[HN Gopher] HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait tim...
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HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)
Author : felineflock
Score : 296 points
Date : 2026-03-20 13:23 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Just further cements HP's position as one of the most anti-
| consumer multi-national companies in existence.
| aurizon wrote:
| I love the way they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with
| their actions
| alnwlsn wrote:
| You would never suspect they once made some of the world's
| finest test/scientific equipment.
| bell-cot wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| I'd argue that their excellent test equipment and printers
| _allowed_ this to happen; anyone who made generic shit would
| have been quickly killed by all the blunders they made.
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The spinoff for lab and scientific equipment (Agilent,
| 1999) happened long before the HP/HPE split (2015).
| rnrn wrote:
| No, wrong decade and wrong split - the test & measurement
| equipment and scientific equipment was long gone from HP at
| the time of the HP -> HP inc + HPE split. It ended up in
| Agilent (1999) and from there Keysight.
|
| HP semiconductors went HP -> Agilent -> Avago, now
| broadcom.
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| Interesting, had no idea they used to make proper lab
| equipment
| anonymousiam wrote:
| I've got two garages full of 80's and 90's HP lab
| equipment, and most of it even works. In that era, HP had
| the best hardware design/production capability in the
| world.
|
| Unfortunately, in the same era, their software was almost
| always complete crap. I think the same rigid processes
| and controls that allowed them to make great hardware
| were the reason their software was awful. Their rigid
| processes made changing the software difficult, so it was
| harder for the devs to improve (and they usually didn't
| bother).
| pjmlp wrote:
| And great technologies as well, HP-UX (Vault was one of the
| first UNIX containers), Modula-3 (Olivetti/Compaq became part
| of HP), ...
| justin66 wrote:
| Those HPUX machines were _hot!_
|
| No, seriously, sometimes they caught on fire.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Interesting, I used HP-UX across a few years, but never
| heard of heat moments that would require using an
| extinguisher on the server room.
| justin66 wrote:
| I only ever heard of HPUX workstations catching fire. No
| idea about their servers.
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| 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.
| archerx wrote:
| Let's not kid ourselves, they knew exactly what they were
| doing. They were hoping people would just hang up and give up.
| This would save money in the short term but lose money in the
| long term but that's what you get when the current quarter is
| all that matters.
|
| Anyway my experience with HP has taught me to never buy their
| products ever again.
| whizzter wrote:
| Optimizing the wrong thing, probably wanted to shave customer
| support costs by having lower call volumes, but those that need
| support probably were hanging onto the calls since nobody that
| can fix things calls support (so no savings) AND reduced
| customer satisfaction.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| 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. Same
| thing if they've just spent a ton of money on some AI chat
| agent that they need to justify as well.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| 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.
| halapro wrote:
| I think HP was absolutely right in doing this. How many times
| have you opened a GitHub issues only to come back an hour later
| with "nvm I figured it out" and close it?
|
| The hope is always that you figure it out autonomously.
| nkrisc wrote:
| If offering free support is too expensive, then they
| shouldn't offer free support, instead of externalizing the
| costs by wasting the time of every customer who calls.
|
| Charge callers some small fee and refund it if it was a real
| issue.
| Macha wrote:
| I've seen it pitched here even, with the idea that deflecting
| some call volume will make call centre jobs less hell. The
| thing it misses is that call center jobs are hell because
| they've used metrics to optimise to the minimum number of
| staff, and any reduction in average call volume will just
| result in the company cutting staff, so now staff still have
| the same workload but callers are XX minutes of waiting more
| frustrated.
| john_strinlai wrote:
| > _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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Easy for that to be true: just set your expectations to
| zero.
| bombcar wrote:
| The only ones I believe are the ones that tell you the
| estimated wait time or number ahead of you (most of which
| offer to call you back).
|
| It _is_ funny to hear "our wait times are higher than
| average, your wait is estimated to be zero minutes".
| Symbiote wrote:
| It can't be that complicated.
|
| My doctor's office phone manages "You are number two in the
| queue". Somewhere, maybe it was a previous doctor, added "and
| should expect to wait about 5 minutes".
| jerf wrote:
| All call centers are actually located in Lake Wobegon, where
| all the call wait times are above average.
|
| ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Wobegon#Recurring_monolo
| g... , for the probably many people who don't know the
| reference.)
| salawat wrote:
| >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.
| carefulfungi wrote:
| Wait time is calculable; but you need an accurate forecast to
| staff and schedule. When I last worked in this space,
| forecasts were generated down to 15m granularity and agent
| work schedules (hours, break times, etc.) were derived from
| those forecasts.
|
| I wonder how these systems work now...
| miki123211 wrote:
| What if you get a large number of people calling at very
| particular times? E.G. what if you're getting far more calls
| at 09:00 than at 09:15? You can't hire agents just to handle
| a 15-minute surge.
|
| Erlang's model assumes that the world is static or at least
| predictable; it doesn't take into account things like the
| superBowl, a hurricane cancelling 90+% of flights from a
| major airport, or a much-larger-than-usual number of
| customers trying to cancel because of a previously-
| confidential price increase now being publicly announced.
| sdwr wrote:
| Baseline demand affects the numbers much more than the
| unpredictable spikes do. You can come up with edge cases if
| you like, but the reality is that it all averages out
| pretty well with large volume.
| voakbasda wrote:
| Did they admit to it? Or get caught?
| sharkweek wrote:
| There's no doubt this is true in my mind.
|
| I honestly bet 75% of the time I hear "We are currently
| experiencing high call volumes" someone answered within a
| minute or two.
|
| In some sense that has the befit of a "surprise and delight"
| moment too because the consumer might be prepared to wait
| longer and then "whoa nice, that wasn't so long!"
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| "i am absolutely positive, without proof of course, that this
| is an extremely common practice. "
|
| Health insurance does this for sure. From what I have seen I am
| convinced they have sophisticated systems to frustrate patients
| and providers until they give up.
| eviks wrote:
| > and offering digital self-solve solutions as an alternative
|
| But you don't have those as a real alternative! Yes, you do have
| some "digital", but it's of the same awful quality as this
| mandatory 15min rule.
| bombcar wrote:
| The main problem is that once someone has made the decision to
| call, _they 've made their decision_ - a 15 minute hold isn't
| going to bother them much, and they certainly aren't going to
| do anything but sit there holding the phone.
|
| If, instead, they had said "we'll call you back in about 15
| minutes" and at the same time sent an email with chat/self help
| options it might have worked, because then you DO have 15
| minutes to dick around.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Clent wrote:
| 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.
| array_key_first wrote:
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Some people just prefer going into a physical place and
| talking to someone in a face to face conversation they
| can understand. I'll very rarely want to sit in a phone
| queue just to talk to "Jason" who has a thick Filipino
| accent sitting in a crowded support room talking through
| what sounds like a a 1kbps VOIP connection. And I'm never
| going to text chat an AI bot for help.
|
| Contrast that to my kid who is horrified by in person
| interactions and thinks that the kiosks at McDonalds were
| the world's greatest recent invention.
|
| Not to mention people with disabilities that make one
| form of communication the only option.
|
| People are different and good companies try to serve them
| all.
| xp84 wrote:
| 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.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| 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 ourselves up into the car and go to a store to
| get help from someone in person; we instead used the phone.
|
| (That may have been done by using the neighbor's phone, but
| whatever. We still have neighbors and not all of them are
| dicks. And these days, we still have cell phone stores for
| those who can't empty the water from a boot. The days of
| brick and mortar cell phone sales are not, at this time,
| numbered.)
| massysett wrote:
| Yeah, but Baby Bell would dispatch a technician to your
| house if needed.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >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
|
| I'd kill for the building in Denver. Instead I always get
| some extremely compressed voice connection in the
| Philippines.
| dehrmann wrote:
| 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.
| mey wrote:
| Personally switched from VZW to Google Fi. It's on TMOs
| network. As you can imagine, when engaging with Google's
| support was hilarious when there was something I needed,
| but overall I don't miss Verizon and pay drastically less.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| For those of us who have crappy coverage with TMO,
| Verizon themselves offer a much better alternative to
| their postpaid service, called Visible. It's pretty
| hilarious how much better of an experience it is, and you
| are on the same network.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Coverage is very specific to your situation. I've had
| basically no coverage on Verizon in offices in the Bay
| Area where T-mobile worked fine while colleagues could
| only get Verizon at home.
| throwaway27448 wrote:
| I haven't had any issues with tmobile coverage (that
| wasn't also a problem with verizon) in well over a decade
| now. Hell it even worked well in the dense hilly jungles
| of burundi. Verizon customer service was so bad before I
| switched I swore them off for life....
|
| The single place I noticed verizon gets coverage and
| tmobile doesn't is three levels underground in a concrete
| parking garage.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Is Google Fi particularly cheap? Their normal prices seem
| to start at $35/month for 30GB of data which is more than
| Verizon's Visible plans at $25/month. (The current 50%
| off offer on Google Fi does seem a good deal though.)
|
| I ended up switching to Mobile-X since I'm on wifi so
| much I only use a few gigs of data a month. $2/month +
| $1.90/GB vs Google Fi's flexible plan of $20/month +
| $10/GB.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > Is Google Fi particularly cheap?
|
| If you travel internationally, they're _really_ cheap
| relative to everyone else who will charge you absolutely
| ridiculous roaming fees.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| I just buy local eSIM's online when I go abroad now.
| Lycamobile is usually good around Europe if you land in a
| country with them. Their UK and Portugal subsidiaries are
| PS5 or EUR4 / month with 30-50GB in country including
| 12GB roaming in other European countries. Order before
| you go and get the eSIM QR code by email. But you must be
| in the appropriate country to activate.
|
| The Google Fi plans with roaming are either $65/month
| (100GB) or $20/month + $10/GB. I often end up using quite
| a bit of data abroad.
| verdverm wrote:
| My Google Fi is $20/m for connectivity and then $0.01/Mb
| until I hit 6Gb ($80) at which point everything after is
| no cost. Most of my data is on wifi, so my bill rarely
| goes above $25
| laurencerowe wrote:
| I usually end up paying about $5/month, though that is a
| data only plan as I just use Google Voice for calls and
| use maybe a couple of gigs of data.
|
| Having moved here from the UK where I was used to cheap
| mobile plans I just grate at how extortionate they are in
| the US.
| axus wrote:
| I was able to transfer eSIM for a lost phone using their
| website, I think the online carrier had run into that issue
| before.
| piperswe wrote:
| US Mobile gets you QCI8 (same priority as Verizon postpaid)
| when you're on the Verizon network with a 5G device, and
| they let you pay for QCI8 on AT&T.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| USM is the only MVNO I've seen that actually advertises
| QCI tiers. I had to look the term up when I was initially
| considering them, as I'd never even encountered it
| before. It was a major factor in finally feeling
| confident I wouldn't be giving up too much by leaving
| AT&T.
| eru wrote:
| > 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).
| dv_dt wrote:
| Ive been happy with US mobile - you can actually switch
| between their VZ backed network or their ATT backed
| network.
| neild wrote:
| Mint (T-Mobile MVNO) has been great for me, $20/month/line
| and my one experience with international travel was good
| ($20 for 10 days). I used to be on Verizon and the quality
| of service doesn't seem any worse while the price is
| dramatically lower.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Mint works well until it doesn't. I travel a lot and use
| voice over ip(VoIP). One day I called and got an
| automated message that my account needed funds. It
| didn't, my annual payment was months away.
|
| My call to tech support was the generic worst. He
| insisted there was trouble with my current cell tower and
| I should reboot my phone. (ignoring the fact that I was
| able to get automated message). I explained I was using
| voice over ip, but the tech support didn't seem to
| understand that technology. Perhaps it wasn't in the
| script. I was on the call for about 30 minutes and
| eventually gave up. Phone started working about eight
| hours later.
|
| Previous issue was with their roaming in foreign
| countries, however with VoIP that hasn't been an issue
| for years. So, a couple problems in about eight years. I
| rank them as one of the best among the terrible options.
| slumberlust wrote:
| They're all fungible if you aren't addicted to your phone.
| karlgkk wrote:
| > Carriers supposedly prioritize their own customers
|
| They explicitly do, even among their own customers and
| plans. If you Google the carrier name plus QCI, you'll find
| tables where people have documented, which plans are in
| which priority group
| craftkiller wrote:
| eSIM transfers are an absolute nightmare on T-Mobile. I
| recently did two of them and both times, the transfer
| started but never finished, so I ended up with no service
| on either device. That means no ability to call their
| support line and no ability to receive the confirmation SMS
| they use to verify you are the correct person. They also
| immediately permanently nuke your physical SIM card so the
| only way to go back to sanity is to purchase another $10
| physical sim card or get one of the physical sim cards that
| you load eSIMs onto (I did the latter so it won't self-
| destruct every time I do a transfer).
|
| 1. They only do transfers through their native app, not on
| their website. To log in to their native app, they will do
| SMS verification. So I sure hope you are still logged in
| before they lose your eSIM and leave you with no service at
| all.
|
| 2. If you are able to get into their native app so you can
| access their tech support, their AI chatbot will flat-out
| lie to you and tell you that T-Mobile cannot send you a QR
| code to download your eSIM (even though T-Mobile's own
| website states that they can). If you ask politely for a
| human, it will resist. I've found "connect me to a human
| you worthless fucking bot" is the secret passcode to get a
| real human.
|
| 3. If you request they send you a QR code, some of their
| support staff will ignore that request and still try to
| initiate the transfer through their app, so clearly
| requesting the QR code is not a common procedure.
|
| 4. When you request a QR code, even though you provide the
| EID, they will ask for an IMEI number. They then generate
| the QR code for whatever EID they have associated with your
| IMEI number in their database, completely ignoring the EID
| number you sent them. They did this to me _three_ times.
| The only way I managed to break the cycle was I sent them
| an IMEI number for a phone that was never on their network
| so they'd finally listen to me when I told them my EID
| number.
|
| I'm never buying a phone without a physical sim card slot
| again. There's nothing wrong with the eSIM technology but
| the carriers have decided to make it as miserable as
| possible. The hardest part about transferring a physical
| SIM is finding a paperclip.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Those stores generally turn a profit eventually. A smaller
| company is just going to struggle to afford building out the
| stores and running ads to get people in the door.
| tencentshill wrote:
| Those startups eventually need legions of fools with which
| to easily part their money.
| teeray wrote:
| It's always amazing going to these stores and seeing the
| support they provide for frequent "how do I computer?"
| questions. To me, this is like going to the water department
| because you need a new faucet on the kitchen sink. We make no
| such distinctions about who fixes what for purveyors of
| Internet services though.
| anonymars wrote:
| Similarly when layoffs hit and morale gets low, guess what
| caliber of employee is going to jump ship and which is going to
| stay?
| gopher_space wrote:
| Everyone knows morale is a dump stat... if you don't track
| consequences.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, you can't measure it, so it can't matter.
| gib444 wrote:
| For a few years now, I've found every support department has
| been trained to treat every single person as if they were a
| dumb 5 year old.
|
| The condescending replies from the outset, the 'clear your
| cookies' first line response to every bug report, the ignoring
| everything you say because you /must/ be wrong, the weird need
| to explain that they understand your feelings and frustrations
| (before even expressing any frustration)...
|
| Drives me insane. There is no breaking through it. You will
| continue to get LLM replies tweaked for 5 year olds.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| 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 helpful, and even if you did clear
| cookies literally identified the obvious typo in their
| Javascript that makes it work again or whatever, you're an
| outlier.
|
| Maybe you can get that person to readjust their expectations
| for you, maybe you can't, and maybe their management can
| embark on a massive education and training effort to teach
| their customer support agents to assume that each new caller
| is an intelligent expert who's aware of and has already tried
| the obvious things, but tomorrow they will regress to the
| mean.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Yeah, this honestly scares me.
| dwedge wrote:
| 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
| hold.
|
| I have an issue today where a service accidentally
| cancelled my package but still charged me. I asked for it
| to be reinstated or refunded, and three times I got the
| same identical automated output pretending to be a person,
| the fourth attempt is simply a credit card charge back and
| a lost customer
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| 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.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| While I haven't heard of that idea being implemented, I
| have heard of the support page you're looking at
| determine who you got routed to if you started a support
| chat.
| lol768 wrote:
| One of the first things I did when I was involved in the
| set-up of online support ticket system for a GB rail
| retailer was https://xkcd.com/806/ compliance. If the
| support request body contains the phrase "Shibboleet" the
| ticket will be assigned to an engineer.
|
| Equally it's not hard to teach front-line when to
| escalate, and ensure L2 and beyond are approachable. Even
| better if L2/L3 can keep half an eye on tickets that come
| in for anything that looks particularly interesting.
| gib444 wrote:
| Hah, I've seen your posts on RailForums!
|
| > One of the first things I did when I was involved in
| the set-up of online support ticket system for a GB rail
| retailer was https://xkcd.com/806/ compliance. If the
| support request body contains the phrase "Shibboleet" the
| ticket will be assigned to an engineer.
|
| I get the feeling you wouldn't joke about this. I can't
| believe how amazing this is LOL. I /think/ I know which
| retailer...good to know!
|
| > Equally it's not hard to teach front-line when to
| escalate, and ensure L2 and beyond are approachable. Even
| better if L2/L3 can keep half an eye on tickets that come
| in for anything that looks particularly interesting.
|
| Right!? I did L2/L3 support many moons ago and it was
| very much my job to keep an eye on PFYs to ensure they
| weren't dismissing interesting tickets.
| gib444 wrote:
| Nah, that doesn't wash. I can understand a default initial
| response for 99% of callers (a verbal FAQ as it were), but
| I do not accept the lack of breaking through. That is
| because managerial decree has mandated cost-cutting and
| chosen not to provide any real customer support.
|
| After I exhaust the L1 flowchart I expect some real
| support. I've done my bit to prove it, I expect them to
| reply in kind.
|
| The reality is that companies have gone on aggressive cost
| cutting to maximise profits, and customer support is
| absolutely included in that.
|
| What next? Shrinkflation is because 99% of people expect
| smaller portions?
|
| They know getting to L2/L3 support increases costs. Eg
| applying a refund when legally required, delivering what
| was contractually agreed etc.
|
| Also, the more we accept people are 'dumb' and dumb down
| our interactions with them, the dumber everyone will get.
| Do teachers not need to believe in the capacity of
| children, lest education totally go to hell?
| progval wrote:
| > don't know how to clear their cookies
|
| Why do users even need to manually clear their cookies?
| gib444 wrote:
| It fixes like 1% of problems but sounds plausible to
| probably 95% of the population. Hence why it's peddled so
| often.
| bityard wrote:
| Have you tried saying "shibboleet"?
| soopypoos wrote:
| I'd rather die.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I've found every support department has been trained to
| treat every single person as if they were a dumb 5 year old.
|
| That's quite reasonable on their part.
|
| I do wish I could take a quiz to bypass it, though.
| weaksauce wrote:
| I was a programmer at a small company that had their
| programmers field tech support calls and there is a good
| reason they do this... most of the people calling in are dumb
| as rocks when it comes to whatever they needed help with...
| some called while driving for help that required you to be in
| front of a computer.
| LtWorf wrote:
| People suicided because of that, and the UK post office knew
| fully well it was their own fault.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I ran an enterprise help desk for a few years. I wasnt in the
| day to day, but would listen to calls sometimes. The reality
| is, dumb 5 year olds are often smarter.
|
| We had a large (250k) workforce with a pretty wide variance
| in roles. We had probably about 100 people in the call
| center, although some of them did more interesting stuff too.
| It was a very good support organization with multichannel
| contact capabilities and really good, well paid staff.
|
| Basically there was a barbell distribution with the lowest
| ranked people and highest ranked employees being the worst.
| (Think attorneys and other special IC and middle managers.
| Executives had dedicated support and didn't use this method.)
| The most expensive 20% of users make 80% of the calls. The
| high ranking ones were dumber to deal with and took more
| time, the low ranking ones called too often for dumb reasons
| but resolved quickly.
|
| I cannot imagine the hell on earth the general public could
| be.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I used to work tech support. Those lines are there _because
| they work_. In only 9 months, I had a few different people
| tell me they were pc repair techs and knew what they were
| doing, and I didn 't need to do the basics.
|
| I did them anyhow because the company said so, and I found
| that _more often than not_ , it fixed the problem.
|
| If I had sent that to second-level support without making
| sure of it, I'd have been written up.
|
| So yes, they're trained to treat callers like they don't know
| what they're doing, because they often don't. Even if they
| claim to.
|
| The best thing you can do is just go along with it quickly
| and get it over with, even if you've already done it. There's
| no way around it.
| gib444 wrote:
| > I used to work tech support
|
| Me too. Long time ago though. I get it.
|
| But my problem and main point is that now L2/L3 doesn't
| seem to exist, or is way way harder to access.
|
| When I did L1, I was trained to permit escalation. Now, it
| seems people are trained to gaslight people that actually
| nothing is broken and it's all their head.
| wat10000 wrote:
| At most places, 95% of the customers are dumb as rocks. And
| 95% of the support staff is also dumb as rocks. So they're
| conditioned to assume everyone calling in is an idiot, and
| it's very likely that whoever you're talking to is not
| equipped to understand what you're saying to try to convince
| them that you're not.
|
| My favorite instance of this was with an ISP that rhymes with
| Bombast where it was very clear that the modem wasn't getting
| a signal. The lights indicated it, and I was also able to
| connect to the modem's internal monitoring and see that it
| wasn't seeing anything on the line. The support agent kept
| asking me to reboot my computer.
| throwaway27448 wrote:
| To be fair, HP lost their competent customers a long time ago.
| aworks wrote:
| FWIW, I'm typing this on my sub-$500 HP laptop and it's fine.
| I would only call for support as a last resort, and I haven't
| needed to do that.
| zombot wrote:
| Which is still not enough punishment for a decision like this.
| But without adequate consumer protection laws abuse like this
| is to be expected.
| ticulatedspline wrote:
| While I tend to lean towards libertarian the reality is that
| "someone will fill the market gap and customers will leave" is
| largely a myth. Even without lock in or other reasons the
| market tends to be rather shallow with only a few choices.
| Maybe HP is the instigator but it largely signals to their
| competitors that "hey you can be abusive too". This creates a
| casual follow-the-leader collusion then everywhere sucks and
| there's nowhere to go anyway so why leave.
| dsr_ wrote:
| "Best available laptop support" apparently means 18/30 or 12/20.
|
| Pretty sure I would consider those both failing grades.
| red_admiral wrote:
| If you're the customer support hotline, that's shitty practice.
|
| On the other hand, if you're setting up an asshole filter
| (https://mrsteinberg.com/the-asshole-filter/), deliberately
| waiting a while before replying can be part of "chaotic good"
| tactics. You use my private email for something that has an
| official org process that we MUST use, per policy? It'll take me
| several days to reply, and then I'll ask you to use the official
| process anyway.
|
| If you're setting up an asshole filter for your customers on the
| official support hotline, we used to call that "AITA?"
| everdrive wrote:
| My routine is that I curse at the voice bot and treat it really
| poorly and berate it, but then I'm really calm, polite, and
| professional with the real person I end up talking to. In the
| vast majority of cases, yelling a person is both rude in a
| strict moral sense, but also usually counterproductive even
| when viewed through a totally selfish lens.
| iinnPP wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > made someone look bad
|
| That, or that it DoS-ed the database.
| iinnPP wrote:
| It was offline.
| MBCook wrote:
| And making each click trigger a 20 second DB query doesn't?
|
| How much you want to bet that's _why_ it was 20 seconds?
| fifilura wrote:
| If you prefetch all those options in the background, I bet
| the DB would be unhappy.
| oofbey wrote:
| AHT?
| iinnPP wrote:
| Average Handle Time
| LordGrey wrote:
| Not OP, but it is probably either "Average Hold Time" or
| "Average Handle Time". I supposed the usage here indicated
| some call center metric that management was expecting in a
| certain range but the new tool skewed it in a different
| direction.
| soopypoos wrote:
| Assistant Head Teacher
| creddit wrote:
| 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.
| imzadi wrote:
| I believe they are saying their AHT went down (calls take
| less time) which made other people with longer handle times
| look bad.
| iinnPP wrote:
| 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.
| ok_dad wrote:
| A good business would have promoted you to the dev team
| so they could reduce that metric for everyone.
| junon wrote:
| Quasi-related but I did the same thing at RadioShack for
| inventory. It was a long process of scanning each product,
| looking at the scanner and manually verifying the price on the
| tag.
|
| The tags had a barcode on the back with the SKU and the price
| that had been printed, but naturally the scanner didn't support
| that format.
|
| So I brought in my own scanner, scanned all of those into a
| spreadsheet, then ran a script that checked the same inventory
| panel that had the updated prices, and printed out a new sheet
| with just the barcodes that differed to run "inventory"
| against. Saved us hours per day.
|
| Corporate got pissed (understandably) and shut it down real
| quick.
| nubg wrote:
| > understandably
|
| why?
| junon wrote:
| I was running scripts on their PoS (EDIT: point of sale)
| terminals to hit an internal service. If I were the
| sysadmin at corporate, people like me would make me nervous
| too (even though I wasn't doing anything nefarious).
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| >my AHT flagged me
|
| Is that "American Hairless Terrier" or "Aldershot Railway
| Station"?
| mjuarez wrote:
| Average Hold Time
| Zircom wrote:
| Average Handle Time actually
| btreesOfSpring wrote:
| Acronym use here to single being part of an in-group. It is
| one of the most annoying shift in tech language over the past
| decade. I partly blame it on all the certification testing
| that has popped up over that time frame.
|
| It isn't like there hasn't always been tech acronyms but they
| are so causally communicated these days without regard for
| audience.
| batch12 wrote:
| This one is a call center metric. Similar to after call
| work or first call resolution. This one, I believe, is
| average handle time.
| bobbob1921 wrote:
| This comment is so spot on, it's also big in military
| circles, especially over past 15 years. It can even be said
| that frequent (over) use of acronyms is based in insecurity
| m463 wrote:
| Musk's Acronyms Seriously Suck memo:
|
| https://gist.github.com/klaaspieter/12cd68f54bb71a3940eae5c
| d...
| wat10000 wrote:
| That highly prestigious in-group of call-center workers....
|
| It's just jargon. Sometimes people forget that their jargon
| isn't universal.
| midtake wrote:
| If you're not part of their industry, just look up the
| acronyms instead of getting mad. "Audience" is laughable,
| they are not posting solely for your entertainment.
|
| And my guess is "average hold time." If you use your brain,
| you can figure most of them out, unless they are
| adversarially confusing acronyms.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I've seen this in many groups. Every time I laugh thinking
| about private enterprise efficacy. Then I shed a tear.
| Distribution problem.
| lambdaone wrote:
| 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.
| drewg123 wrote:
| I'll always despise them (and their Itanium) for killing the
| DEC Alpha CPU off after they acquired it along with Compaq.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| They were dragged screaming and kicking into offering
| PostScript. Their page description language was PCL, an
| inferior (although sometimes faster) offering.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| 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.
| cogman10 wrote:
| That was basically entirely on Carly Fiorina, Mark Hurd and
| the board of directors. It's pretty similar to what happened
| to Boeing.
|
| HP had engineers at the helm right up until Fiorina. She came
| in and destroyed a lot of what made it great to work at HP
| while not really doing a great job of managing the company.
|
| Then Hurd came in and he just gutted the company to the
| delight of the shareholders. I came in right as Hurd went out
| as an intern. The place was in shambles when I got there.
| He'd fired and outsourced everything he could. The IT there
| was a complete joke. It was actually insane that HP decided
| to outsource IT operations.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Ooooooh, there must be a story there. I think I get the
| same high from corporate horror stories that my wife gets
| from Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
|
| I yearn for the day that I'm in a stable enough career
| position to write about some of the shitshows I've seen.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Not much of a story. Like I said, I was an intern so I
| mostly heard this stuff from my coworkers (it's been a
| while too).
|
| My boss was a manager in IT and they were fortunate
| enough to get a heads up before the shitshow hit. They
| moved departments right before everyone in IT got laid
| off.
|
| I had requests to IT that I had put in at the beginning
| of my internship which were just getting handled by the
| end of my internship.
|
| Real basic stuff like getting my badge was a nightmare. I
| had to make a 3 hour drive to another building just to
| get my badge. The appointment to do that took 3 months,
| which meant my coworkers had to let me into the office
| and past security every day.
|
| General office supply and admin was really bad. I was
| seated in a broken chair for my entire internship.
| Employees were buying their own office furniture like
| chairs because there basically was nobody at the helm
| doing basic recs like that.
|
| The IT firm we contracted out to was obviously one that
| mostly serviced the likes of banks or chain restaurants.
| The stuff they technically "owned" they were completely
| detached from. The only stuff they knew how to do was
| active directory management stuff. But like I said, they
| were extremely slow and backed up. Understandable because
| HP is huge company to contract out to.
|
| Leadership was a total mess. I had like 3 different
| bosses I technically reported to and it was never super
| clear to me in the org chart exactly how I was supposed
| to be positioned in the company.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Friend worked at HP in the old days before (as he put it) the
| company got "Carly'd."
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| >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.
| segmondy wrote:
| Well, it's not the same HP. If there was ever a case that Ship
| of Theseus is not the same it's with companies. It just takes
| but a few replacement to get an entirely different company,
| mostly same people, same name, same business, completely
| different. Yet alone when the company has turned over everyone
| over decades, including customers. This is not the HP we knew.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Isn't this an unavoidable company pattern? Early on you go all
| in to prove your mastery. Then your reverse course to ramp
| benefits or something like that.
| adolph wrote:
| Question is, will the 15-minute wait time be replaced by a rubber
| duck?
|
| https://rubberduckdebugging.com/
| itopaloglu83 wrote:
| I think HP continues to see the real problem as getting caught,
| just like a liar isn't someone who lies, but lies and also gets
| caught.
| fhn wrote:
| 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.
| jgbuddy wrote:
| This is unfortunately how companies die
| jmull wrote:
| "improve customer tech support"
|
| That's corporate-speak. They say improve, but it's perfectly well
| understood internally to mean drive costs down.
|
| There's no problem with doing that at the expense of the customer
| as long as you can get away with it. (Seems like here they were
| going for a boiling-the-frog approach but moved too quickly.)
| hedgehog wrote:
| After years of good experiences I'm pausing buying any more HP
| hardware. My recent Z series desktop was mis-assembled and
| customer service getting it resolved was atrocious, so incredibly
| bad it dissuaded me from even trying a replacement. I don't know
| what happened over there.
| tristor wrote:
| My experience with customer support with every major company has
| always been a miserable one. The fundamental problem from my
| perspective is that if I've decided to call support that means
| I've already exhausted any other alternatives, and most likely my
| issue is one that explicitly requires human intervention because
| I've found myself wedged into a crack in the self-serve systems.
| I'm not particularly bothered by waiting 15 minutes, but what
| pisses me off the most is that when I finally do get a person
| they're also not empowered to do anything except read to me from
| a script that is word-for-word identical to the documentation on
| the website which was written by Legal instead of someone
| technically competent.
|
| What I really want is something like https://xkcd.com/806/ to be
| a real thing. In a fit of irony, the one time I got somewhere
| useful was when I called Comcast/Xfinity. I was able to isolate a
| problem with my connection to an aggregation router in their
| network that was not very far away from me, and I happened to
| know was in the middle of a major public construction zone. I
| actually managed to get someone on the line finally who could
| direct information to their network engineering team and it was
| discovered that there was a partial fiber cut caused by the
| construction and it was repaired a few hours later. It's hard for
| me say anything positive about Comcast, but I was pleasantly
| surprised that day that I was able to get information to someone
| who could do something with it, even though it was not exactly
| the smoothest process.
|
| Most companies you just run into a competence wall. Generally
| speaking, I am not calling because I don't know what to do or
| don't understand something (unless its a lack of understanding in
| the sense that the company's process is utterly stupid and
| therefore incomprehensible). I'm calling because I fully
| understand what needs to happen, I've thoroughly investigated my
| issue and identified an appropriate outcome, and I have a good
| understanding of the systems involved. I simply lack the
| necessary access to make it happen and resolve my issue, so the
| customer support line is simply a gatekeeper. In the infinite
| cost-cutting wisdom of miserable bean counters everywhere,
| customer support has been so disempowered in most cases that they
| are then gatekept from actually doing anything also, and are
| often bottom-dollar workers in cheaper third-world countries, so
| also lack the competence, context, and care to actually effect
| any positive outcome even if they have the access.
|
| Realistically, customer support systems are not customer support
| systems, they are legal compliance systems that are designed to
| find the cheapest and most defensible way to tell your customers
| to fuck off after you already have their money.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Unfortunately, my experience with customer support at various
| companies matches exactly your description.
|
| Having heard many other similar stories, I assume that this is
| really how nowadays typical customer support is, so anything
| else, if such a thing exists, is a rare exception.
| FiatLuxDave wrote:
| I used to be the top-level support escalation at a company, and
| I made sure to brief all the tier-1 support personnel to
| escalate directly to me any call using "shibboleet" Sadly no
| one ever used it.
|
| The company had "Nuclear" in the name, and our average customer
| had at least a masters in physics, so maybe not the typical
| support situation. But in at least one case, it has been a real
| thing. It doesn't work at AT&T and Spectrum, I've tried.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _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 15
| minutes then complained about the wait times to workers, which
| means the workers had to lie about the cause.
| imzadi wrote:
| 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.
| temporallobe wrote:
| Yeah it's almost like purposely frustrating people has
| negative consequences, which HP completely overlooked.
| Macha wrote:
| HP didn't care, that was a problem for the low level
| support staff and the customers, not whatever exec was
| hoping to show reduced call volumes -> reduced staffing
| levels -> savings.
| duskdozer wrote:
| 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.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| The fact that I'm calling an HP support line automatically
| means I'm annoyed. Keeping me waiting for 15 mins will only
| leave me inflamed. I have better emotional regulation but
| dealing with customer service sometimes pushes me to the "being
| assertive but polite" phase, which a lot of people will just
| skip. And for the workers, there's only so much abuse you can
| take in a day.
| kotaKat wrote:
| (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?_ "
| lich_king wrote:
| 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 the service you
| purchased.
|
| There are some exceptions to this rule, for example many
| brokerages have real customer support. Amazon stands out too -
| they're not prepared to handle anything unusual, but their model
| is to refund you almost no matter what.
|
| But by and large, it's absolutely awful in the US and I'm often
| positively surprised when I need to interact with customer
| support in other countries, where you actually can reach a
| courier about your delivery, etc.
| drstewart wrote:
| Wow, other countries sound like utopia! Can you tell me how to
| reach RyanAir by phone and how long it will take? How about
| Evri? China Southern?
| aboardRat4 wrote:
| China Southern is okay if you speak Chinese.
| tristor wrote:
| > United?
|
| FWIW, Airlines are actually great /if/ you're a frequent flyer.
| I get great service from United on the phone and did so
| previously from Delta, but in both cases I was a frequent
| traveler and so they automatically route your call into a
| better queue with better trained staff.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Wouldn't be surprised if they have their own internal PBX
| system with a SIP trunk
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Sigh. VoIP makes everything less interesting.
| justin66 wrote:
| 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...
| tiagod wrote:
| 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.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Ah, so that the music changes and/or clips when you jump into
| the call queue. That way, you _know_ you just got mishandled
| for 15 minutes. Diabolical.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| American companies seem to increasingly hate their own customers.
| Add random fees, make products worse and provide terrible
| support. In a functioning market small competitors would take
| away the business of the big players but with the lack of
| monopoly enforcement they just buy their competition. Not sure
| where this is leading but it's not a good trend.
| laughing_man wrote:
| HP has plenty of competition. What they're doing is suicidal.
| kykat wrote:
| I honestly don't know who is still buying HP products,
| haven't seen one around me in years, probably just clueless
| people walking into a store and thinking "I've heard this
| name before"
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| My employer buys HP products
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Wait 'till you hear about their printers.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| 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.
| bitwize wrote:
| Hewlett-Packard split into two companies some years back: HP
| Inc. which handles the consumer PC and printer business; and
| Hewlett Packard Enterprise which handles all their server and
| enterprise stuff, and consulting.
| Steve16384 wrote:
| 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.
| delecti wrote:
| I would actually expect support calls to be more bimodal
| between customers who use them as a last resort or first
| resort. If I'm calling support for something then I have
| probably already tried everything within my power. But there
| are absolutely people who will call as the first step, for a
| variety of reasons (maybe they're too technologically
| illiterate to even approach the problem, or maybe they feel
| like being a customer entitles them to technical support, which
| isn't totally unjustified).
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > I would imagine that most people who call are doing so
| because the "online help" can't help them.
|
| Based on the anecdata I have, this is very false.
|
| My brother used to work tech support for X-Box Live. He said
| 80% of his calls were for password resets, something anybody
| could self-service in less time than it takes to find the
| customer support phone number.
|
| Sure, there were cases where they no longer had access to the
| original e-mail address on the account, or cases where he was
| sure someone was trying to social engineer their way into
| someone else's account by claiming a forgotten password, but
| generally, he'd just trigger the password reset e-mail and the
| customer was able to reset their password.
|
| At one point, he tried going off-script to tell people to
| select the "Forgot Password" option and walk them through the
| self-service, but he got in trouble for it.
| g947o wrote:
| Marginally related:
|
| I have been an Android user for almost 15 years. A recent
| incident makes me seriously think about whether I should get an
| iPhone (other than all the privacy/sideloading/security
| discussions)
|
| I have a Samsung phone with a "protection plan" which takes care
| of certain repairs. I did crack the phone screen once, so I took
| it to a ubrealifix store to get the screen replaced. I was told
| that I either need to wait till the next day, or bring it early
| in the day so that it can be done by the end of the same day.
|
| That store somehow is closed for half of the year for no reason.
| The next closest store is about 20 minutes of drive away, with
| the same thing -- arrive early or wait overnight.
|
| Meanwhile, these repairs are straightforward repairs at genius
| bar that can be done within about an hour, any time of the year.
|
| I had similar experience with laptop repairs. Apple and Intel
| (NUC lines) were top tier, and I was able to get back my device
| quickly. Not so for other manufacturers.
|
| Apple devices come with a premium price, but as my life gets more
| complex, I realize that my time is worth more than the money I
| save on the hardware.
| ectospheno wrote:
| Indeed. The older I get the more I optimize for my time spent
| over almost all other factors. I want to enjoy life more.
| doubled112 wrote:
| The older I get, the more money I have available to optimize
| for time spent.
|
| A man I worked with told me that eventually his entire
| toolbox was a VISA. He could fix just about anything, he just
| couldn't be bothered anymore unless it seemed like fun.
|
| I didn't get it then, in my early 20s. In my mid 30s, with a
| couple of kids and a million other things to get done, shut
| up and take my money.
|
| Android phones to tinker with became an iPhone that just
| works for years. 15 year old VWs turned into 3 year old
| Toyotas. Probably other choices I've made without realizing
| it too.
| closeparen wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| mmooss wrote:
| I've seen that option with other major vendors too. It's always
| worth the extra cost for a business - incidents' internal time
| to resolution, labor costs, and downtime (which impact user
| productivity) can drop dramatically.
|
| It also reduces frustration and improves morale for the support
| staff, who, reasonably, want to deal with professionals.
| Havoc wrote:
| Mandatory wait times is an insane concept anyway
| caderosche wrote:
| In the long run, your customer's best interest aligns with your
| own best interest. Unless customer support costs were going to
| bankrupt HP, I think causing customers pain can only harm them.
| kevinpet wrote:
| I'm mostly a libertarian, but claiming "we are experiencing
| higher than normal call volumes" when you aren't should put you
| in jail for fraud.
| xvxvx wrote:
| Sound terrible but they've probably tried everything imaginable
| to reduce their call volume and weed out the lazy folk who could
| just read their website. Call centers are expensive.
| daft_pink wrote:
| Another mandatory wait time that's annoying, Target. If you do
| driveup and you don't tell them you're coming, they literally
| have an software based wait time where you have to stare at the
| phone and wait for literally no reason.
|
| The software could just add you to a queue and it could wait
| longer, but instead they make you watch the software do a
| countdown before you can ask for your order.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| It's OK their customers can all just upgrade to MacBook neos
| syntaxing wrote:
| Some CIO thought it would be great to get rid of our local in
| office IT team and replaced them with a multi million contract
| with HP to use their "tier 1" support. Their service was absolute
| garbage. But the CIO got a fat bonus check for the "cost savings"
| chrismorgan wrote:
| > _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._
|
| Won't be true for everyone, but if _I'm_ ringing, it's because
| the digital self-solve solution _didn't work_. Which happens
| ridiculously often.
|
| Right now, I'm struggling with working out how to return a laptop
| keyboard1 on Amazon (India). They _say_ you can return it, but
| when you try, it only offers you a "chat now" button2, and the
| bot eventually reveals it can only help with troubleshooting, and
| suggests you try other options, and here's how you can escalate
| to a human, and... they're both just a link back to the start of
| the support system, which no longer mentions any phone number or
| other way of contacting a human.
|
| And this is hardly abnormal. _So many_ self-serve systems are
| just broken, and it feels to me like it's happening increasingly
| often.
|
| --***--
|
| 1 For an ASUS GA503QM. Among other issues, Space/f/j activate
| well past the click, Space doesn't activate _at all_ if pressed
| at the ends, and it's 2KRO with _horrific_ ghosting--typing "you"
| will activate F11 most of the time, "he " gets a spurious N, and
| mashing the keyboard will put the laptop to sleep (which doesn't
| even make sense) among other key-pressed-state-poisoning things
| (though that part could be a software issue). This is
| particularly insulting as the original is NKRO. All up, it's
| _utterly_ unfit for purpose (the Space key is bad enough that
| even a hunt-and-pecker would probably notice), and the worst new
| keyboard I have ever encountered, by a significant margin,
| barring those dumb roll-up ones twenty years ago (they don't
| exist any more, right? Right?).
|
| 2 This isn't true on all products: I ordered a battery at the
| same time, and they'll let me return _that_ without fuss. Which I
| will probably do, because despite being advertised and labelled
| as 5675 mAh like the original, it reports a design capacity of
| 4800 mAh. Straight up counterfeit /fraud. Sigh. So it's <40%
| better than my five-year-old battery, instead of >60% better.
| vladde wrote:
| my parking space company has a variant that if you call in, you
| can choose to be called back at a later point.
|
| what they don't tell you is that they will call you back after
| 4pm.
|
| you don't keep your place in the queue. the first time around i
| expected to be called back within an hour, and ended up expecting
| a call "any minute now" the whole day.
| fechols wrote:
| What if I told you that customer support is a marketing expense?
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I am so frustrated that every company in the world seems to treat
| user support as a tax that they must must MUST eliminate at all
| costs.
|
| Microsoft just straight up doesn't have phone service anymore -
| at least for non-enterprise customers. It's gone. You get an
| online chatbot, that's it. Have a problem with your license or
| account? Get fucked. Go away.
|
| Good support _makes_ me want to stick with a company. Do you know
| why I buy all my audio gear from one company? Because they 're
| one state over with a _5 year_ warranty, and immediately respond
| if I 'm having a problem. I considered 'better' options from
| China, but the last time I did that I got equipment that would me
| ~$200 to send back for repairs when it broke, so I just shelved
| it.
|
| But once you get past a certain size, and once you have
| enterprise customers, supporting everyone else is a waste of
| time. Why spend X dollars on customer retention with good support
| when you can spend X/2 dollars advertising to new customers or
| shoving in ads for other companies that will generate more money
| instead?
| ACV001 wrote:
| the title spews evil
| waynesonfire wrote:
| All the sudden it's a bad idea now that you can have people talk
| to a chat bot for 15 minutes.
| LogicFailsMe wrote:
| I have a Ford EV and a local Ford dealer refused to do warranty
| work on it because I didn't buy it there.
| Footnote7341 wrote:
| It is technically possible for mandatory 15 minute support call
| wait times to increase total user happiness by lowering average
| wait time in the queue.
| midtake wrote:
| Not if un-happiness compounds over time spent in a hold queue,
| and instant responses produce asymptotically incalculable
| happiness.
| corvad wrote:
| Won't this just cause more issues with customer server agents.
| Like I would assume more people would be annoyed once they get an
| agent.
| everyone wrote:
| Just curious has anyone _ever_ contacted customer support in the
| past decade and _not_ gotten the message saying their call volume
| is high atm and thus the wait will be "longer than average"?
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