Who even comes up with these bizarre ideas? I cannot believe ideas like this are not only proposed in a professional setting but also approved and implemented! Are we living in a bizarro-world?
The people who thought this up are clearly not aiming to provide the best-possible customer service. Likely, their goal is cost-saving, with delivery of a minimum-acceptable level of customer service.
Let's be honest, very little of HP's activity seems focussed on providing the best-possible anything.
Shareholder "value", i.e. profit
They are, like the vast majority of corporate America, only providing for themselves, and not giving one shit about anyone else, especially their marks, I mean, customers.
Although I'd propose to optimise the concept to something like "shareholder value, inasmuch as it influences the rewards of the current leadership team, within their likely period of employment".
Of course, probably what would happen is the savings would be cut from the customer support budget.
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.
This policy was meant to make people give up, it's literally anti-support.
_Glances around everywhere, winces_
But seriously, how isolated and idiotic does an entire room of people need to be in order to do something like this? Did they not think the internet would go apeshit over such a policy? Was the cost-savings of people giving up on the support line worth this bad publicity? Anyone with an even slightly realistic view of being a customer would guffaw at such a suggestion. This is nothing but outright contempt for their customers.