Hacker News Reader

It worked great until the information about the policy got leaked AND made headlines around the world. I'm sure a lot of this stuff is going on which doesn't make it to the HN front page and therefore goes on for years, marginall increasing profits while actively harming customers.

View on HN

It’s not unusual to add a few minutes wait time for customers that didn’t input their data into the system, or for lower priority customers (ones without a support contract for example).

What HP did is just incompetent management. Anyone that works in CC would advice against his strongly. Handle time will go up as every call will start with a complaint about the long wait time, agents will disengage and have higher absenteeism, supervisors will be stressed & angry about it. Brand damage is priceless though. Bravo.

That's probably the key here. The fifteen minute minimum wasn't disclosed to customers, they were made to think there were a bunch of other customers ahead of them in the call queue. Once word got out that the waits were artificially inflated, that's when customers went from annoyed to angry.

A secret like this can be kept for a while, but support turnover is generally pretty high and after they quit/are fired your secrets will leak.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com