Foo Infusion

A periodic infusion of foo from the world of a junior developer

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Customer Segmentation

I forget if that's the 'official' term for this or not. I just read an article on the other Joel's website about how Dell's website sucks because of its insistance on classifying you as soon as you get through the gate: you're either a home customer, a small business customer, or a large business customer.

I agree with him that this is stupid, and it's going to bite them in the a$$ before too long (I think the same can be said for MSFTs new 'a zillion models' scheme for Vista, BTW).

Something I DON'T agree with though, is the way people like Joel (smart people - he's one of the smartest I can think of) complain about this, and don't do anything about it.

He says:
Somehow Apple and IBM/Lenovo have been happy to sell computers on the Internet to people without needing to know their "customer type."
Whenever we buy servers from Dell, even though they eventually offer us a price that beats the competition, we still have to spend a week or two negotiating, gathering competitive bids, etc. By the time we place our order the price we pay is about 20% to 30% less than the price advertised on the web, and we're still not sure if we could have paid less.
I'd love to just order the damn servers from their website, clicking on the links to configure it. Dell would have my money sooner and wouldn't have to pay any sales people to talk to me on the phone. But you've trained me to negotiate every time if I don't want to pay the sucker price, so now I have no choice.
And lo and behold, there is another answer - a solution to every gripe on his list, and he even *almost* mentions the answer in his prolouge leading up to his real problem. And yet he doesn't see it.

I know the XServes have their own shortcomings (I don't think they have redundant power supplies, for instance - which is arguably a pretty important feature) but it's ridiculous for people to completely overlook them ALL THE TIME.

If/when I need server class hardware it won't be a question as to which piece of hardware I will buy - not because I have a penchant for Apple's hardware, but because it's pretty damn good, and very very cheap compared to the competition. Plus, no haggling or customer classification.