Discussion
fancyfredbot: 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.
john_strinlai: >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.”>Even if HP’s telephone support center wasn’t busy, callers would reportedly hear: We are experiencing longer waiting times and we apologize for the inconvenience.i am absolutely positive, without proof of course, that this is an extremely common practice. my isp does the exact same thing with basically the same wording. over the years i have called at all times of the day, all days of the week, across all seasons, and it is always "we are experiencing high call volumes right now. but hey, did you know you can do lots of stuff on the website? go to the website. please use the website".i almost (not really) respect HP for at least admitting to it, rather than all the companies that i suspect are still doing this in the shadows and will never admit to it.
philipallstar: I think it is a common practice, and another I think will be just a static set of times that they play the "higher than average call volumes" message, rather than anything dynamic. I think call centre stuff is incredibly basic, even though the domain isn't that complicated.
jandrese: Even in my internal company tech support line they play that "higher than expected call volumes" message, but their website also has counter on it that tells you just how many people are on hold and even when it is just one (me) it plays that message.
voakbasda: Did they admit to it? Or get caught?
salawat: >i am absolutely positive, without proof of course, that this is an extremely common practice. my isp does the exact same thing with basically the same wording. "sorry, high call volumes right now. but hey, did you know you can do lots of stuff on the website? go to the website. please use the website".Look up Erlang numbers for call centers. We absolutely know how to calculate required reps for a desired queue dwell. It is 100% a voluntary decision to degrade the Call Center to push people to web based automation. Consider this your proof. We have the equations. Executives make the active decision to not use them/use them to shift cost burden.t. Helped implement a Call Center before, and we aimed for sub 5 minute queue dwell at all hours of the day.
jqpabc123: Just further cements HP's position as one of the most anti-consumer multi-national companies in existence.
alnwlsn: You would never suspect they once made some of the world's finest test/scientific equipment.
dsr_: "Best available laptop support" apparently means 18/30 or 12/20.Pretty sure I would consider those both failing grades.
bell-cot: Rome once ruled the greatest empire on earth. Vs. look at the last few centuries of Italian history. Regression to mediocrity seems an inescapable part of human endeavor.
dfxm12: It depends what your goal is. If HP gets charged per call answered, then their goal is to minimize the number of calls they answer. If they see a most of their calls are like "my internet is slow" or the laptop won't turn on because it's not charged up, it's easy to see how this could be approved.
StableAlkyne: They sort of still do!It's just HP and HPE split up. HPE took all the nice enterprise stuff, plus the supercomputing business (they own Cray). HP took the consumer stuff, and proceeded to milk as much as they could.
_ks3e: The spinoff for lab and scientific equipment (Agilent, 1999) happened long before the HP/HPE split (2015).
iinnPP: 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 day.
fifilura: > made someone look badThat, or that it DoS-ed the database.
iinnPP: It was offline.
Foobar8568: Depending of the country, legislation (and changes in them), the waiting time might be taxed as well. So a way to recoup some little costs.
fhn: I'm sure HP is bad but look at Nvidia's support forums. Most questions go unresolved but the close it after 14 days of inactivity and mark it resolved.
oofbey: AHT?
iinnPP: Average Handle Time
kotaKat: (2025)I'm reminded of the Beavis and Butthead episode Tech Support. Why the hell would those two dolts be allowed anywhere near a headset they picked up?"See, Hamid: our goal is to help the customers - of course - but if we're on the phone too long, we don't make any money. We go out of business - and then what will the customers do?"
josefritzishere: Wait 'till you hear about their printers.
cjs_ac: 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.
omcnoe: 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.
creddit: 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.
vjvjvjvjghv: [delayed]
lambdaone: 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.
tonyedgecombe: [delayed]
ryukoposting: 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?
f_devd: Wouldn't be surprised if they have their own internal PBX system with a SIP trunk
closeparen: 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.
halapro: That gets expensive fast. Most phone support tech is composed of average gents who are given a 60 minutes introduction to the system and wished good luck. So cheap, so many unemployed people to choose from.
ryukoposting: Sigh. VoIP makes everything less interesting.
Clent: 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.
xp84: No. In the case of cell phone carriers, the only times in the past 10 years I have ever darkened the door of a retail store is times when the carrier was too incompetent to let me get my problem solved another way. For instance, there was a time at AT&T where if you had acquired a brand new unlocked iPhone that needs eSIM, you needed to receive a physical piece of cardboard printed with a unique QR code on it in order to activate it successfully.I’ve been with US Mobile for years now and never once felt the need for a physical store.
array_key_first: With sims switching to e-sim there's basically no reason to have in person support for cellular service. There's nothing they can do, outside of what they can already do online or over the phone. Like, if you go to an AT&T store with a broken e-sim they can't wave a magic wand. They'll probably just reset it on their end, like they could do over the phone.
