I returned from last week's travels to find that my HP laptop had returned, repaired, but deposited rather unceremoniously by Fed Ex on my door step. The fact that it was pouring rain didn't seem to phase them. As I feared, it had to have all of its memory wiped clean, so I left it happily transferring files with another 4 hours or so to go. In the mean time, I succumbed to the seductive voices of Richard Binhammer and AndyLark (never mind decades of badgering from my own CTO) and I bought a Dell XPSm1330. It felt traitorous, and somehow unfaithful. After years of true and monogamous love with the HP, I'd been seduced in a moment of weakness by a pretty little package. But the reality was, I was leaving on Monday for a week of speeches and presentations, I didn't know when the HP was coming back, (they had told me Oct. 8th) and my 6 year old Sony didn't have enough memory to save an email attachment.
But it all caused me to analyze what had happened to the relationship and how one or two bad people or bad decisions can have a huge impact on a brand particularly in this era of social media, and citizen journalists. I've had a bit of experience measuring relationships and I know that trust, credibility and satisfaction are key to a good relationship. Unfortunately actions and decisions made in the last year cause me to doubt HP on each one of those factors.
First, lets deal with satisfaction. The HP dv6000 that I initially purchase was a screaming machine. It was running XP and it was beautiful. Within the first six months the hard drive crashed, the wireless card failed and the battery jammed – I believe all those conditions were not the fault of the current HP management, but were rather a result of cost cutting measures made years ago that reduced QA and QC testing. It took me about a minute to find a class action lawsuit about my very laptop.
Then there's the issue of credibility. The next bad decision I believe HP made was to entirely outsource its support. Consistently, I found that the people on the other hand of the on-line support chat were less qualified to deal with problem than was I. Their answers were so clearly dug up out of standard scripts and put together by a computer, they infuriated me. Invariably the answer was we can't help you, 'send it back in for service." Which I knew was going to be the response, but instead I had to waste 2 days arguing with someone with bad grammar.
This latest episode was the laptop's 6th trip back to service central. The first time it came back in days, similar to the most recent experience. But then last June, it was gone for weeks. As a result, I lost all faith in their reliability, a key component of trust. So this time, when they said it would be back by May 8th, I assumed that that was an answer generated by a computer and that I would see the laptop sometime in June.
To HP's credit, they are committed and are listening. Wwhen the laptop died for the 5th time, they sent me a brand new one. Just as pretty and sleek as the prior one, but this one ran Vista. It was slow and buggy and annoying and took a month to get everything working right. Not HP's fault, but definitely hurt on the satisfaction front. When it started getting up to its old tricks and hanging up and not coming back after "sleep," I started to worry. When it died completely in a workshop last Friday, I wasn't surprised, just annoyed. Once again I spent 3 days arguing with a someone by email (since all I had was my HP iPAQ for email) only to hear "we will send you a box to ship it back to the factory." Again, to HP's credit I did received a nice call from HP's executive offices saying that if I hadn't heard back from someone in 48 hours to call them, but I did hear back, and the answer was "it will be there on May 8th " and I left on my trip May 5th. So while I had an answer, it wasn't one that was going to meet my needs.
So I took the plunge and bought a Dell, mostly because road warriors like me, people I like, trust and respect recommended the m1330. In fact I got mine before Dell's chief blogger, Richard Binhammer got his—making him quite jealous.
This isn't really a Dear John note to HP. But as someone who never strayed while married, but who was certainly tempted once or twice, and who's husband certainly did. I feel like I did then. The cheating itself is a sign of a failing relationship. Its not that I still don't love HP the brand, and my HP printers and even my HP iPAQ, I even make movies with it ! , but in terms of the daily experience of dealing with HP it needs to fix its relationships with its customers. It needs better ways to listen. Don't make me spend hours trying to talk to someone who doesn't speak English. I now it kills you to hear this but copy Dell. Dell has come along way, simply by being open and accessible. Richard@Dell doesn't have some anonymous computer read the blogs about Dell, he reads them himself. He answers his own email, and whether you attribute it all to him, he has in fact reduced the negative blog postings by xx% He has become the face of Dell to the people like e trying to get answers.
HP needs to put that human element back into its relationships. Get rid of the auto-responses and the badly written support chats. Use humans, people like me, that I can understand and talk to. And if I know more than they do, pass me on to someone smarter, or more knowledgeable. Go back to your roots and make things that can survive earthquakes. (Did you know that after the LA earthquake in hundreds of offices, people just picked their LaserJets up off the floor, plugged them in and they worked fine.) Most of all, keep listening.
here's the photos: 
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