HP's Call Center Strategy More 'Partner-Centric'

As part of a new strategy intended to clarify rules of engagement governing HP&'s business-class products—including PCs, workstations, industry-standard servers and business-class storage—HP also will unveil a named account list to identify where it will engage customers on a direct basis.

But clearly it was the reining in of the call center&'s direct sales efforts that caught solution providers&' attention. “The call center was a problem and a conflict for us,” said Chris Ferry, executive vice president of Technology Integration Group, a San Diego-based solution provider. “This is nothing but an improvement, and we welcome the change.”

Many solution providers viewed the call center as a renegade organization whose mission was to sell direct. Solution providers have complained for years that HP&'s telesales reps have been calling into their accounts and trying to get their customers to buy direct, often offering prices that undercut solution providers.

“The call center will be more partner-centric,” promised John Thompson, HP&'s vice president and general manager, Solution Partners Organization, Americas. “We will no longer have a concerted effort on an outbound marketing campaign, which tended to create the largest challenge and confusion in concert with our partners. We have listened to our partners, and we believe this is another component in ensuring that we have the appropriate rules of engagement.”

As part of the strategy, the call center will still field incoming calls, but reps responsible for coordinating channel influencer sales will now report to Thompson&'s organization. Previously, they reported to the now-defunct Customer Solutions Group, a disconnect solution providers blamed for many of the conflicts surrounding HP&'s influencer agent program.

Thompson said HP is crafting rules of engagement and a collaboration effort with partners similar to those in place in its enterprise business. As a result, HP is compiling a list of named accounts for business-class products that it will unveil to the channel in its fiscal first quarter, which began Nov. 1.

Thompson declined to reveal the number of accounts on the list but said HP would take the lead in managing those accounts, while bringing in select partners to augment its efforts. All accounts outside those named will be partner-led customers, with HP providing support where needed.

“We will work with those partners incumbent in the [named] accounts,” he added.

Thompson said the list will give partners a clear path so they&'ll know where to invest their sales efforts and how they can best partner with HP.

“This list will be good for partners,” said Pete Busam, vice president and COO of Decisive Business Systems, a solution provider in Pennsauken, N.J. He said the call center working with channel partners on HP direct accounts should be able to drive much higher attach rates for HP.

“What they realized was if you have HP plus a partner you are going to drive a lot more attach and have a much more predictable model on how the channel works with the call center because we are going to have rules of engagement on both sides,” Busam said.

However, some partners said they are withholding judgment on the strategy until they see the named account list and fully understand the rules of engagement regarding where HP would lead and where the partners would lead.

Thompson was vague on the specific rules of engagement but said there would be compensation penalties and disciplinary actions including termination for end-user reps who are out of compliance on rules related to the named account list.

“We want to reward partners that have investments in those accounts,” he said. “If there were attempts to change that motion, the end-user rep would not be compensated.”

Solution providers who discussed the new strategy with HP said HP would likely collaborate with only its best and most loyal partners in its new SMB engagement strategy.

“Where [HP CEO Mark Hurd] said he would double down, you are likely to see some weeding out of partners,” said one HP solution provider, who asked not to be identified. “HP is going to go with its franchise players on this.”