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BUSINESS ISSUES Just Replace The Pilot by Ron Dunlap ....................................................................... Taxiing down the tarmac, a jetliner abruptly stopped, turned around and returned to the gate. After an hour-long wait, it finally took off. A concerned passenger asked the flight attendant, “What was the problem?” “Oh. It wasn’t anything that important really. The pilot was bothered by a rumbling noise he heard in the engine,” explained the Flight Attendant, “and it took us a while to find a new pilot.” Yes, it’s a joke, but it reminded me of a conversation I had with a web host owner several years ago. “John” had just hired a new support manager to replace “Robert.” Robert had been with the company since they had opened, and was a very good support manager. It was surprising to me, because I knew Robert loved working there, so I asked what happened to Robert. I thought he was doing a pretty good job. John told me that his company was going through a growth spurt and it seemed his company’s support efforts were lagging behind. They were getting more and more emails and calls for support from their customers. I asked if the increased requests were complaints, or just the typical setup and operation questions that are expected with the influx of new customers. John said they were mostly setup questions, but there were so many of them they couldn’t get to all of them. Robert had been with the Web Host company from day one, and was a very good manager. I was eager to find out why Robert left so I asked, “Did Robert quit from not being able to deal with the added pressure or something?” “No,” said John rather abruptly, “Robert was doing everything he could to keep up with the problems, but he constantly complained that we needed to hire more people to handle the increased number of support questions!” That was reasonable, I thought, but John wasn’t finished… “His complaints finally got to me and I couldn’t take it anymore, so I finally just put a cork in it!” “Put a cork in it,” I asked, not sure where he was going with his story? “Yes! I fired him and hired a new support manager!” I was dumbfounded. “Well, maybe I am not following you. You fired Robert because he told you he needed to add more staff to handle the increased support requests?” “Yes, I sure did,” John said with conviction. Scratching my head, I asked another “dumb” question. “Well, did hiring the new manager decrease the support requests, or something?” I was still incredulous. “Nope. But the new manager never complains to me about adding more staff and that takes a lot of pressure off my shoulders!” Amazing! John thought it was better to get a “new pilot” that didn’t complain about the noise, rather than fix the real problem. Just so you know, the web host lost a lot of customers when Robert was let go. It also lost credibility over the next year, and was eventually bought out by one of the “mega-hosts” that gobbled up quite a few web hosts back then. John complained that he should have sold his company when they had more customers (ironically, that was when Robert was with them). And, sadder still, Robert was disillusioned with Web Hosting and left the industry. The remaining customers were absorbed by the “mega-host,” and hopefully received better treatment. I hear this kind of thing happening every so often and I always believe that greed is the motivating factor. All companies face problems, but not all web hosts deal with them the same way. Quality web hosts fix the “engine noise.” Bad web hosts just replace the pilot. P! 56 Ping! Zine Web Hosting Magazine
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