On 28 Feb 00, at 12:39, Steve Hammond wrote:

> You may have a "Response Center Advocate"

The deemed necessity for the existence of such a creature at
all speaks volumes about the changed nature of HP. It would
take a thoroughly mindless bureaucrat to conceive of this as a
solution to a "Response Centre" that doesn't respond!

One wonders if the advocates at HP charge the same fees as
their counterparts in the legal world?  Does anyone beside me
remember calling the response centre and talking to a real,
live, SE; one who actually knew how to turn on an HP3000, on
the first call?  Then we were given the tele-marketing frontend
that gave you your incident number but an SE did in fact call
you back, within 30 minutes to two hours as I recall.  There
were a few more changes rolled in over time, all to "improve"
customer service of course.

When our company finally dropped the Response Centre, call-
back times were nearly always the next day and after
speaking with the HP representative one was often left
wondering about the level of experience with the HP3000
possessed by the caller.

I remember when I dealt with all support issues through our
local office.  Problems were managed by our account SE all
the way through the chain of command until things were fixed.
 Now, THAT was advocacy.

Yep! The accountants took over the front office at HP and cut
costs (while improving service!?). Now a proto-legal profession
has evolved within HP to slink through the service centres.
Why?

The next thing that you know and we'll have to get a "lab
broker" to get any system enhancements done. I guess that
the likelihood of a given enhancement getting an "IPO" will
depend on the "market's" reaction to the "prospectus".

Or is that already happening?

Sigh,
Jim


---
James B. Byrne                Harte & Lyne Limited
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fax: +1 905 561 0757          Hamilton, Ontario
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