For a start, it’s refreshing that Dell is so open to the fact that its support hasn’t always been great. “We’ve obviously not fared too well in your own surveys over the past couple of years,” Griffin said, referring to PC Pro’s annual reliability and service survey, “and it’s something we’re very cognisant of.”

(I’ll interrupt myself here to say that if you haven’t already taken part – and we do rely on a huge number of responses to make our results significant – then you have just over a week to do so. And you’ll be in with a chance of winning one of our £4,500-worth of prizes too.)

I’m not fooling myself. I realise that it took more than a succession of PC Pro surveys to kickstart what Griffin refers to as a “sea change”, and one of those factors was the return of Michael Dell in February 2007.

On his return, Mr Dell seemed none-too-pleased with the drop in customer support – the term Dell Hell became a little too well recognised – and placed renewed emphasis on customer support. So I asked Tim: was Michael happy?

“I think ‘pleased but never satisfied’ would be a reasonable description. He’s pushing me and the team hard as you’d expect [but] this is a company-wide initiative and we’re all on board with it, it’s not something that’s a purely Michael-driven agenda.”

You’d have thought the boss would have been a little bit more than satisfied, because Griffin claims a 90% improvement in customer support. To be precise, he said that Dell’s “net satisfaction score” has increased by “90% in the UK over the last six quarters”.

Now this figure is based on hard facts – Dell receives feedback from 50,000 people a week via online surveys, so it has the data to back it up – and I’m confident it’s true. So how has it achieved such good results?

“One of the things that’s been driving our customers mad is wait times and being transferred,” said Griffin. “We’ve taken out a huge number of transfers in our system and, in that process, obviously delighting the customer with shorter wait times.”

What hasn’t changed is where many of the customer support teams are based. “We use India,” says Griffin, “but they’re not outsourced [contractors] they’re Dell employees [for] warranty-based support.”

Dell employees or not, I pointed out, such call centres are often vilified by customers who have to call them, but Griffin insists they invest in much training. “You’ve got language skills to make sure they’re fully understood, you’ve got technical skills to make sure we can actually fix issues, and then we’ve got customer service training to make sure they’ve got the right empathetic approach.”

But that, said Griffin, isn’t the key. “We find if you fix the issue and fix it fast, and do so with respect, then the ‘where’ becomes a non-issue.”

Of course, this could all be meaningless. If the results of our survey find Dell’s customer support rating lingering in the three-star zone then, so far as we can tell, it’s all talk and no action. And whilst we wait for the results – did I mention you can take part in the survey for another week? – I’d be very interested to hear if your Dell experience matches Tim Griffin’s claims.

But there was one surprisingly pleasant part to the whole process, and it’s surprising because it’s the aspect of moving I dreaded the most: changing my address details with all the service providers that take my money each month.

Without exception, the web-based services I’ve used have been flawless – for example, using the Royal Mail redirection service online is 50 times easier than going into a Post Office (if you can still find one) and filling in a box-ridden form.

But what I’ve found most exceptional is when I actually spoke to people. Perhaps I called on a good day, but my ISP was efficient, friendly and delivered on its promises – not only to attempt to tie in my broadband connection with when my phone number went live, but to monitor the progress and let me know how it went.

It wasn’t just my ISP. I had to ring BT, British Gas, Ecotricity and others, and without fail I was met with a friendly voice and someone who genuinely wanted to help (or at least appeared to – perhaps they’re all jobbing actors).

Perhaps – and this is a tentative perhaps – we’re seeing a change. Companies are focusing on customer service as a differentiator to their rivals, perhaps they’re realising this is the key to their long-term survival. Whatever the motivation, I’ll be interested to see if this is reflected in 2009’s Reliability & Service survey, where PC Pro finds out which IT companies offer the best customer service (and, as the name might just give away, the most reliable products).

Click here if you want to take part in the survey, but I’d also be interested to see if I’m alone in this experience. Is customer service actually getting better as a whole? Or is it just the sunny weather going to everyone’s heads?

Most embarrassing event of the year

The will they, won’t they, courtship between Microsoft and Yahoo was just about the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever seen. Yahoo couldn’t resist Microsoft’s bedroom eyes, but didn’t want to appear cheap, while Microsoft made the old lover’s mistake of seeming overeager. Microsoft proposed, Yahoo said no… for a bit, then yes, but it was too late, Microsoft was shunned and not coming back. Yahoo’s share price is now somewhere south of hell, Yang’s out of a job and Steve Ballmer needs a new plan. Worst first date ever.

Brilliant thing of the year

Tough one this. There were a few brilliant things shortlisted for this award, including Fusion Man’s flight across the channel on a jetwing, the Sony eBook reader and MI6’s decision to advertise on Facebook. The winner, though, is Dropbox. Nothing’s made this much difference to the way I work since the introduction of minimum wage. I work on a file in the office, forget about it, go home and there it is waiting for me. Marvellous stuff. It just works. No fiddling, or hassle. It’s everything technology and innovation is supposed to be, but never quite manages.

Weirdest moment of the year

Stephen Fry is awesome. Simple fact. One moment he’s a silver-tongued sophisticate, charming birds out of trees with prose soft enough to fall asleep on, and the next moment he’s a foul-mouthed fury, breathing fire at Vista in language that sends sailors scurrying back to their bunks. And doing it on Twitter, no less. If anybody says they saw that coming they’re a liar and a brigand, sir, a brigand.

Most soul destroying moment of the year

The destruction of my pen drive. The realisation that I hadn’t backed anything up for three years. The complete lack of sympathy from… well anybody. Lesson well and truly learned.

Thing that nearly made my head explode in 2008

The devil that is my work PC came close, as did those ridiculous self-service machines in Tesco. Ultimately though it was the outrage at the Prime Minister’s comedy dismissal of the Jeremy Clarkson for Prime Minister petition. It was a bandwagon with David Cameron at the wheel, and half a million people with nothing better to do clinging on for dear life. Brown could have appeared at a press conference wearing a Panda’s head for a hat, and it wouldn’t have stoked up such strong feeling. It was funny people. Get a grip.

Me VS the World moment

If you’re going to take a kicking, you might as well make it worthwhile. So, it was with my Gary McKinnon post, which expressed in no uncertain times my utter lack of sympathy for the alleged hacker. Other people, vocal people, have quite a lot. Some of the opinions were eloquent, others were… erm, less eloquent… but none of them have changed my mind. If you put yourself in the way of a car, expect to get run over.

Thing I was utterly wrong about this year

Facebook. Again. Year after year I predict the demise of Fadbook, and year after year, it carries on growing, despite the fact that I’m still not entirely sure what it’s good for. This year, I almost escaped its prodding, pushing, ninja-attacking clutches, only to go on holiday and have all my new-found friends post their snaps on the damn thing. So, I’m back, again, and hating myself for it. The mafia would be easier to leave than Facebook.