Service seems to be something of a theme for this week’s issue of
IT Weekly
, with both Dell and power specialist APC announcing plans for regional service centres. Both companies will be basing the centres in Dubai, allowing them to provide their customers with top quality support.
Putting the words ‘Dell’ and ‘top quality support’ in the same paragraph is not something that has been a regular occurrence of late: the PC giant is more used to taking flak for its customer service levels.
Not always fairly, the firm is keen to point out. As one of its senior executives was keen to stress to
IT Weekly
this week, the company has actually done pretty well with supporting some of its larger customers around the world – where it has generated bad publicity has been in its consumer operations.
Even with its consumer customers, Dell has delivered better service in the EMEA region than in the US – part of the reason why its former EMEA head, Paul Bell, is now taking charge of the Americas region for the firm.
However, Dell has had, by anybody’s standards, a terrible time of it recently. January’s resignation of CEO Kevin Rollins (pictured) – and the resumption of those duties by Michael Dell himself – was intended to draw a line under those problems.
Last week’s news that the firm’s own internal review of its accounting procedures has found “evidence of misconduct” suggests that it is very far from out of the woods yet.
For Middle East customers, the good news is that the review of customer operations that Rollins himself initiated – as part of last year’s Dell 2.0 strategy – looks to be bearing fruit and is helping the computer manufacturer to deliver better service here in the region. It remains to be seen whether those reviews will help Dell itself.
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