Some of you may have seen yesterday’s story that appeared in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required). Our view is that it only tells part of the Dell story. What’s missing is the progress we’re making against four key areas for consumer and small-business customers: post-sales customer experience, sales customer experience, pricing simplification, and improving how we reach customers through marketing.
The online community is important to us. More than half of our consumer customers buy from us through the Internet. You’ll be hearing more from me and other members of the Dell blog team about changes we’re making for the better across the business. Meanwhile, here’s the letter I sent to the Wall Street Journal in response:
Letter to the Editor: “It’s Time for the Full Story”
Wall Street Journal, August 30, 2006
After reading Wednesday’s A-1 story on Dell, we wondered what happened to the other half of the article. To the Journal’s credit, it factually rehashed many of the issues we have acknowledged and addressed for some time. We long have explained how our business is split between corporate and consumer customers, the former comprising about 85 percent of our sales. In fact, we are larger in corporate segments than the next three competitors combined.
What was missing in the story is more fundamental. U.S. consumer customers, like all customers, are important to Dell—we sell more PC’s to them than any other company in the world. They are a part of the reason we widened our lead last quarter to a global industry leading overall share of 19.2 percent. We are quite proud of this result and we are very committed to each and every customer.
Our U.S. Consumer business grew from 6 percent share in 2000 to nearly 29 percent share this past year. This is perhaps the best reflection that consumers believe in the Direct Model. We don’t know a better measure.
Dell is also growing faster than the industry in all high-growth international markets and recently earned the No. 2 share position in Asia and No. 2 in Japan. Critics and pundits may find it interesting to question our model, but customers are not and the results continue to show this progress.
The best is yet to come for our customers, employees and all stakeholders. We look forward to seeing the Journal write the other half of the story soon.
Ro Parra
Sr. VP, Home & Small Business
Dell