Bean Counters and Pyromaniacs

This morning in an attempt to buy a digital ID from Verisign, an error message appeared with the instruction to call customer support, listing the phone number. After an interminable wait, the service representative said that Verisign supports digital ID only on line. Explaining that the error message occurred only after the credit card entry, she referred over to the merchant account support. The operator at the merchant account referred back to Verisign support with the same endless loop of inaccessible destinations. From there, it was easy to seek other competitive options, not previously considered. Indeed, there were three or four others listed by Outlook Express.

Pyromaniacs are rather easy to identify and eliminate from the customer service staff. These persons are compelled to "burn all bridges" behind problems that they cannot or merely find difficult to resolve. The greater problem is purging administrative management of the pyros. Typically a successful enterprise will grow exponentially and with little or no administrative control, driven by engineers and marketing people. Support will be top notch. The customer will be highly valued, large or small. Then some investment banker will insist on better administrative management, and in come the bean counters. Bean counters apparently operate by three laws. 1. Information may not be shared. 2. Engineered scarcity is the highest order of good. 3. Customers are mere commodities.

Computers are good at doing things that our brains do not do well: accurately store and make accessible vast quantities of data, apply statistics to the data, move all forms of digital information, data, voice graphic text etc. Computers do not think well. Artificial intelligence is in its infancy. The attempts to assign computers to replace humans for solving complex variable problems fail miserably. Computers multiply productivity, but they can also multiply loss of business when misapplied.

Business depends upon relationships. Small businesses tend to become big businesses. There is no way to determine which ones. The enormous cost savings and productivity gains engendered by computerizing the telephone receptionist and the customer support burden seems far outweighed by the loss of customers, reputation and return business. The bean counter will say, there is no customer loyalty. Ah yes, and he makes it so.