When brain dead policies are observed in business, it means that the management responsible for the policies is brain dead. It follows that the management above that level is brain dead for hiring and tolerating brain dead lower-level managers. "Brain dead" is an institutional problem wherever it exists. If found at lower levels, it means that the upper management is asleep at the switch or unfathomably stupid. Ultimately, the top management is responsible for all the stupidity seen in the organization below it. Incompetence, like excellence, begins at the top and propagates downward.
There is an alarming trend toward gross stupidity in business today, especially in high-tech, and most especially in the dot-bomb industry.
freepolls.com is the new name of vantagenet.com, who offered a very functional Web polling mechanism. It was possible to add polls to one's Web pages, soliciting visitors' opinions and displaying the tabulated results. Under the old name free polls were offered and under the new name free polls are offered.
The problem is that when the change took place, the existing free polls stopped working. The old domain, vantagenet.com, goes to the new place but the poll number information is ignored and instead their front page is displayed. So someone clicks on a poll that has been working for a few years and now, instead of seeing the poll, sees the very commercial freepolls.com home page, with its offer of free polls.
It makes the Webmaster who was foolish enough to use the vantagenet.com free polls look stupid. To those who have a clue it makes freepolls.com look extraordinarily stupid, and with good reason.
DirecTV was so overwhelmed by confused customers after taking over USSB that it deflected calls with a recording that apologized and told callers, "We are unable to handle your call personally at this time." This treatment included calls from people attempting to pay money to DirecTV. Marathon efforts of 1/2 to 1 hour failed to reach a human being.
On Saturday, 14-Aug-99, "The accounts are being updated," according to representative Marcia, and so no balances could be retrieved and no credit card payments accepted.
The automated call handling system hangs up on callers.
The automated call handling system refuses to divulge account balance information if an account is overdue, making it more difficult for a customer to bring an account up to date (see Routing Calls to Collections in Brain Dead Business Practices, below).
No one ever understood why there were two companies involved in providing DSS digital satellite TV service, DirecTV and USSB. No one at either company seemed to comprehend that massive consumer confusion resulted from the unexplained anomaly. Since DirecTV's acquisition of USSB, the former confusion has been replaced with a new one: incomprehensibly complex new programming packages and prices that top out at about $80/month (that's almost a car, for crying out loud!).
DirecTV's new lineup includes Spanish-language Galavision and Univision, which have channel numbers and appear in the on line Guide. Unfortunately they appear nowhere in any of the configured programming packages, requiring customers who wish to receive either channel to call and speak to representatives. That blunder alone is probably good for a few million unnecessary calls.
The DirecTV Website has no feedback feature — no way to let them know there is anything wrong.
These days, and particularly in the dot-bomb industry, it is common for the new owner of an acquired business to overhaul or trash the existing Web presence and mechanisms. This demonstrates extreme brain death or cluelessness on the part of the new owners. It makes them look abysmally stupid.
In the consolidations of automobile and food companies in the previous century, companies who acquired smaller ones wisely maintained the recognized brands. Thus when Ford acquired Lincoln, the respected Lincoln brand continued, and when Nabisco and Kraft acquired any of the hundreds of smaller food companies and their products, the known, established brands of the acquired companies continued. The U.S. automobile and food industries by and large comprehend brand name recognition and demographics. They take the long view.
Not so in high tech industries. There, wet-behind-the-ears MBA jocks inflated with fantasies of their own self-worth regularly trash established brands when their companies acquire smaller ones. They compulsively "brand" everything in sight with their own, often little-known brand, confusing and losing long-standing customers.
Just a few of the brands that have been trashed by the new generation of clueless high-tech corporate wheeler-dealers are:
Increasing numbers of companies have automated voice call management systems. "Press 1 for English, press 2 for Latvian, press 3 if you are deaf and cannot hear this..." Large companies with customer account issues often make account balances available through such systems, 24 hours a day. Great. But some, most notoriously the brain dead mortage servicing industry, route balance inquiries for overdue accounts to their Collections deparments. The problem is that the Collections people aren't always available and don't usually work 24 hours a day or seven days a week. So anal is the mindset, though, that if the badgers of Collections can't take your call to get credit for making you cough up, you won't get a chance to hear a synthesized voice tell you how much you owe. Or where to send the payment. Or their physical address for overnight service. Now, is the 24-hour availability of balance and payment address information more important for the customers who are up to date or for the customers who are trying to get up to date or beat a late charge deadline?
Any company whose phone system auomatically routes all calls from overdue account holders to Collections is Brain Dead. Companies who do this after hours are Doubly Brain Dead.