3cPlatform

HP is starting to remind us a lot of Dell

Back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s Dell was our PC vendor of choice. They put together a good quality PC but equally important they had great service and support when you needed them after the sale. Well that all went away in the name of profitability and we consequently found another company we liked better, HP.

We got hooked on HP with their printers. They did their homework with printers and the internal testing and preparation really paid off for the customer. Their printers install easily and in the early days of Plug ‘N Play (we called it Plug and Pray) their products actually did. We eased into their computer product line with laptops because they had produced some 18” laptops that had as much computing power as a desktop. We had good results and we started recommending them to our clients. The machines were good technically, the cost was right and we could get decent service both pre-sales and post sales. That was a couple years ago, and to give a little testimony to how good their product line is we haven’t had to use their support in about a year. Last year we did an install for a dental practice that include dual monitors in each operatory, and HP had all the right toys ( I mean tools) to get the job done. We used their ultra slim desktop that had the computing power we needed to run their practice management software (Dentrix), digital X-rays etc. However, the secondary monitor setup that we needed to do required us to use the HDMI port, and in order to reach the distance we needed to mount the secondary monitor on a swing arm, we had to use a special converter. Long story short the converter was defective out of the box. We called HP support, had no problem getting to a person, getting a tech dispatched to the client’s site and the problem was solved, and everyone involved looked like a professional to the client.

Yesterday was not quite the same experience. We had a new very simple, very small install at a new dental office. We installed the machines last Friday with no problems. Yesterday one of the machines at the practice’s reception desk “removed itself from the network and wouldn’t rejoin it”. We couldn’t remotely support the problem so we did have to go onsite and it looked to be a defect in the machine. After running routine test to make sure it wasn’t the network cable, router, and a half of dozen tests to “triage” the problem we needed to contact HP to use our warranty to replace the machine. Begin the nightmare here. Finding the contact information on their website is a holy nightmare. We are in the web design business so I can say with confidence their site is well designed, very attractive and very focused on sales. But they would rather you didn’t bother them if something they sold you doesn’t work. It took more than 5 minutes of searching to find the information. We finally found their online chat with support which we thought would be faster and keep us out of phone queue hell. Nice idea, but it didn’t work; they didn’t support our model of desktop. Which in itself would be fine if they had said “we don’t’ support it go here or here. But they didn’t they just said “We don’t support that model” – the end. So we gave up and called their customer service line. HP now has voice prompts only on their phone system. There is no option to push a button to get to an extension, it isn’t even a choice. They ask you to pick a product by name, and as it happened our recommended Compaq 8000 Elite Ultra Slim Desktop wasn’t understood by the computer on the other end. After several tries the phone system gave up and put us into another product that wasn’t ours and asked us to make another selection, with no option to back up. We had to hang up and dial again. The second time, same problem and we had to hang up and dial again. It was the fourth or fifth try we got so frustrated we pushed zero until we were redirected to a customer service representative. It was a person with a heavy accent whose English was hard to understand, and who either wasn’t listening to what we asked or was unable to understand us because it wasn’t her primary language, and we were redirected to another department that turned out to be the wrong department which put us on hold and then we were disconnected after being on hold for 5 minutes. So we called back again and after going through much of the same process this time we got to another department. Again it was a person with a heavy accent whose English was hard to understand, and who either wasn’t listening to what we asked or was unable to understand us because it wasn’t his primary language, but asked us questions and had us repeat a number of steps that we had already done and would go quite and not respond for what seemed like a couple minutes at a time. When he finally agreed with our original assessment and agreed to honor our warranty claim he gave us a reference number but would have to have someone call us back within 24 -48 hours, at least we think that is what he said. This is to honor a 3 year, 24/7 on site warranty. The total time it took to get the call complete was more than 1 hour and the problem isn’t resolved. There was still our time to go out to the site, do the initial troubleshooting and the client’s machine is still down, and there will be at least another hour follow up once HP does honor their warranty and fixes the problem.

HP – We want to sell more of your products, we think they are great, and our customers agree. But our time is money too. We are your front line support. Give us a direct line to people here in the US, and whose primary language is English. If it is a cost issue, make it a pay per computer option on check out if that is what it takes and we will pay a little extra to get good service. You don’t have to make support a profit center, just cover your cost. Here is what we would consider good service:

1. Having been through the purchase and support system it would seem almost everything could be done through the web, and eliminate us from having to call you on the phone. We love the fact that your printer drivers etc are available on the web. We resolve problems all the time by downloading them and installing them for clients. We fix their problem, never had to call you and it makes us and your products look good.
2. If you have steps that you give your phone support people to put us through before they will honor a warranty call, give us a website that we can log in and complete those steps (it is obviously already in electronic format). We don’t want our customers out of service any more than you want a ton of RMA’s so if it will help resolve the problem and get our customer back to work quicker we will gladly do it, and if it will eliminate a phone call to phone queue hell, we are more than willing to.
3. A direct phone number prominently displayed on your website – One that we can find without having to search or click more than three links.
4. The direct phone number rings to a person in the US whose primary language is English.
5. The person knows the products and is knowledgeable but also knows that they are talking to a technician on the other end of the phone and doesn’t need to make us repeat what we have already done.
6. Plan B – If you are selling a warranty and someone local is going to be the business servicing the warranty we could always be given their information at the time of purchase and eliminate the bottlenecks associated with your centralization plans.

Service is always the first thing to go, and then someone makes another profit centered decision to buy second tier or third tier components, and then suddenly you will be like Dell, and we will be in search of a hardware vendor that we can recommend to our clients that makes good quality computers at an affordable price but one that realizes service after the sale is what builds the relationship between you and the customer.