Comments | _earthshine_: The New Shape Of Success In America

_earthshine_

The New Shape Of Success In America

Oct 04, 2009 20:23

America, self-proclaimed leader of the free world (or at least the free market, which is anything but free), has a new theme boldly re-shaping how it does business. Knowing this theme will not only bring your business in step with the industry leaders, but may likely boost your revenues in time for that critical quarterly report. That magical ( Read more... )

stupidity, .sec_public, credit cards, .tpc_sociopolitical, .tpc_itsupport, dsl, verizon, business

Comments 23

slawson01 October 5 2009, 02:33:28 UTC

My former employer has a really good sales team. I did very specific, complex testing of electronics. They would sell to everyone all the time. We would get jobs in and then those of us in the lab would have to figure out how in the hell we were going to do this testing.

Sales outstripping what we could do. Then we had to explain to the customer why it took us three weeks just to get started on the testing.

_earthshine_ October 9 2009, 04:43:24 UTC

Totally. ...and this works if the company gets big enough.

At sufficient size (which you might be), the disconnect between sales and testing can be so unavoidably apparent to the customer that it becomes almost implied from the jump, and perhaps even acceptable.

At really large sizes (like the companies above), the bureaucracy becomes so impenetrable that it's rare you can get the same salesperson twice. ...and forget about talking to the person who's actually going to do the work -- that's as unAmerican as mass transit!

mykkel October 5 2009, 12:47:27 UTC

Your American Express experience is 180 degrees in the opposite direction from mine. The rest of the post is familiar.

_earthshine_ October 9 2009, 04:45:29 UTC

Wow... well, i'm not shocked shocked, but i am a little disappointed. Was your bad experience right with AmEx itself, or just with an AmEx card offered by another bank?

I ask cuz those are definitely not the same thing. One of my hair-tearing sagas with Bank Of America was with respect to an AmEx card that they offer. It's got the AmEx logo on it, but it's not AmEx who administers it, which has made all the difference to me (so far).

mykkel October 9 2009, 14:59:24 UTC

My Bank of America American Express card experience and my American Express card experience were different only in which call center I was speaking with.

Bank of America is definitely on my list of credit institutions that I will never deal with again.

_earthshine_ October 19 2009, 01:01:37 UTC

That's a bummer to hear. I was hoping that AmEx was the last holdout of actual service in the industry.

redmomoko October 5 2009, 12:59:34 UTC

I know I sound like a broken record but you should read "Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work" by Matthew Crawford (http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/1594202230). It will pass the time while you are on hold.

Personally, I blame TCM and its ilk.

_earthshine_ October 9 2009, 04:46:20 UTC

TCM? The bank?

(Re the book, i'll keep it in mind. Now that i commute without a car, i actually have time to read a little!)

redmomoko October 9 2009, 11:31:27 UTC

whoops! I meant TQM- Total Quality Management. I think that I was thinking Total Customer Management 'cause that's what it turns into.

technolope October 5 2009, 15:08:00 UTC

The solution is an automatic, worldwide, free, shared consumer experience database, and it is coming. This recession is actually helping it along.

As long as the companies are the only ones with the information, they can play these costly (to us) games.

_earthshine_ October 9 2009, 04:49:01 UTC

That will help, but even if it's well-designed, it's success against this problem depends on three things:

1) that people will contribute useful data to it en masse,

2) that people will actually use it before selecting a company to work with, and

3) that the market will provide alternatives.

These are not impossibles, but they're far from guaranteed IMHO.

(The comment has been removed)

_earthshine_ October 9 2009, 04:59:49 UTC

OMG what a mess! (Was there ever an epilogue?)

Here's what i find amazing about dealing with these companies (especially the credit card companies):

1) They do things that in any other reasonable practice would be considered utterly unprofessional.

2) We as consumers often end up with NO recourse at the end.

#2 has reached a particularly nasty state of excess. My experience with Discover drove this point home. They literally put a charge on my account counter to my instructions and without my authorization, and there was nothing i could do about it, short of devoting a major portion of my life to suing them -- and, oh, by the way, completely destroying my credit in the interim to the tune of thousands of dollars in penalties while our "justice" system spends N years ironing out the verdict. I even called their Fraud Department, but guess what? Their Fraud Department doesn't help you when they're the ones who've committed the fraud ( ... )