Larry Bodine Law Marketing Blog
Worst Customer Service EVER
Law firms will be sorry if they jump on the trend to offshore legal services. I just went through a customer service nightmare with Hewlett-Packard ordering a $4 power supply cord for my printer. It took more than an hour, dealing with people who barely spoke English.
No store carried the part. It could not be ordered online. I was doomed: I had no choice but to telephone the HP phone number for support. After a long wait, listening to blaring hold music, I finally reached a man in India. His headset was badly adjusted that I could barely hear him. I told him to speak up, and noticed he could barely speak English.
Because I had never called HP before, he had to set up an account for me. In a trans-Pacific call, the consonants B, C, D, M, N, P, S, T and V are unintelligible. He kept putting me on hold and asking me to repeat my address. After going through this, he tried to sell me a warranty on the printer, which would cost more than $50. When I said I just wanted the part, not a warranty he kept putting me on hold. After about 30 minutes on the phone he said I had to call another number for parts.
I was ready to throttle him.
So I called the second number and reached a woman in Costa Rica. English was also her second language. I had to repeat every word -- my name, street, city, the printer name -- several times. She would say them back to me, very very slowly, often mixing up N and M, and T and P. Then she discovered the shipping address was different from the cardholder address, so I had to give her my address on East Camino Pimeria Alta, Tucson, Arizona. It took forever, even though I presumed she spoke Spanish. She kept asking me why there was no "road" or "street" as part of the street address. The city "Tucson" completely confused her, because it is not pronounced as it is spelled.
I was grieving that fact that customer support has been sent offshore to incompetent, substandard workers who don't have the language skills to do their jobs. Next I had to call Citibank to change my credit card address. I was dreading it.
Lo and behold, I reached an American who spoke English! The address change took 2 minutes, including the confusing fact that my home town is two words (Glen Ellyn) and one word is spelled unconventioinally.
Perhaps if enough of us have these horrendous customer service experiences, these customer service jobs will come ack to America, where they belong. I am not xenophobic, but when I'm doing business, I want the vendor on the line to be from the USA and speak high school English.
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" It took more than an hour, dealing with people who barely spoke English."-
This is interesting because highly skilled english language work force is considered to be among the main factors behind INdian success in outsourcing in the first place. Anyway, we should get better service than that from a company like HP.
It is surprising that "people who barely spoke English" were assigned to customer service, in a company like HP.
But Mr. Bodine won't encounter a similar situation with a Filipino.
English is a second language for the Philippines, yet it is the official language used in business and government. English is also the medium of instruction in schools at all levels. Filipinos are much more familiar with American English than any other Asian. The Philippines was once an American colony.
The Philippines is now a key player in outsourcing, but still behind India.
Hewlett Packard wretched, atrocious, miserable, shameful, worthless customer service. HP is a scam, they do not honor their warranties, they ignore and hate their own customers, they have set up a system of the most abominable non-existent customer service I have ever encountered. HP sells lemon notebooks that malfunction right out of the box, they take your money an run. If you are thinking of buying anything HP slap yourself and then throw your money in the trash, this will be less aggravating then dealing with this low-down, unscrupulous, deceitful bunch of criminals. HP sucks.
Lol !!! what a joke !! Indians dont know English .... Lol !!!
50 % of Americans dont know how five is spoken, nine is spoken...
Wanna learn English talk to a Britisher...
Great post! I'm sure we've all felt that way at one time or another.
I thought you might find this article interesting: http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1540,2003813,00.asp
I don't know if this technology has been released yet, but there are companies working on technology that can detect an irate customer so they can answer their call faster. In theory it seems like a good idea, but then I wonder about all of the nice people who keep getting pushed to the back of the line.
Same experience with HP customer service. I paid for and charged to my credit card Support Service for my HP Note Book. When I call for support, I amd told by someone that does not speak Englishthat I do not have this service. When I ask for a supervisor, I am hung up on.
I paid for this Jan, 2006 and to this date have had no support from HP.
Don't Blame India or blame Indians for their accent, remember it means they know one more language then you do. Just blame the people who outsourced it to India just to save few bucks admitting that the Indians are far intellectual in this industry (technical knowledge). Personally i think America would be no where without immigrant think tank working for them. Remember it's a machine and supporting the product over the phone needs immense patience from the customer and probing from the technician to resolve it.
So blame it on us.......
It cannot be, hello, hi, lo and behold your computer works fine.
Larry! The sweet sound of the truth! THe whole HP India customer service/tech support scam has me slackjawed. I just ordered a HP Pavilion entertainment notebook. It was expensive. It was supposed to be a CTO (custom to order). I noticed the product number inside the notebook didn't match the service tag on the outside. I do a little digging through a detection scan that it's actually a different series notebook! The hardware was installed a year before I ordered it and some of the software was installed 3 years earlier. What a deception! THey obviously wanted to get rid of an other notebook they had with some of the similar specs on it that chose in the order process. They didn't exactly customize it to order or build it upon request as I was told they would be doing. Then I tell this to tech support and their main comment was "not to worry" if it has the right customizable features than it should suit me. Ahem, well NO. That's not okay with me. To start with, it's a different series for godsake! That means by definition it is not what I ordered. HP won't take it back because the service tag is shows it as the series I ordered. But the computer itself is not! Unbelievable. And they transfer calls that then get dropped. They pretend not to hear you and speak unintelligibly. They probably sent me a refurbished notebook for all I know. If I had only found your blog before I bought this computer I wouldn't have touched an HP computer. This wasn't a mistake from HP. They had to know what they were doing. They were hoping I wouldn't notice? Unbelievable! It's a sham. I actually agree with the anonymous poster above. I was a sucker for ordering something from this company. When you get TECH SUPPORT telling you things like "Not to worry, not to worry" about tech specs and series models, you know you are in trouble.
The worst part of this
whole thing is Hewlett-Packard in the US is by all accounts a good place to work if you're an engineer. A reputable american company. The biggest mistake they have made in this global marketplace is farming out tech support and customer service to foreign countries. Manufacturing is a different thing. But customer service and tech support??!! Are they interested in losing customers by the droves? They just lost me and most likely many people I tell my story to, and on down the grapevine which could grow exponentionally over time into a more sizeable loss of business (in theory.) And all of this just from one person's bad experience. Multiply this by other incidents all across the world. And you have the "shoddy customer service effect." At some point, when they lose enough business, maybe HP will rethink this issue. I wonder how long ago they got rid of american customer service centers. Didn't they used to have some here?
In answer to the person from India. Computers are not easy to troubleshot at times, however good English skills will certainly help the process as poor ones will definatly hinder the process. In the telecommunications field techs are certainly no better in India than America in my experience. If we are catering to America lets do it properly!
I am a Filipino.If you go to the Philippines, you will see that there are a lot of Filipinos who speak BETTER english than Americans, and better accent than Americans although english is our second language. Better grammar, and words are spelled correctly and could even understand most english words that Americans could hardly tell the meaning of.Especially when you go to the business district and schools.
I'm from Glen Ellyn, IL, too, and have had the same problems! For all of you defending the Einsteins hired to answer our calls, give me a break. I've been snubbed by French who didn't want to spend the time talking to me like an 8 year-old because my French isn't native! AND I DON'T BLAME THEM! If you take a job that specifically REQUIRES you to speak fluent English then you better dam- well speak fluent English or find another line of work. If you can't do the job, in America, YOU'RE FIRED!!!
Anyone posting a comment on this site that claims HP's Technical Support in India or Philippines speaks good english is plainly ILLITERATE. I just spent the most difficult 20 minutes of my life trying to explain a simple concept to this person. UNBELIEVABLE, it's like she was looking up every word in her Philippine to English dictionary. CLUELESS. Maybe there are individuals there who speak "good" english, but one thing for certain: NONE OF THEM WORK AT HP's CALL CENTERS !!!!
HP, if any of you corporate greedy sleeze-bags read this, I will NEVER buy another HP product again. Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett are rolling in their graves at what you twits have done with the company they founded and worked hard to establish as a name synonymous with quality. A pig trough trade for profit to be sure!! A good thing Agilent split off, you would have taken that test equipment division and screwed them into the ground too! Fools.
HP has the worst customer service. I had in past (for 20 odd years) dealt with DELL computers only and had no trouble. Unfortunately for a new biz that we started, I purchased a couple of HP computers from Costco.
The hard disk failed in 4 months. Which is fine because hard disks do fail. I went thru a 2 hour conversation with a technician who concluded that we the hard disk will be replaced. I said I will call back with details of where to ship it. Later on, when I called, they had not record of our conversation. They said they will call back in 24 hours. No one did. I called again and they want me to go thru the whole process again.
I WILL IN MY LIFE NEVER BUY AN HP COMPUTER AGAIN. THEY LOOK GOOD BUT THE CUSTOMER SUPPORT IS NOT WORTH THE HEADACHE. HP IS NOT FOCUSSED ON PCS BECAUSE THEY SELL THOUSANDS OF THINGS. DELL SELLS PCs AND WILL DO ANYTHING TO SATISFY CUSTOMERS.
HP has the worst customer service. I had in past (for 20 odd years) dealt with DELL computers only and had no trouble. Unfortunately for a new biz that we started, I purchased a couple of HP computers from Costco.
The hard disk failed in 4 months. Which is fine because hard disks do fail. I went thru a 2 hour conversation with a technician who concluded that we the hard disk will be replaced. I said I will call back with details of where to ship it. Later on, when I called, they had not record of our conversation. They said they will call back in 24 hours. No one did. I called again and they want me to go thru the whole process again.
I WILL IN MY LIFE NEVER BUY AN HP COMPUTER AGAIN. THEY LOOK GOOD BUT THE CUSTOMER SUPPORT IS NOT WORTH THE HEADACHE. HP IS NOT FOCUSSED ON PCS BECAUSE THEY SELL THOUSANDS OF THINGS. DELL SELLS PCs AND WILL DO ANYTHING TO SATISFY CUSTOMERS.