronics/accessories, and printers. Time flies when you’re…busy.
We grew quickly, finishing the year at 3x initial volumes. It was a crazy year of learning—how much pent up demand existed, how much the agents could handle, was the site prepared. This is not Dell’s first foray into tech support chat; Consumer tech support started chatting in August 2004. We were lucky to be able to take advantage of some of their lessons learned, but still had challenges along the way.
Through our online surveys, you told us you like:
- staying online for help,
- the ease of use and navigation to chat,
- getting a written copy of your communication,
- getting links pushed to you online,
- utilization of DellConnect as an extension of the online capability.
We’ve also heard from you on the frustrations
- dropped/disconnected chats,
- not enough agents handling chats,
- agents handling too many chats at once,
- the ability of some of our agents to resolve issues,
- lack of support for globally traveling customers.
We don’t have everything fixed, but are working on chat tool stability improvements, ensuring we have enough of the right agents to meet demand, and working globally to provide chat support regardless of your home country or current location.
And by the way, US Consumer and Business tech support chat are not alone in the Dell chat world. In 2006, our Dell Europe partners launched web chat for some product lines in English, Dutch, French, German and Swedish languages, with plans to launch Spanish and Italian later in 2007. In Asia, we launched web chat for China and India (limited product lines), with support to the rest of Asia to be launched in 2007. In Latin America, Spanish, Portuguese, and English language support all launched in 2006 as well.
US Consumer Customer Service also offers chat support, and has recently expanded to include our Small Business and ATG customers.
US Consumer sales chat has been available for close to two years now. It is also available for US Employee Purchase customers and Canada Consumer Sales. We also have plans to roll out in Dell Europe (Consumer) and have a pilot in Norway that started in November. Development is currently underway for sales chat in Asia.
Dell has a dedicated and passionate group of people globally that are focused on growing the channel and improving the customer experience through increased resolution and effectiveness.
Next time you need to contact Dell, consider using chat @ http://support.dell.com/chat. Check it out, and let us know what you think.