There’s been a lot of talk about big, slow, and dumb at Make It Work lately. Specifically, how no matter how far our company’s reach grows and how successful we are, we can’t ever let ourselves “feel” like one of those Big, Slow, and Dumb companies. Our business has to move at the speed of technology, which naturally builds in a pace of innovation, fresh thinking, and new ideas that most companies will never achieve.
I have an example of a big, slow, and dumb company to illustrate my point. I’ve been a very, very loyal subscriber to DISH network for almost five years. Until recently, I’ve had 99%+ uptime, excellent quality signal, and was really pleased with the customer service experiences I had had to that point- they have moved with me four times and each time came out and moved my dish to my new apartment, sometimes at great peril- for free.
But then, things started to unravel and I started to realize how slow this company had gotten. I started have massive DVR problems about four months ago- it would reset itself automatically and was boot-looping like crazy. Confident it would be a simple replacement, I called DISH tech support and had one of the worst customer service experiences of my life. I don’t need to explain it in detail because everyone reading this has had the same thing happen to them- disconnects, busy signals, language barriers, unnecessary troubleshooting (“I hear that you are saying that your lightbulb is dead. Can you please try to turn it on for me sir.”) and then they tried to charge me for shipping of the new DVR, which by the way, I’ve been paying $10 a month for 5 years for (Do I own it yet or something?).
Anyway, the new DVR arrives and, of course, it’s clearly a refurbished device. A week later it starts doing the same thing. Rinse and repeat terrible tech support experience, and I have yet another one. Two months later, same thing. I’m not bothering this time- I, like many of my coworkers, am switching to DirecTV.
But bad service and an insistence on cheap, old equipment isn’t even the biggest reason I’m switching. I’ve had the DVR I’ve had since 2004. When I called to get my second replacement, I asked if there was a new model available, and low and behold there was one available- only one in five years. It boasted literally only one new feature at the price of $200 to upgrade (plus still pay the $10 a month)- I could watch two HD shows at the same time. Neat. I realized then that this technology company had basically sat around doing nothing with their products the entire time I’ve been with them, offer essentially no on-demand programming, and charge the same as a company that, while certainly not perfect (I so wish I was in a FiOS territory…), at least *tries* to keep up.
After my experience at MIW, I could never work for a big, slow, dumb company. I’d feel stifled, unimportant, and frustrated unless I could affect a massive change in company culture. At MIW, I don’t have to affect that change, because from the ground up we’ve built a company that is moving faster than the speed of “cool”.
