Is Anybody Home??

That’s the question asked by a reader of this blog after visiting Hewlett-Packard Canada’s website.

As an entrepreneur, he was reading up on printers at HP’s sub-site dedicated to small and medium-sized business. On this page HP offers an ambitious slogan: “No one understands you like HP.”

Well, let’s see.

From the page at http://www.hp.ca/portal/biztown/colour_printing_centre/printing_imaging.php, he clicked on what looked like an interesting link under "Solve Business Problems" called "Success Stories".That click took him to HP’s U.S. site. But what the heck, he figured, a success story is a success story.

Except that the graphic box entitled "Printing solutions success stories for Small & Medium Business" offered this stark message: "None currently available. Please check back."

HP has hundreds of customer success stories on its site. But apparently not one deals with printers in small-business environments. That seems pretty strange when printers and imaging constitute HP’s most profitable division.

What would it take, my correspondent wondered, for HP to talk to a couple of its millions of printer users to see how they’re faring, and post a story or two on its website? “Hell,” said our reader, “they could give me a call.”

What would it take for HP to show its small-biz customers some respect? Especially when it likes to tell business owners that “No one understands you like HP.”

MORAL: If you talk the talk, walk the walk.