Wow and Shit!

I have had the fortunate luck to have to call HP customer service a couple of times here at my job, and I can honestly say that they have the best customer service of anyone I have ever dealt with. With today’s exception of a long wait on hold, I can’t say anything bad about their service… even the holding. Here’s why:

1. Voice Driven Menu System – When you first call, you’re greeted by a (for me, at least) humorous sounding woman who guides you through your service experience. However, if you’ve been through this before and know how it works, you can just cut her off and say what you’re after. Best part: She doesn’t get mad when you do it, and actually encourages it. Not to mention the menu system is only long enough to place you in the lap of the right initial operator, not like some others where you have to punch in a billion digits to get somewhere..

2. The initial people that you talk to are the friendliest sounding people I’ve ever talked to. They appear as if they want to take your call; reality says they don’t and probably hate their job, but at least they’re good at feigning interest in your broken printer.

3. When they put you on hold, the music is awesome. One time when I called there, ragtime piano. The other, light rock. This time, jazz. I actually don’t mind putting the phone down on speaker and continuing my work while I wait. Let’s face it, you can only hear “It’s Hip to be a Square” by Huey Lewis before it gets boring.
4. When you get to the service tech, all the ones I’ve talked to have come from Canada. You can understand them, but they have enough accent to still be charming, eh? Microsoft could take a hint. I mean, there’s people in Idaho who won’t work a drive-through because it doesn’t pay enough, not even at $12.15; there, now we know where to get people who can actually speak something you understand, domestically grown.

I’m also a little biased because I own an HP laptop, but I really like it as well, and they have a really good including-third-party computer recycling program. Hewlett-Packard, will you marry me?
You can read other tech-related stories on my blog, /life.