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

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

#61

Post by imzadi »

_2d30 wrote: post #58
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…

If yours was instant, why would your AHT decline? Shouldn’t you be way faster? On many questions you would have saved over 3mins on network calls alone.

I believe they are saying their AHT went down (calls take less time) which made other people with longer handle times look bad.

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

#62

Post by canucker2016 »

Do HP and Boeing recruit from the same candidate pools/train using the same employee manuals???

I was going to say that the Hewlett and Packard families should ask that the company stop using their family names, but a quick glance at the company website and I only see "HP" used.

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

#63

Post by iinnPP »

imzadi wrote: post #61
_2d30 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If yours was instant, why would your AHT decline? Shouldn’t you be way faster? On many questions you would have saved over 3mins on network calls alone.

I believe they are saying their AHT went down (calls take less time) which made other people with longer handle times look bad.

The AHT value indeed went down 3 minutes below the average, which is generally a good thing so long as you are doing everything well still. All outliers get checked and mine was the lowest. I was honest about the tool, including that it was offline. Their supposed policy was no personal tools and as it was during "probation" (first 90 days in Ontario), they could fire without cause, and did, immediately.

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

#64

Post by imzadi »

xg15 wrote: post #49

> Some HP workers were reportedly unhappy with the mandatory hold times, with an anonymous “insider” in HP’s European operations reportedly telling The Register, per its Thursday report: “Many within HP are pretty unhappy [about] the measures being taken and the fact those making decisions don’t have to deal with the customers who their decisions impact.” Sounds to me like some customers who did get through after the…

As someone who has worked in a call center, it's not just that they complain, but they complain a lot and become much more difficult to work with. A customer who has been on hold for a long time can take twice as long to resolve because they spend so much time complaining and refusing to do what you ask them to do.

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

#65

Post by f_devd »

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?

Wouldn't be surprised if they have their own internal PBX system with a SIP trunk

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

#66

Post by anonymars »

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?

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

#67

Post by temporallobe »

imzadi wrote: post #64
xg15 wrote: post #49

> Some HP workers were reportedly unhappy with the mandatory hold times, with an anonymous “insider” in HP’s European operations reportedly telling The Register, per its Thursday report: “Many within HP are pretty unhappy [about] the measures being taken and the fact those making decisions don’t have to deal with the customers who their decisions impact.” Sounds to me like some customers who did get through after the…

As someone who has worked in a call center, it's not just that they complain, but they complain a lot and become much more difficult to work with. A customer who has been on hold for a long time can take twice as long to resolve because they spend so much time complaining and refusing to do what you ask them to do.

Yeah it’s almost like purposely frustrating people has negative consequences, which HP completely overlooked.

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

#68

Post by Clent »

omcnoe wrote: post #59
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.

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.

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 online only is it's own customer service barrier.

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

#69

Post by ryukoposting »

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.

It is staggering how much HP has fallen from grace. I don't think a lot of people my age even know.

If you're a late millennial/early zoomer, you probably know IBM had a sort of "golden age" from the 1960s through the 1980s. You also know AT&T was a juggernaut (even if you can't imagine the scale of "Ma Bell").

HP though? Nobody my age knows how great HP was in the '90s unless they're either a retro computing nerd, or an EE who knows the Agilent/Keysight lore.

The timeline makes it all the more surprising. HP's glory days were the 1990s! A decade after AT&T and IBM were clearly declining! Somehow the recency doesn't play in HP's favor.

They torched their reputation so quickly and so thoroughly that I can't think of any comparisons. As far as I know, the only companies who did it faster were fraudsters, the Enrons and FTXes of the world.

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

#70

Post by duskdozer »

imzadi wrote: post #64
xg15 wrote: post #49

> Some HP workers were reportedly unhappy with the mandatory hold times, with an anonymous “insider” in HP’s European operations reportedly telling The Register, per its Thursday report: “Many within HP are pretty unhappy [about] the measures being taken and the fact those making decisions don’t have to deal with the customers who their decisions impact.” Sounds to me like some customers who did get through after the…

As someone who has worked in a call center, it's not just that they complain, but they complain a lot and become much more difficult to work with. A customer who has been on hold for a long time can take twice as long to resolve because they spend so much time complaining and refusing to do what you ask them to do.

Wow, you mean to say intentionally pissing off people who are already probably pissed off makes them more difficult to work with? That doesn't sound right.
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