Vivid Curiosity

So the Adamo By Dell micro-site is pretty cool. I definitely like the positioning. I like the high fashion models, the black & white look and feel. I even like the navigation bars: Discover, Admire, Commit. When was the last time a nav-bar alone made me want to click on the buy page? Though I wish you could order right on the page rather than having to go to dell.com. I like how the main co-branding is Adamo by Dell. Because in this case, Adamo is sexy and has some social currency to it. Dell is just along for the ride.

The story behind the product is nice (according to the marketing video), it definitely defines its own space. It seems to scoff at being compared with a MacBook Air. They’ve strayed away from Apple’s all white, smooth finished look and gone with different textures and patterns. But they definitely have some subtle direct hits against other premium laptops.

Adamo has enough ports to be productive, it isn’t flimsy or ‘too light’. (or ‘like a toy’ as they put it). They call the materials honest, and say they have a temperature to them. All in all, this laptop has soul. I liked the m1330 (yes I have one, so perhaps I’m biased) and this is a great follow up. I’ve been wondering who was going to step up to Apple. I think Dell is hitting its stride in both this design and marketing campaign. Now where are some sexy commercials…

I had to talk to a Dell customer service rep today. I enjoy the chat feature, it lets me do other things while I am talking to customer service and I don’t get put on hold. The first person, Tim, wasn’t very good. He took a long time to respond, and wasn’t very helpful. Luckily I was disconnected and was got Sam. Sam was knowledgable, friendly, helpful and I filled out a survey just to say how great he was.

At the end I thought it would be nice if I could request Sam again when I needed customer service help. It would be an interesting customer service model, but I realized most companies hope their products are good enough where customer service isn’t needed minimally.

So I think it would be much better if customer service established a relationship with customers and was proactive about helping them. Since computers come bundled with huge amounts of software anyways, why not write some of it for customer service annoucements. Why not invest money and make it extremely useful. Tell me about known product issues, updates, new drivers, let me know about upgrades or peripherials. All limited to actually be useful. You can probably glean what I’m interested in pretty easily, or just ask.

A few reminders or good advice and guess where I’m going to start my laptop hunt the next time around? (Or even when a friend asks me)