Let me start with a warning: this post is probably going to be nothing more than a rant and will most likely not provide much value in terms of managed services commentary but with any luck it will serve you as a warning to proactively step up and take notice.
We lost our first client to Dell Managed Services today and it sucks!! (by the way I will probably say a bunch of not nice stuff about Dell in this post as well and wonder if their blog team will show up to try and defend them)
The client is a manufacturing company that has been with us a little over a year (we take great pride that our average client has been with us 3.5 years) and has always been a bit hard to wrangle. You know the kind of customer that calls you at 2am on a Sunday night to tell you their network is down and by 10am Monday morning it has become clear that their internet line has been shut off due to them not paying the bill and somehow you are to blame for the business interruption because it takes Verizon 48 hours to do anything…
So needless to say our relationship was not at the level we like it to be but our account team was actively working on gaining first position with the client. And yet it was difficult, the client never seemed to have enough time to talk to us about their business or technology needs and never really provided much insight into how we were doing as their technology provider.
The last communication from the main contact despite repeated attempts to setup a call from our Client Services team and our Project team was that he wanted us to purchase a server and have it sent to the office. As you can imagine if any of your clients asked you to “purchase a server and send it to their office” you would try to get in touch with them to talk about what they are doing with the server at a minimum, never mind helping them think strategically about IT, so you would know how to spec the system appropriately.
This is where I think we all need to learn a lesson: Dell is actively calling and marketing to anyone that has ever purchased anything from them……. I know, this is not news, they have been doing this since launching their managed services and I for one have always held the position that they will never be able to provide the same level of service, personal interaction, and support that you or I can provide. I still believe this to this day, in fact the organizations I have spoken with that have used Dells service have reported exactly what we all have been talking about since Dell first launched their service, things such as: you get stuck talking to techs that do not know you, they have strict limitations on what they will and will not help you with, bla bla bla, who cares because that is not the important part. Their service could suck and it would not matter because of how top of mind they are making their service.
Think about this, your happy customers will never leave you for Dell, in fact your sort of happy customers will probably never leave you for Dell, but your unhappy today customers can click a button while purchasing a PC or server and be gone….
Unhappy today customers are customers that have experience a service bump and you are working to restore their faith in your service, we all have them. Heck you have probably gone through something like this with your best customers considering managed services is a lot like a marriage: there will be disagreement, fights, and even times of doubt but if both sides are committed to making it work in the long run things always move back to a good place.
The problem is what just happened today, my customer was not out looking to replace my service (by the way he was a $60k annual customer not including project work) he was simply going through a “not happy today” time period. He was not excited about the 48 hour business interruption no matter who’s fault it was and he had sent us an email to buy him a server that in his mind we had not had delivered yet. When he got to the point of frustration about the server where he called Dell to buy it himself they got him. He was in a place that allowed them to move him from my service to their service today.
That is the major problem we all need to be aware of with Dell’s marketing power (they recently launched Pro Managed Services or something like that as well for SaaS solutions by the way), their access to customers when purchasing hardware, and their list of all clients that have ever bought anything from them it is easy for them to be top of mind. And top of mind is what we all want to be when any small business owner is “not happy today” about their IT. That is the moment we win customers, the moment they are willing to make a change even though they may have had six previous years of good service with their provider, it is just that time.
I don’t believe my client would have gone out and shopped for new providers given his level of “not happy today” with our service. I believe we would have worked through the issues and been his long term provider but given the option to click a button when purchasing his server or check a box on his contract with no shopping or thinking he took it………
Two lessons I take away from this (yes I know we f’ed up building our relationship and we need to fix that as well):
- Keep your customer’s away from purchasing anything Dell – I know it sounds silly but if you so much as ship something to your customers address they have them and they will start marketing to them.
- Be more aware than ever of your “not happy today” customers and quickly move them back to happy. I know we all do this but you have to admit that there are customers you know are going through this period and you know will come around eventually so maybe you are not very panicked or urgent about it. Lose that attitude, build a program that allows you to put an overwhelming effort into fixing any “not happy today” customers right away and if you are not successful let them go. It is becoming too easy for customers to jump ship with the click of a button.
I am not trying to paint Dell as the evil empire I just had one of those moments today where I sat back with my team and asked the question “how in the hell did we lose a customer to Dell managed services” and thought i would share my thoughts.
As always comments and feedback are appreciated.
Josh
