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HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

arstechnica.com

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Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#111

Post by gopher_space »

anonymars wrote: post #66
cjs_ac wrote: post #18

The danger in assuming that all your customers who request support are the sort of person who couldn't empty water from a boot with instructions written on the heel is that all of your competent customers will seek out your more respectful competitors, leaving you with only those who couldn't empty the boot, thus maximising your support costs.

Similarly when layoffs hit and morale gets low, guess what caliber of employee is going to jump ship and which is going to stay?

Everyone knows morale is a dump stat... if you don't track consequences.

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#112

Post by justin66 »

ryukoposting wrote: post #54

My first thought was "wow, those assholes." But my second thought was... how did they make their PBX do that? Is this actually a feature that PBX vendors ship?

I mean, any system has the ability to play a message before putting the call into a queue. Make the message fifteen minutes of muzak…

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#113

Post by tiagod »

ryukoposting wrote: post #54

My first thought was "wow, those assholes." But my second thought was... how did they make their PBX do that? Is this actually a feature that PBX vendors ship?

Many call centers have these privacy messages that play before you're actually put on hold. Just use the same feature with a 15min of waiting music.

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#114

Post by marcosdumay »

gopher_space wrote: post #111
anonymars wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly when layoffs hit and morale gets low, guess what caliber of employee is going to jump ship and which is going to stay?

Everyone knows morale is a dump stat... if you don't track consequences.

Well, you can't measure it, so it can't matter.

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#115

Post by BobaFloutist »

dwedge wrote: post #104
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no breaking through it because those LLM replies are not tweaked for 5 year olds due to managerial decree, they're tweaked for the average callers to those support departments due to cold hard reality. If 99 out of 100 callers are wrong, are frustrated, and don't know how to clear their cookies, and then you call in, they'll treat you like those 99. Even if you're correct, just cheerfully trying to be helpfu…

Is this not begging the question that 99 out of 100 were wrong? This totally depends if the aim is the solve problems or to reduce support costs - which are not necessarily the same thing. If only 1% of tickets ever got past level 1 then okay but I doubt this is the case in most places. And if you already tried to fix your issue online there is nothing more frustrating than being told to do so repeatedly while on hol…

Maybe the online FAQ/support flow should give you a one-time skip-the-line code that you append to the phone number or something.

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#116

Post by BobaFloutist »

iinnPP wrote: post #26

I worked HP CS in Highschool and during my time there I created a HTML/JS replacement for a unbearably slow tree system that made a 10+ second network call every single question(often 20+ questions and a tree copy was required for notes). Mine was instant. They fired me for it because my AHT flagged me and it made someone look bad. At that point (this is at Windows Vista launch) the minimum hold was 25 minutes all da…

>my AHT flagged me

Is that "American Hairless Terrier" or "Aldershot Railway Station"?

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#117

Post by soopypoos »

oofbey wrote: post #36
iinnPP wrote: post #26

I worked HP CS in Highschool and during my time there I created a HTML/JS replacement for a unbearably slow tree system that made a 10+ second network call every single question(often 20+ questions and a tree copy was required for notes). Mine was instant. They fired me for it because my AHT flagged me and it made someone look bad. At that point (this is at Windows Vista launch) the minimum hold was 25 minutes all da…

AHT?

Assistant Head Teacher

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#118

Post by eru »

dehrmann wrote: post #89
omcnoe wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. You can see these exact same market dynamics at work in the mobile telco industry. Newer online only upstarts able to save on costs because they don’t operate a retail store you can visit to get help resetting your email password.

One time, I needed this. I lost my phone with a physical SIM card and needed a replacement that day. Now I'm trying to remember the eSIM transfer flow to know if this is still an issue. But also, which MVNO should you go to? Carriers supposedly prioritize their own customers, so it feels a bit like running on spot instances.

> But also, which MVNO should you go to? Carriers supposedly prioritize their own customers, so it feels a bit like running on spot instances.

If you are so paranoid, just get multiple SIMs? Most phones support that these days, especially multiple eSIM. And the plans are really cheap (at least where I live).

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#119

Post by BobaFloutist »

lambdaone wrote: post #32

What a fantastic company HP used to be, back in the day. They led the way in scientific equipment and calculators, and even desktop computers for a brief moment. They even made PostScript laser printers that were built like tanks and were a by-word for reliability. Now they are just famous for being the printer brand everyone hates, and this is just scraping the bottom out of an already empty barrel.

>Now they are just famous for being the printer brand everyone hates

They're not bad for $300-500 upgradeable Costco/Best Buy laptops, especially since Dell has deteriorated and Chromebooks exited their honeymoon period at escape velocity.

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#120

Post by massysett »

ssl-3 wrote: post #97
Clent wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the opposite though? Having a store for the customer to get face-to-face support is sometimes necessary even those who prefer it all to be online. It acts as a stop gap to people otherwise low support customers. The newer upstarts you mention are self selecting for customers who would do everything they can to never make a support call. They are just another form of having a 15 minute wait time because onl…

Centralizing support generally saves money. There's a lot of reasons for this. One of them is that it tends to be a lot cheaper to have one building in Denver to host support people than to have many buildings in every city. Besides that concept, they're selling telephone and data services. It makes sense to -- you know -- make use of them. When we had a telephone issue back in the landline days, we didn't load ourse…

Yeah, but Baby Bell would dispatch a technician to your house if needed.
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