81–90 of 249 posts
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
In high school I worked at a VAR that had partnerships with HP, among others (Cisco, Microsoft, etc). Our partnership gave us access to a special support line where a fluent English speaker picked up quickly, talked to you like you had seen a computer before, didn't enforce a script, and issued a return authorization with minimal hassle. At that time, only Amazon came close on the consumer side.
I don't even think if singling out Dell is useful. Most US companies have long decided that providing good customer support is a drag on revenue and that you can get away with not providing it if the product is problem-free for 99% of your users. Have you tried calling UPS with an atypical problem? Bank of America? United? It's all the same, and the thing is, you don't find out until you actually have a problem with…
> 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…
Someone presumably pitched this idea within HP and other people agreed it was something they should try. I guess probably HP didn't put its best and brightest in charge of call centres but still, isn't that sort of amazing? I wonder if it's the same people who eventually decided it was a bad idea after all, or whether some other group discovered what was happening and got them to stop.
The hope is always that you figure it out autonomously.
Someone presumably pitched this idea within HP and other people agreed it was something they should try. I guess probably HP didn't put its best and brightest in charge of call centres but still, isn't that sort of amazing? I wonder if it's the same people who eventually decided it was a bad idea after all, or whether some other group discovered what was happening and got them to stop.
I would imagine that most people who call are doing so because the "online help" can't help them. People want their problem fixed as quickly as possible, no-one wants to call a call centre.
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.
But also, which MVNO should you go to? Carriers supposedly prioritize their own customers, so it feels a bit like running on spot instances.
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.