Being a hero at Dell?

Just back from a very relaxing week, I wanted to give you a quick heads-up on this interesting "Dark Days at Dell" Business Week article. It reinforces our analysis that something geared reverse to customer satisfaction was happening, infringing many Marketing 2.0 basic rules. Refer to Marketing 2.0 mistakes: Dell and AOL in turmoil and Don't you ever get Dell'd! chapter 2 if you missed the previous posts about it.

One major statement from Dell's CEO Kevin Rollins gave me the clue I was looking for: "Being a hero at Dell means saving money." did he say to Business Week back in 2003. If that is all it takes to be a hero and if this is the critical mission coming from your CEO, you bet customer satisfaction can only go South. Despite spending $115M to improve customer service, you can read further details in the article, nothing to me will really change at Dell before a probable new CEO states: "Being a hero at Dell means overwhelming customers expectations."

After all, one of the main ingredient in Michael Dell's original recipe for success was about highly considering customers and their desire for PCs, providing valuable guidance and relevant customized offers vs competition always considering PC buyers as dummies with over priced and over featured packages.