HP not meeting support needs of customers

The new-look HP will have to make big improvements to its services to win over disgruntled UK customers, an influential study reveals.

The 2002 annual Worldwide HP Advocacy Survey - to be released next week - shows widespread concern among international user groups about important areas of business.

The UK scored particularly poorly, with users' overall relationship satisfaction being four per cent lower than that of international counterparts.

Just over 30 per cent of UK users felt HP understood their business needs, compared to almost 60 per cent of European users. A little over half UK users said the company consistently kept commitments, and less than 30 per cent of users sat HP has consistent and seamless contact.

The research was conducted by Interex shortly before the acquisition of Compaq.

The company did improve its understanding of users' business needs and there are promising signs that concerns are now being addressed, says Emmet Hayes, chair of the HP Computer Users Association in the UK.

'However, it [the survey] also highlights that the long-standing problems of support contracts and sales support have still not been solved,' Hayes said.

'As long as I can remember these have been the two biggest issues that customers have had with HP: fantastic products, great people, but real problems with overly-complicated support contracts, and a constant lack of people to answer sales queries,' he said.

'Bearing in mind this survey was of the 'old' HP, I hope that with the injection of 'new' HP that these old chestnuts will finally be put to rest,' Hayes said. Stephen Gill, chief executive of HP UK and Ireland told Computing that 'customer service is an course of absolute priority for us.'

He says the company will be looking at how top use the information in the survey to improve customer issues but points out that the survey was conducted before the Compaq purchase.

'At that time there was widespread debate about the proposed merger between HP and Compaq and this environment would have impacted the responses. Since the survey was conducted HP and Compaq have successfully integrated and customer feedback has been very positive,' Gill said.