Dell – El Salvador: My longest blog to date.

So I just got back from my trip to San Salvador, El Salvador on an information seeking trip to help my Integrating the Lean Enterprise group a basic understanding of Dell’s Customer Service Call Center. We are working with Dell to help them understand and develop their lean culture at their El Salvador location so as to help create the model lean call center for all of Dell. What a great trip we had though…

Day 1 - We left early Sunday morning and arrived in San Salvador, via Miami, by noon local time. Flying into San Salvador, we flew along the Pacific coast where we saw the best surfing in Central America, the coast of El Salvador. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to even make it to the beach let alone go learn to surf…maybe next time! We were met at the airport by a driver who took us to our hotel – the Sheraton Presidente. As soon as we made it to the hotel, the rain and thunderstorms started. I really enjoy thunderstorms, so I was excited to experience one in El Salvador. After relaxing in the hotel for a little while, my teammate and I headed out on the town to go and see San Salvador. Our hotel was located next door to the museum of modern art so we decided to venture in but unfortunately it appeared closed due to construction. Instead, we decided to head on down to the Anthropological Museum. It too seemed closed, but eventually we figured out how to buy tickets and how to get into the exhibits, which were all in Spanish. It was very interesting to try and understand all the different semi-technical Spanish that isn’t taught in Spanish 1 or 2, but somehow we got by. After the museum, we decided to walk downtown and see the Metropolitan Cathedral – it took 50 years to build and the façade was designed by a famous El Salvadorean artist Fernando Llort (more on him later). After seeing the Cathedral we walked around downtown San Salvador and took in the sights and sounds of the street markets that flowed from the Plaza Barrios in front of the Cathedral. As the sun was setting and the vendors were packing up their belongings, we caught a cab and headed back to the hotel. Once back at the hotel, we discovered from the concierge how to get into the art museum and so we decided to head over and see everything. A small but great exhibit was on show and we had a good time seeing the museum. We were pretty exhausted after our day of travelling and sightseeing, so we decided to have dinner at the hotel and then called it a night.

Day 2 – Monday morning we had a breakfast meeting arranged with the Director of the El Salvador site and our local Dell contact. After discussing the scope of our project, we made our way to the Dell facility where we were quickly engrossed in interviews and learning about the call center space. Neither of us had ever worked with a call center before and I must say that it is VERY impressive: lots of people, data and information all travelling around at a fast pace to try and service customers in the best possible way. With all of my previous history, I was actively comparing the space to a manufacturing facility – there are many similarities, but at the same time there are many unique differences. After a full day of getting our feet wet, we headed back to the hotel tired and full of new information. After relaxing for a bit and checking in with Alicia, we headed out to a “typical” Salvadorean restaurant called Alo Heustra. Delicious food, but I don’t necessarily agree that it was typical due to the sheer fact that they had no pupusas on the menu. Just for those of you who don’t know, pupusas are the national food of El Salvador. There are pupuserias on the sidewalks and all over town and every El Salvadorean eats them at least twice a week (at least that is what our contact said). Also, over the course of these two days, I have now found my favorite beer, Bahia. It is made in San Salvador and is awesome. If anyone knows where I can find this beer in the States, please let me know. Just for the beer aficionados it is a beer similar to Corona, but oh so much better. On our return trip, my teammate laughed at me as we were eating – down to my last sip of beer, I said “Goodbye, my friend” and finished off my drink. I think I had the last laugh though as she almost had beer go through her nose because she was laughing so hard. Anyway, let’s get back to the rest of the trip.

Day 3 – Tuesday morning we were met and taken back to the Dell center. The day was packed with more interviews and when we had a minute we were able to sit down with some of the call center agents and the call center operations agents to see what they did. This was a great learning experience for me. By “side-jacking” with an agent, I was able to hear the whole call and problem resolution and let me just say that we, as Americans, need some work on how to be polite. I was embarrassed for me and for America as I stood there listening to these calls while a great employee, and I will say that every single person that I met on this trip was exceptionally kind and talented, took it all in stride and still helped the customer out – I know that I wouldn’t be able to stand it for long. Anyway, I just want to urge you all that the next time you make a call, treat everyone you talk to as you would like to be treated. Hopefully, if you all take these words of advice you will make many people (not just the employees I met) much happier. After another long day at Dell, our contact took us out to dinner at Arbol de Dios, one of the best pupuserias in town. We ran into another Dell employee with an American in tow so we all ate wonderful food together and had a great time hearing and sharing stories – definitely a night to remember! At this restaurant, there was a gallery exhibit of the same artist who designed the Cathedral. He had a couple of paintings for sale and I purchased two of them. I’d love to post them for you all to see as they have a great style and wonderful colors, but unfortunately I can’t. I can however suggest that you look up Fernando Llort on-line to see if he has any paintings on there. I can however share a photo of the façade of the Cathedral (see the photo above) so you can have some idea of his work (though the paintings are a very different style). After dinner, my teammate and I worked late into the night getting our interview questions as well as an on-line survey in order for our half-day on Wednesday. After a late night, we headed to bed.

Day 4 – Woke up early to pack and get everything in order for our return trip to the States. We made our way back to Dell and spent the morning in an interview with a Lean Change Agent (“I met Captain Kaizen”) who was a delight to talk to. He was very positively focused on his lean actions and was rolling out his own ideas to help influence the lean culture at Dell – I must say he was a great spokesperson for lean at the facility and hopefully he will be able to help us (and us help him) throughout our project. After our meeting, we made a trip to a local bakery to pick up some semitas (two layers of a pastry filled in with a jelly of your choice) and quesadillas (different from the Mexican quesadilla, but I haven’t had it yet so I don’t know how it differs) to bring home to share with our friends and family. We then headed back to the office for our last interview of the day and then took off to go to the airport.

Follow-up: What an amazing trip we had. It was my first experience with being a consultant and it was especially interesting in that I got to visit another country to do so. Though there are nicer places in El Salvador than the capital, I must say that everyone I met was amazingly kind, intelligent and full of energy – even in the call center where they are exposed to high stress and irritated customers, even there they had an amazing ability to have fun. Definitely a trip to remember and I hope to head back down to El Salvador to see the rest of the country and to see how our project results are implemented!

I’ll have photos up in the next couple of days, so please come back soon.

More later…