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HP realizes that mandatory 15-minute support call wait times isn’t good support (arstechnica.com)

submitted 1 day ago by resipsaloquitur@lemmy.world to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/44521973

EDIT: This happened back in 2025. Will leave as I’m sure I’m not the only one that didn’t know, but I saw it on hacker news and didn’t realize it was a year old. My bad.

In an odd approach to trying to improve customer tech support, HP allegedly implemented mandatory, 15-minute wait times for people calling the vendor for help with their computers and printers in certain geographies.

Callers from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Ireland, and Italy were met with the forced holding periods, The Register reported on Thursday. The publication cited internal communications it saw from February 18 that reportedly said the wait times aimed 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.”

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[–] TheRagingGeek@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

This is interesting as every call center I have worked or been involved with has always had metrics of hold times and a whole group of managers doing call forecasting and manipulating schedules to ensure a target of average hold times, average handle times, and average not ready states for their workers. I feel like HP is taking heat for something that every single company is guilty of. All companies want to encourage self-service, to the point of eliminating tools for agents to assist the customer, forcing them to refer the customer back to the app or website to complete transactions. Callcenter workers are a constant cost center and companies are trying anything to avoid paying.