My next paper will be on how customer service quality of a company (or lack thereof) can be a useful predictor of corporate success / failure.
HP. Hewlett Packard. One of U.S largest companies. Let's set aside for the moment the fact that my 1.5 yr old laptop, having ALREADY gone in for repair once, has failed utterly, again.
Set aside the fact that HP wanted $300 to fix a well documented hardware problem.
Set aside the fact that it took me 30 minutes to place the order for the repair.
Let's get to the GOOD part.
Days go by, no self-addressed box from fedex. Call customer service. Takes 18 minutes on the phone to get a tracking number from them. Enter the tracking number into fedex site? "data transmitted to fedex" and… nothing.
6 days === nothing. No change on tracking info.
Call back customer service. Chat up customer service. Hours spent on trying to figure out what the hell happened to this order. And of course, credit card charged fully, already.
About 20 minutes into each exchange the rep would finally admit that no, in fact, there was no working internet connection, not anywhere in the entire customer service department. In asia. Accessible via 800 numbers.
So let's review this for just a minute. HP has at least 2 full days without internet access for their ENTIRE CUSTOMER SERVICE DEPARTMENT.
2 whole days === they came in to work, answered the phones, and annoyed the living lights out of people. Because they couldn't get their internet up. For two days.
This is just what I happened to know. It could have been longer.
Anyways, things like that are just not sustainable. Its not simply annoying, it is in fact utterly dysfunctional. Based on that particular interaction, I would say do not whatever you do buy HP stock
- zoya (mobile)
