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Hewlett Packard Update and the Power of Blogging
Oct152005 Filed under: Technology Author: Tony MorganHere are the recent developments in my encounter with Hewlett Packard:
- I started getting hits yesterday from Yahoo! News. If you haven’t noticed, Yahoo! has started including blog searches whenever you complete a "news" search. For a while yesterday, my post was the number one ranked blog post coming up whenever anyone did a search for "Hewlett Packard."
- Mr. FedEx Guy (see picture below) finally showed up with the replacement printer that I had to pay for. It’s not FedEx’s fault it arrived two days late. HP shipped it two days late. I’m still waiting to see how HP is going to handle the additional charges I paid for overnight delivery.
- The good news is that HP apparently pays attention to the blogosphere. Yesterday, I got an email message from Andy, one of their engineering program managers from Austin, TX. He had seen the description of my stinky customer service experience and wanted to know how he could help.
- Later in the day, I got a call from HP headquarters in Palo Alto, CA. I nice woman by the name of Mary told me she’s going to pass my situation on to a case manager who’s supposed to get in contact with me next week.
Of course, part of me thinks, why should it take a couple of blog posts including some pictures of my adorable family in order to get HP to respond? The reality is that my poor customer service experience goes back to a decision HP made a couple of years ago to offshore their call center to India. They’re getting cheap tech labor, but at what cost?
If you’re playing along at home, I think these are just a few lessons out of my recent experience with HP that have application in any business or ministry:
- It’s not just about the initial transaction. We must also be concerned with the ongoing relationship with our "customers." The ongoing relationship impacts future business as much, if not more, than how we process the initial transaction.
- We need to not only be concerned with the short-term benefits of a decision, but we must also consider the long-term implications particularly as it relates to the ongoing customer relationship.
- We can’t ignore the conversation that’s taking place on the web. Negative encounters travel far and fast. People will talk about their negative experiences, and that dialogue can influence more people quicker than it ever has before. For example, here are just a few of the other folks that have picked up on this story: Bob’s talking about "Blog Ears"; Perry included it in his "Random Thoughts"; EchoFaith compared it to "101 Uses for a Dead Cat"
In the mean time, here’s Mr. FedEx Guy showing up with my replacement printer.
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Tony Morgan is a pastor and the Chief Strategic Officer at NewSpring Church where he develops creative solutions for communications, technology and NewSpring Ministries--the church's ministry that equips other church leaders.
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Big Chris
October 15th, 2005 at 2:59 pm
I’d love for them to call me so I can tell them all about my mis-adventure. Maybe I should post on my blog about this….?
Big Chris
Because I said so blog
Rich Kirkpatrick
October 15th, 2005 at 3:08 pm
I had an opposite experience with Canon, by the way.
We had a similar experience to yours with an HP printer in our graphics dept. at my church.
Jesse J. Anderson
October 17th, 2005 at 5:59 pm
Ahh, the power of the blog. Maybe you’ll get the hookup after all?
BTW, thanks for the link. I feel like I was just casually watching one of my favorite tv shows and had them mention my name, sweetness! =)
keith gascoine
November 8th, 2005 at 11:31 pm
I had a great experience with the HP helpdesk in India a few months ago. My 7130 threw the claw in and after waiting on the phone for a short while, the technican determined it needed replacing. It arrived on schedule a few days later.
Ann
December 27th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
I’ve been wrestling with HP for weeks over my laptop and all-in-one, which are both still under warranty. It started when my printer wouldn’t scan to the computer and the tech had me reinstall the printer software. It didn’t change anything and, while he checked to see what to do next, my laptop crashed and wouldn’t reboot. (Let me know if you need the error message(s). After days of innumerable talks with multiple techs, “supervisors” (?), a case manager and a trip to the Geek Squad, all of whom managed to get us off their backs one way or another, we finally did a full system recovery, taking it back to factory settings. The laptop worked for a week and crashed again, out of the blue. I was finally able to get to a new case manager and he has offered to send a new hard drive (or a box to send the laptop in for repair). I’ve opted for the new hard drive - so we’ll see what happens. My complaint is with the umpteen techs who have been either unintelligible, incompetent, uncaring, untrained, unskilled (clearly going solely by the script), unreliable, and/or counterproductive. HP is clearly out for the bottom line only and does not care about the consumer AFTER he buys their product. I will never buy another HP, nor will I recommend them to anyone. I truly feel like I’ve been duped. (One tech admitted that HP has a problem with Vista compatibility issues and that a patch COULD be available sometime in the SPRING!) Why, then, are they still selling them to the public???