At the begin­ning of Novem­ber I wrote an arti­cle titled Why I love pub­lic trans­porta­tion and hate HP after a hor­ri­ble cus­tomer ser­vice expe­ri­ence with HP where I had to wait two hours for tech­ni­cal ser­vice after I had paid for their tier 2 ser­vice. I com­pared it to pub­lic trans­porta­tion in San Fran­cisco because now we have transpon­ders on our buses let­ting us know how long we’ll have to wait. That infor­ma­tion is very valu­able, allow­ing us to make a deci­sion on how to pro­ceed. Should I wait, take another bus, or hail a cab?

While I like HP prod­ucts and the actual ser­vice was excel­lent, the wait angered me so much that it has irrepara­bly dam­aged my opin­ion of the HP brand. I was con­tacted by two peo­ple at HP and spoke to one of them on the phone off the record. I wanted some­thing on the record that I could print here, so I sent two ques­tions for which the HP rep­re­sen­ta­tive said he would get an “on the  record” response. After a week and a half, here are the responses to my two ques­tions from Jodi Schilling, Vice Pres­i­dent, HP Global Cus­tomer Sup­port Oper­a­tions for the Amer­i­cas. I reserve my opin­ions and follow-up ques­tions for you read­ers until after you read the responses.

My Q&A with HP

David: What is HP doing to edu­cate cus­tomers about their wait time online for cus­tomer service/technical sup­port? I don’t want to know that on aver­age you answer tech ques­tions in 10 min­utes. I want to know how some­one who either gets stuck online for a while can fig­ure out what’s hap­pen­ing so they can make an edu­cated deci­sion. For exam­ple, when I look at the Muni wait time and it says 45 min­utes for the next bus, I know I should take an alter­nate route. If I know I’m going to be wait­ing for two hours on hold, I know to take an alter­nate route.

HP’s response: HP’s focus has been to answer all calls in a timely man­ner, and we typ­i­cally do so in 2 min­utes or less. In your par­tic­u­lar case, it appeared to have been dur­ing a time period of unusual and extremely high call vol­ume and we are cur­rently increas­ing our staffing to ensure min­i­mal hold times. It also looked as if you were trans­ferred twice, which added to the wait time, unfor­tu­nately. We sin­cerely apol­o­gize for the inconvenience.

Thank you for your sug­ges­tion about the wait time noti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem. Although HP cur­rently does not have a sys­tem like this in place, we may con­sider adding one in the future. With the vol­ume of calls com­ing into HP and being routed to mul­ti­ple call cen­ter loca­tions, esti­mat­ing hold times is no easy task. The length of tech­ni­cal sup­port calls can also vary widely depend­ing on the issues being dis­cussed and the level of tech­ni­cal exper­tise of the cus­tomer, so pro­vid­ing accu­rate esti­mates would be a challenge.

David: Is the offi­cial com­plaint line mark@hp.com? How are peo­ple sup­posed to know that? Is there a phone num­ber peo­ple can call? You said that hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple send emails, but I’m sure plenty more would if they knew that. Have you done some type of PR cam­paign to pro­mote that email address? I know that if I click on a cou­ple of screens and scroll to the bot­tom I can find that, but really, who would know?

HP’s response: Cus­tomers are asked for feed­back on their sup­port expe­ri­ence after nearly every sup­port inter­ac­tion, either by phone, on the HP Cus­tomer Care site, or fol­low­ing sup­port chats and via email. We greatly value cus­tomer feed­back and take action on it when­ever fea­si­ble. If cus­tomers have spe­cific com­plaints, they are encour­aged to sub­mit them online here. (Note: This is a form to “email HP CEO Mark Hurd [pic­tured at right] your sug­ges­tions and complaints.”)

My take on HP’s response

While I appre­ci­ate HP reach­ing out to me, I wasn’t that impressed with their response.

1. They’re very sorry about my two hour wait, yet they took a week and a half to answer my two ques­tions. That doesn’t jibe.

2. How is any­one sup­posed to know about that Mark Hurd cus­tomer ser­vice page? They didn’t answer that part of the ques­tion. The only rea­son I knew about it and asked about it was because the per­son who con­tacted me off the record had told me about it. Not in my wildest dreams would I have thought to con­tact the CEO of HP. Out­side of my pro­vid­ing the link here, how would any of you know to make that con­nec­tion and con­tact him?

Also, this strikes me as a com­pletely bogus cus­tomer ser­vice offer­ing. They’re telling us to email Mark Hurd, and yet I’m sure he’s not read­ing nor respond­ing to any of those emails. I don’t need to talk to Mark Hurd. I just need to talk to some­one who will con­sider my ques­tion and respond accord­ingly, which I’m sure is what happens.

But why say, “Email Mark Hurd your com­plaint”? What kind of bogus non-authentic rela­tion­ship does HP want to cre­ate with us? Why would they set up some­thing like that? I take that cus­tomer ser­vice page the same way as McDonald’s telling me to email all my com­plaints to Mayor McCheese. How can I pos­si­bly take it seriously?

What com­pa­nies have a good cus­tomer ser­vice wait experience?

I do rec­og­nize that it’s not easy to cal­cu­late the cus­tomer ser­vice wait time, but I know com­pa­nies have done it before. I hon­estly can’t remem­ber which com­pa­nies. So, I put the ques­tions out to Socialmedia.biz readers:

What large com­pany has a good phone cus­tomer ser­vice expe­ri­ence? Which ones inform you what your wait time will be? Which ones let you know the num­ber of peo­ple who are ahead of you in the queue? Do any oth­ers pro­vide a good expe­ri­ence? I remem­ber Microsoft used to have a radio sta­tion pro­vid­ing lots of infor­ma­tion. Do they still do that?

I’m look­ing for tips and advice that we can all share to improve the cus­tomer wait expe­ri­ence. If it’s going to have to be a two-hour wait, what can we do to inform peo­ple about that, or pro­vide a faster response through some other means?

Cre­ative Com­mons image by A30_Tsitika on Flickr. David Spark helps busi­nesses grow by devel­op­ing thought lead­er­ship through sto­ry­telling and cov­er­ing live events at Spark Media Solu­tions. He blogs at The Spark Minute and can be heard and seen reg­u­larly on ABC Radio, Cranky Geeks with John C. Dvo­rak, and KQED in San Fran­cisco. See his busi­ness pro­file, con­tact David, or leave a com­ment below.

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