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HP ditches 15-minute wait time policy due to 'feedback'
- blenderob 2y agoWho even comes up with these bizarre ideas? I cannot believe ideas like this are not only proposed in a professional setting but also approved and implemented! Are we living in a bizarro-world?
- cgcrob 2y agoEvery time I talk to an MBA grad I hear stuff like this spoken about enthusiastically. I suspect that they moved the business ethics bit to the elective part of the course.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoI suspect an adult willing to do these kinds of things is not going to change their ways due to an ethics course.
- Mountain_Skies 2y agoThe best likely outcome of ethics classes is for it to give good people who are naive about the business world some forewarning about dilemmas they're likely to face so they can be prepared to do what's necessary to preserve their integrity and not get caught up in the (possible fake) urgency of the moment.
- amarcheschi 2y agoBold of you to assume there is one
- elaus 2y agoIt worked great until the information about the policy got leaked AND made headlines around the world. I'm sure a lot of this stuff is going on which doesn't make it to the HN front page and therefore goes on for years, marginall increasing profits while actively harming customers.
- Mountain_Skies 2y agoThat's probably the key here. The fifteen minute minimum wasn't disclosed to customers, they were made to think there were a bunch of other customers ahead of them in the call queue. Once word got out that the waits were artificially inflated, that's when customers went from annoyed to angry.
- pixl97 2y agoA secret like this can be kept for a while, but support turnover is generally pretty high and after they quit/are fired your secrets will leak.
- dade_ 2y agoIt’s not unusual to add a few minutes wait time for customers that didn’t input their data into the system, or for lower priority customers (ones without a support contract for example). What HP did is just incompetent management. Anyone that works in CC would advice against his strongly. Handle time will go up as every call will start with a complaint about the long wait time, agents will disengage and have higher absenteeism, supervisors will be stressed & angry about it. Brand damage is priceless though. Bravo.
- baggachipz 2y ago> Are we living in a bizarro-world? _Glances around everywhere, winces_ But seriously, how isolated and idiotic does an entire room of people need to be in order to do something like this? Did they not think the internet would go apeshit over such a policy? Was the cost-savings of people giving up on the support line worth this bad publicity? Anyone with an even slightly realistic view of being a customer would guffaw at such a suggestion. This is nothing but outright contempt for their customers.
- Libcat99 2y agoSupport is looked at as a cost center only. This policy was meant to make people give up, it's literally anti-support.
- bluGill 2y agoSome companies (Ryanair) have a marketing strategy of coming up with stupid ideas once in a while just to keep people talking about them. However it appears they - unlike HP - know they are in a bizarro-world.
- mft_ 2y agoMisaligned incentives. The people who thought this up are clearly not aiming to provide the best-possible customer service. Likely, their goal is cost-saving, with delivery of a minimum-acceptable level of customer service. Let's be honest, very little of HP's activity seems focussed on providing the best-possible anything.
- MrMcCall 2y ago> best-possible anything Shareholder "value", i.e. profit They are, like the vast majority of corporate America, only providing for themselves, and not giving one shit about anyone else, especially their marks, I mean, customers.
- mft_ 2y agoFair point. :) Although I'd propose to optimise the concept to something like "shareholder value, inasmuch as it influences the rewards of the current leadership team, within their likely period of employment".
- IncreasePosts 2y agoEveryone has a budget. Maybe kicking people out to social media or whatever other channel is the best way to make that budget stretch the farthest. Of course, probably what would happen is the savings would be cut from the customer support budget.
- regularfry 2y agoUgh, HP. Such a pain to buy from. They're in my "never again" list.
- elric 2y agoI don't understand why people keep buying HP products - printers in particular. They're awful in every regard. They have zero respect for their users, even after they've over paid for inferior products. They've shown time and time again that they will do everythin within their power to rip you off and screw you over.
- criddell 2y agoHave you used an HP printer lately? I have and I don't think they are awful in every regard. The printers I've used work just fine. The output is clean and the paper handling is good. My current printer at home is a Canon and it's good as well.
- blenderob 2y ago> I have and I don't think they are awful in every regard. I have too. And the printer insisting that I create an account in some "Smart" website and log into it even before I can print anything with it is beyond annoying. I got around the problem by finding some old drivers that I had a backup of. But I suspect most people don't give old drivers around and are forced to go through this "Smart" sign up nonsense!
- macNchz 2y agoI bought a small HP laser printer a couple of years ago, not realizing that the “e” in the model number meant it’d require an HP account and an always on internet connection. I did the initial setup and declined to create an account, after which it successfully printed 20 pages before refusing to print anything other than a sheet of paper telling me I needed to create an HP account and finish setting it up with the app. There was absolutely no way it would print without an HP account, and, even if I’d made one, it’d actually refuse to print if it ever didn’t have an internet connection (even over USB). Naturally it’d taken me three weeks or so to print the twenty pages and it was outside the return window, but it made me so upset that I just put it away and bought a new printer from a manufacturer that’s not overtly hostile. HP lost me as a customer for life with that thing, and actually made me a vocal critic. The print quality wasn’t as good as I’d hoped for a laser printer, either.
- blindriver 2y agoHP used to be the gold star standard of what Silicon Valley company was like. They treated their employees and customers so well. Now they are just about as anti-customer as I’ve ever seen. I blame Carly fiorina for gutting company culture. I encourage everyone to stay far away from any HP product and let this zombie company finally die.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 29athrowaway 2y agoOh let me check. Is she an MBA? Ah, that's why. Most engineers as leaders don't ruin companies, MBAs as leaders do.
- bluGill 2y agoYou need MBAs in your company to keep the leaders grounding in reality. Someone needs to watch the bottom line and say "hey support is costing us $$$" - however MBAs seem to look to cost cutting now vs an investment. That is if support is costing dollars increasing quality is often an answer, but it is something you have to do 5 years in advance.
- 29athrowaway 2y agoNo, you don't. You need MBAs to reduce everything to money and extract every penny out of processes and people making everyone sad, unsafe, sick, impoverished, etc. It is planet and civilization destructing mindset. Have you noticed how MBAs have never created anything? They always take credit for unsustainable short term gains that destroy great companies and present it as a success case? Like the MBA god Jack Welch, the reason 10% of employees in companies get terminated every year. We don't need MBAs for the same reason we don't need to believe in horoscopes, or put a colony of termites in our house.
- MrMcCall 2y ago
- DonHopkins 2y ago>We've asked HP to comment. We suspect we'll be waiting longer than 15 minutes. I love The Register.
- fazeirony 2y agoi mean, literally the very first sentence in their statement is a blatant lie that consumers are supposed to just go 'see, they care about us!': "We're always looking for ways to improve our customer service experience." in no universe is putting a mandatory 15min wait on a customer calling for help "improve [our] customer service experience" and if they think it actually does, that person should be summarily terminated from their position for being this stupid. "We're always looking for ways to skirt customer service needs like the big boys at google, et. al., and to maximize our bottom line" is the real translation i guess.
- soared 2y agoI will never buy HP products even harder now.
- MrMcCall 2y ago"This one goes to eleven." --Nigel Tufnel :-)
- vezycash 2y ago"Initial feedback", blatant lie.
- amluto 2y agoAs far as I can tell, the system in the US is worse: I tried to get support for a broken HP laptop that’s still under warranty. The only option I found was to pay to subscribe to a support tier that wouldn’t even obviously help. The warranty tool confirms that there’s a warranty and offers no way to invoke it.
- Schiendelman 2y agoTwo hours of your time: 1) Document several attempts to contact HP. 2) Attempt a credit card chargeback if available. 3) If it's too late, file a small claims case in your local court. Usually online. You will likely win by default.
- valiant55 2y agoWith small claims the trouble isn't winning, it's collecting.
- Schiendelman 2y agoWith a company it's usually trivial. Once they get a judgment they roll immediately as you can use a local court to seize their property.
- rtkwe 2y agoWhat happened when you called main support?
- amluto 2y agoSea of webpages leading to no ability to call anyone. Maybe I’ll try it again and see if it sucks less now.
- rtkwe 2y agoHmm most of their stuff is behind serial numbers now but there are always the old phone numbers listed online you could just jump into those and they'll probably direct you to the right location or give you the right number.
- talkingtab 2y agoThe company reply says "We're always looking for ways to improve our customer service experience". It does not continue as it should: "Clearly we are either the dumbest people on the planet or this is an outright lie. We are not dumb. We hold profit above everything and we already have your money. You could choose to just buy another of our products and be done with it. But noooooooooo. You want us to spend some of our money helping you. As if we care. We don't care. We don't have to care, because we all treat you this way. Get used to it." [edit to give credit: the "we don't have to care" is from the Lily Tomlin skits about Bell Telephone.]
- dpb001 2y agoThis phrase, and probably a handful of others, are assigned to hotkeys on the PR flack’s workstation to save time in situations like this.
- MrMcCall 2y agoPauvre Lavoisier Mais, il n'ya pas de quoi. C'est la vie. C'est la guerre. C'est tout. {Thanks for getting to the root of this issue. Well done, indeed!} "Perfection is perfected." --Snoop Dogg
- petesergeant 2y agoAt a certain size, companies have to start publishing certain things to stay in compliance. I would welcome in the UK/EU for this to include average call wait time for support so I could let it influence my buying decision. Companies can only play games with this because there’s so little transparency and competition in the market can’t work its magic.
- josefritzishere 2y agoA response to bad press, not some natural urge to do the right thing.
- kotaKat 2y agoIs it "feedback" or did some dumbass manager finally realize that the sudden cost of adding 15 additional minutes of toll free termination charges to every holding inbound call was a bad idea? There's more costs to the inbound call than just the labor...
- kube-system 2y agoThe purpose of the 15 minute delay wasn't to add 15 minutes to the call. It was to encourage the caller to terminate the call.
- rtkwe 2y agoYeah they were hoping people would bail out of the call queue and try their other tools by making contacting a human artificially more difficult nd time consuming. My first crack at doing this without being shitty is maybe they could have a priority queue for people who've gone through the self help section, though you'd have to have some measures to try to detect if people just spam "no it's still not working" on every prompt and then maybe drop them into the regular queue.
- anymouse123456 2y agoIt's not possible to create a policy like this without having contempt for your own customers. Please help your family, friends and coworkers avoid getting burnt by the smoldering ashes of this once iconic brand.
- toss1 2y ago>>"We're always looking for ways to improve our customer service experience. ..." That is a load of absolute bullocks. Even if we give HP the benefit of the doubt and grant that they genuinely thought the "digital options" would be better and provide quicker resolution. If you actually care about customer service, you would alert them to the better options and give them real information to encourage them to switch, e.g., while they are on hold tell them "our live chat option typically gives you resolution times 20% quicker than telephone conversations". You do NOT just enshittify your primary option. Sheesh
- ubermonkey 2y agoThat is an astonishing choice to make. I cannot fathom it. Fuck you, HP.
- ubermonkey 2y agoAlso, the whole notion of pushing folks to "social channels" means they want to sell things, but rely on the community to support them -- which is a terrible idea for a consumer good. It BARELY works for very nerdy, enthusiast-based thing. It barely works for open source packages, honestly. But "community based" support for things intended for regular people are uniformly horrible. As exhibits 1 through 1,000,000, I offer any links at all to Microsoft's tech forums.
- 0culus 2y agoBill and Dave would be spinning if they knew what has been done to their formerly great company.
- hnpolicestate 2y agoI can't recall if this breaks the rules bought I bought a Canon PIXMA TS7720 inkjet for $70 and it prints excellent (imo) photos. I use the glossy paper.