- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/44521973
EDIT: This happened back in 2025. Will leave as I’m sure I’m not the only one that didn’t know, but I saw it on hacker news and didn’t realize it was a year old. My bad.
In an odd approach to trying to improve customer tech support, HP allegedly implemented mandatory, 15-minute wait times for people calling the vendor for help with their computers and printers in certain geographies.
Callers from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Ireland, and Italy were met with the forced holding periods, The Register reported on Thursday. The publication cited internal communications it saw from February 18 that reportedly said the wait times aimed to “influence customers to increase their adoption of digital self-solve, as a faster way to address their support question. This involves inserting a message of high call volumes, to expect a delay in connecting to an agent and offering digital self-solve solutions as an alternative.”
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Just venting that Aruba, owned by HPE, needed me to set up an sftp server for their product. But, they needed shell access. Also, limiting that shell access to just sftp wasn’t ok…?
Bruh you sure you dont just need a VM? What are we doing here…?
HP = Has Problems
This is the kind of corporate bullshit that I pray the EU will pounce on and skin them alive for.
This needs to be met with a fine that is a % of global revenue. It’s the only language they understand.
More like they realized they don’t have the leverage to pull this off like they did in the past. I mean, who would’ve thought that imposing shit would piss off your customer enough to tank your market cap.
I’ve hated HP as a company for almost two decades. They still aren’t proving me wrong
Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line to speak to one of our skeleton staff, who are insufficient for our call volume and we know that, but it would be expensive to fix so fuck you. Your current place in line is 69.
Nice.
A 2023 analysis of laptop tech support conducted by Laptop Mag scored HP support highest when accessed via phone (18 points out of a max of 30) or via HP’s support website (12 out of 20 points)…
Um, those still aren’t very good numbers.
No doubt the support was strategically wound back until it was cheaper and just above a failing grade.
This is interesting as every call center I have worked or been involved with has always had metrics of hold times and a whole group of managers doing call forecasting and manipulating schedules to ensure a target of average hold times, average handle times, and average not ready states for their workers. I feel like HP is taking heat for something that every single company is guilty of. All companies want to encourage self-service, to the point of eliminating tools for agents to assist the customer, forcing them to refer the customer back to the app or website to complete transactions. Callcenter workers are a constant cost center and companies are trying anything to avoid paying.
