If you ever got the feeling a customer support line is intentionally keeping you on hold in the hope you'll go away it turns out the HP is doing precisely that with a minimum 15 wait
That feeling a customer support line is deliberately designed to keep you hanging in the hope that you'll just go away. We've all had it, right? Now it turns out HP has introduced a minimum 15 wait to PC and printer support phonelines in some territories with the explicit intention to push customers to use online support, known in HP parlance as «digital self-solve.»
The news that what we've all felt might be happening actually is comes from the Register, who got hold of an internal HP memo outlining the policy. It seems HP is inserting a warning of high call volumes with a 15 minute wait time regardless of actual call volumes.
«Objective is 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,» the HP memo says.
Specifically, callers are told, «We are experiencing longer waiting times and we apologize for the inconvenience. The next available representative will be with you in about 15 minutes.
»To quickly resolve your issue, please visit our website support.hp.com to check out other support options or find helpful articles and assistant to get a guided help by visiting virtualagent.hpcloud.hp.com."
Apparently, the 'service' keeps warning callers about wait times and encouraging them to hang up and go online. Currently, it's thought the policy is live in UK, Ireland, France, Germany and Italy. But it's not absolutely clear it doesn't apply more broadly. Likewise, there's no word if HP plans to roll this approach out universally.
The HP memo says the policy came into effect February 18. So, this precise version of keeping you hanging seems to be new. But the general aspiration to get customers to use cheap online support surely is not.
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