HP Live Chat Experience – Part 1 of 2
I talked about the live chat experience I had with Dell not too long ago. It was an overall good experience and Dell did a good job. Now, it’s time to compare Dell’s live chat experience to that of their rival, HP.
Not even three hours after I posted the second part of the interview with HP executive Janice Liu, my HP all-in-one printer thing died. The carriage (the thing that holds the ink cartridges) got stuck and nothing really worked.
I went to HP’s web site and found the live chat section pretty quickly. I found my product fairly quickly and clicked on the button to enter a chat with a representative. At this time, the only problem I had was the chat page didn’t tell me to disable my popup blocker and I had to figure that out for myself and go back a few pages, and then refresh. I was connected to a representative named James within a minute or so.
I described my problem, got my information verified, and we proceeded to the troubleshooting. I was told to unplug the printer, wait 30 seconds, and then plug it in again – and then repeat that three times. I did that and nothing happened. I was then asked to remove the ink cartridges (which I couldn’t). The representative then said it seemed like a hardware problem. I was asked to find the serial number (which is of course in the back and not easy to read or access) and give it to the representative.
Then, it happened – I was hit with a sales pitch. I could send the printer for repair or get a new one. I was surprised that the representative gave up so quickly. I was not in the mood to have to pay for a new printer or not have mine for a few weeks while my existing one got repaired.
I asked for more troubleshooting steps. He told me to try moving the carriage “to and fro”. I interpreted that as “You have nothing to lose. Might as well try and force it.” I did and I got it to move over. The printer electronics then started to mess up and I had to go through a step to reset the printer.
In the end, I got my printer working. A critique of the customer service experience (as well as suggestions for what HP can do to improve it) is coming tomorrow.
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Service Untitled » HP Live Chat Experience – Part 2 of 2 said:
Sep 15, 06 at 12:13 pm[...] Yesterday I talked about my experience using the HP Live Chat. Overall, it was an acceptable experience. I wouldn’t consider it great, but it certainly wasn’t bad. [...]