Money

HP looks to save laptop face

By Wang Chao (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-16 08:24

HP expects to solve most customers' laptop problems in two to three weeks, before launching a comprehensive campaign to stimulate sales and rebuild the brand.

Isaiah Cheung, vice-president and general manager of Hewlett-Packard's personal systems group in Greater China, told METRO after resolving the crisis, the company will spend three to five months to rebuild the brand and resuscitate sales hit by the crisis.

HP's quality problems were first reported on March 10 by the Financial Times before the crisis peaked when problematic laptops were criticized during Consumer's Day in China, on March 16.

The next day, Cheung apologized to customers and promised to honor warranties. Then, on March 20, HP drew up a "Q&A" detailing ways customers could deal with laptop problems.

The document was drafted after customers complained that a previous version was too vague and was hard to understand.

"This crisis is definitely detrimental to HP, but we have to solve the customers' problems first," he said.

According to Cheung, since March 15, HP has received 44,066 calls from customers. Among them, 23 percent were queries about how to deal with laptop problems and the rest were inquiries about the company's policies.

"But since the beginning of this week, calls from customers have been dropping," Cheung said. "We doubled the number of operators to answer calls from customers."

After that, HP provided repairs or warranty extensions for 6,301 customers and refunded 1,792 people, Cheung said.

Asked about the causes of the quality crisis, Cheung said there was a gap between soaring sales and insufficient post-sale services.

"We failed to pay enough attention to backstage support and did not do a good job of supervising our staff to offer a good service."

Cheung also admitted HP did not provide enough channels for customers to report problems.

"To be honest, this crisis had a very bad impact on our brand and our sales," Cheung said. "But in the long term, it is a good thing because we can draw lessons from the crisis," he said.

"If it had happened two years from now, the result might have been even worse for HP. In the future, we shall never sacrifice customers' interests."

Wang Fengchang, founder of a consumers' group that has been demanding proper treatment from HP, said some customers exchanged their laptops but he said there were still groups whose problems remained unsolved.

"Legal avenues are not the best choice to demand immediately rights for consumers, since that will be time-consuming," Wang said, "We hope HP can introduce a more satisfactory plan to cover all consumers."

Since Cheung took the helm in 2007, the Personal Systems Group in the China market has accelerated in revenue, profit and market share.

HP said during his tenure, the group has maintained a PC unit shipment growth rate that is twice the market average.