The Scottrade Website: Where "Random Issue" = Permanent Bug.
May 1, 2008
When something is fouled up, fix it. Then examine your payment structure. You will probably find that you have been subsidizing your problem. You get what you pay for, or close to it. Here is a case in question.
Yesterday, my wife and I were doing some trading.
My wife executed five ETF trades. At the end of each trade, a confirmation screen appeared. The first button visible was print. My wife clicked it.
Her screen locked up every time. On a mutual fund trade a few minutes before, the screen printed.
So completely locked up was her screen that she had to use control-alt-delete to escape, or else twice had to click the X in the upper right-hand side of the screen. This tossed her off the site. She had to log in again every time.
We called for help. The account rep gave us lots on suggestions: clear the cache, clear cookies, disable the pop-up blocker. She did. Nothing worked.
Then it was my turn. I went to my computer, cleared the cache, cleared cookies, and disabled the pop-up blocker. I executed a mutual fund trade. I clicked print. My screen turned into a blank page. At the top was this: about:blank
So completely locked up was the screen that half a dozen control-alt-deletes could not unlock it. About five minutes later, the screen did close. I had to log in again.
I sent an email that warned them of the problem. There was fast response. Within half an hour, I received this note.
Dear Client,Thank you for the e-mail. There is a random issue with the "Print" button that is built into the Scottrade web-site. You will need to use the "Print" button built into the browser by going to "File" and down to "Print". That will allow you to print the information.
If you have any further questions please let us know.
Notice the phrase: "random issue." In earlier days, such random issues were called "bugs" by users, and "features" by software sellers.
There was nothing random about this glitch. It was consistent. The customer service person was well aware of it. He was delivering the webmaster's Party Line: "Randomness is beyond anyone's control." That means, "I have not been able to fix this, but management remains unaware of it. If management ever finds out and tells me to fix it, I'll fix it."
It seems to me that when your business is mainly web-based, and a screen offers an option as common as print, the webmaster would come under pressure by the sales department to fix the bug.
As a fall-back position, the webmaster should remove the print button. He should insert these words: "To print out the page, click your browser's print button, or click File>Print." That's what customer service says in response to a complaint. So, tell the user in advance.
This will not happen. Why not? Because such an announcement might come to the attention of senior management. Here is the Webmaster guild's nearly universal rule: "Better to accept defeat than admit it." Besides, who will notice? Only clients. What power do clients possess?
Senior management has never noticed any of this, of course. The chain of command suppresses the flow of bad news upward. This is true of every known chain of command. It takes active intervention by senior management to thwart this universal tendency.
What Went Wrong?
Senior managers rarely think through incentives, other than commissions. They do not think of ways to head off problems at the pass. There are two ways: fear and greed.
What company has a full-time staff member whose income comes from finding foul-ups? With a web-based firm, such a person should be commissioned: so much money (say, $250) per error. He would make a lot of money. After a month, raise it to $400 -- fewer errors remaining.
He would be the nemesis of the webmaster. Every web-based company needs a nemesis for the webmaster, who holds the company captive. Senior managers are afraid of him, for good reason.
The other way: let anyone in the firm find an error on the site. Pay $500 per discovered error. Soon, the site would be close to perfect.
No company does this. Senior managers don't want to be bothered with glitches far down in the bowels of the company. Bowels are as bowels do. So, those at the bottom have less incentive to fix problems than to cover up problems. Senior managers don't want to hear about problems. So, when it comes to website problems, here is senior management.
If they really wanted to fix this sort of thing, they could. They would creative a fear/greed incentive structure to discover such problems early and eliminate them soon after.
People perform as they are rewarded. If they are rewarded to let things slide -- swept under the huge rug of randomness -- things will slide. Bank on it.
The productivity guru W. Edwards Deming was right. "Get it right the first time." Having to play catch-up is a sign that something at bottom is fouled up. The system is broken. Fix the system. Start rewarding whistle-blowing.