Call for Keysight Customer Service Stories - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: tindel
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 01, 2022, 01:59:28 pm
content: Posting a new thread for more coverage.I've been shocked to have a poor experience with Keysight customer service recently. Not exactly the same as some of the others, and I'm fortunate to have a business in the US and have some leverage. With that leverage, I'm trying to capture the ear of Keysight's leadership (CEO, COO, CFO, and Global Sales) to let them know how bad they are @%#ing up - literally targeting the people that built Keysight; the type of people Dave and Bill were; that go on to build the type of companies that Dave and Bill founded.The ask:Make sure your voice is heard - post a short (1 or 2 lines) how Keysight @#$@ed you over here:https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/threads/1ghz-scope.177949/#post-1721361. Remember, these are high level executives at one of the largest companies in the world - They don't have time to read your entire post. They need cliff notes. Even if you've decided to go elsewhere based on stories from others - this is incredibly valuable.Let small voices make a loud noise!Unfortunately, I myself don't have a lot more time to dedicate to this - soplease spread the word and reach out if you want to help.

author: moore
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2022, 08:02:26 pm
content: Good luck. The problem as I see it is every company is falling down in the area of customer service. There are three sales staff who barely understand what they are selling for every competent support engineer. Keysight in my experience is no worse than Tek, maybe better actually.As for going back to Hewlett - Packard, I had an interesting experience recently. I met an engineer who works at HP Enterprise, which spun off from the parent about 6 years ago. He was a mid-to-late career guy, had been there at least since the 90s and seemed quite knowledgeable. I mentioned that we buy stuff from Keysight from time to time. His response - "what's Keysight?". He'd simply never heard of the brand, it wasn't even a vague presence on his radar. I looked it up and HPE has about 7x the revenue of Keysight. This BIG company that we love/hate and see as a market leader in test equipment is a pipsqueak in the overall scheme of things.

author: jpanhalt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2022, 08:23:36 pm
content: Carly Fiorina (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carly_Fiorina_2016_presidential_campaign) is clearly bright, and more important, well spoken. That did not make her a great CEO or Presidential candidate. As a young chemist, we relied on Varian and Cary. Later in life, HP GLC's and its multiwavelength UV detector for HPLC (I never liked the HP HPLC pumps) were our standard. Having a lot of experience with an early version of that HPLC detector (circa mid-1980's), I was convinced it must have taken a lot of effort to make a fast processor slow, but it worked well nevertheless and was the only choice at the timeHP/Agilent/Keysight has lost its way. IMHO. I don't have an opinion on Tek, but I have two of its o'scopes. My newest is a Rigol (2015). I think competition is the only way to get the best.

author: EE-digger
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2022, 08:30:56 pm
content: While I agree that many of these companies are losing their way but it's 2022 and none of us work for free.One new pet peave I have is Keysight selling a contract for technical support. I've bought much HP/Agilent/Keysight test gear over the 40 years for copper, digital and fiber optic testing and development, and especially general use lab gear. Technical support was always excellent and always found a solution for us. In recent times, this has still happened and I hope that you are not rejected now without a contract.On a happy note, Keysight recently repaired my MSOX4000A series scope which had a thermal intermittent problem. They replaced the entire acq board (most of the electronics in the unit), held it for a few extra days of observation due to the intermittent nature, then ran it through factory calibration. Top notch results !In closing, it still is 2022 and nothing is cheap anymore. I just paid >$9 at noon for a Burger King Whopper sandwich only. You can thank all the current mindset in our ruling class for some of the problems. The rest of the problems rest on our shoulders as stock holders, mutual fund owners, etc. A lot of artificial demands for growth are placed on these companies. How does management push back? Either very gently or find another line of workDaniel from Keysight made a good point a while back. The same resource that's repairing or supporting a $250k scope or analyzer is assigned to your $6k scope. Maybe the solution here is like a $350 visit to your dentist or a $50 visit to a local dental school. You hire bright young people and train them to staff your support centers for the lower cost products. With time and experience, they migrate to the higher end products and requisite expertise.I don't know what the solution is going forward but Tek is horrid and Keysight getting worse for replacement parts. Service documentation is a thing of the past. But when you realize they are both supporting large corporations, not the small user, this has become expected.

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2022, 09:57:10 pm
content: Quote from: jpanhalt on April 02, 2022, 08:23:36 pmFunny point: Agilent bought Varian, who had bought Cary. The opposite of competition.