Dark Patterns vs. Customer Experience Efficiency: HP’s Hold-Time Controversy

Imagine calling tech support and being told you’ll need to wait 15 minutes. Not because the lines are busy, but because the company wants to see how long you’ll stick around.

That’s what happened to HP customers in February 2025. What began as an experiment quickly became a lesson in minding business efficiency while upholding customer trust.

The Experiment That Became a Dark Pattern

On February 18, customers in several European countries who called HP support heard an on-hold message saying high call volumes meant a minimum 15-minute hold time. The recording suggested customers try the company’s website or virtual assistant for faster help.

But an internal memo that went public later revealed the hold time was intentional. The company wanted customers to give up on phone support and use online self-service instead.

Within hours, tech media labeled HP's tactics as a “dark pattern,” a deliberate, manipulative customer experience design choice that exploits friction, fatigue, or confusion to steer customers’ behavior in ways they might not otherwise choose.

Dark patterns emerge from how designers set up a choice architecture for customers. Ideas behind choice architecture are based on behavioral science and how people think, evaluate options, and make decisions. Choice architecture is always present in commerce.

A dark pattern is a deliberately implemented customer experience design choice that exploits friction or confusion to steer customers’ behavior in ways that serve the company, rather than the customer.

Within 48 hours, HP reversed course. But the incident surfaced a constant economic reality for CX leaders: when problems are complex, people still want to talk to a real person. At the same time, digital support is far cheaper to run than human-staffed call centers.

Shortly after the controversy, HP announced plans to eliminate thousands of jobs as part of broader cost reductions. So, the pressures driving the situation were very real.

In 2016, CX stood alone as the top priority for corporate contact center leaders, outranking operational improvement, tech transformation, and revenue generation, but that setup is no longer; the hierarchy of priorities has disappeared.

In my book, Sage Works Guide to Global Leadership, I wrote about situations like these, where leaders must think and work quickly within complex, heavily interconnected systems. There are no easy answers, but perhaps the first step is to recognize the situation and call it what it is.

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