Is Your Business Broken? Seth Godin Was Right.

I was watching a video of Seth Godin http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/ where he talks about 7 Kinds of Broken Business or Marketing Processes.  Seth is a master marketer; he gets it.  One of his types of broken was “Broken on Purpose”. I thought to myself, who makes a business process that is broken on purpose? Well, I found one myself: The Department of Motor Vehicles. Some might say, hey Mike, that’s is not a big surprise- everyone knows that he DMV is the worst place you could spend your day.  But, I will tell you that here in Nevada the DMV has made significant improvements in the last 20 years. When I got my license at 16, we had to follow multicolored lines, painted on the floor that started at the front entrance of the DMV. It was confusing, it was de-humanizing, and it was ineffective; people kept bumping into each other because they were looking at the floor. The DMV has come a long way. Now they have modern facilities where automated “Now Serving number A43 at window 17” voices direct you to the person waiting to help you. It usually takes less than an hour to get your business finished at the DMV. Yes, the DMV has come a long way, however, they haven’t come far enough.

I was trying to register my vehicle with the DMV Online Registration Service.  I got home from work and got on the website only to find this message: Sorry the Online System is Currently Closed.  Closed? What do you mean closed? I must have read it wrong – perhaps the system is down for maintenance? No. They were closed. WILL SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME IN THIS DAY AND AGE – HOW CAN A WEBSITE BE CLOSED?  Isn’t that the purpose of having a website instead of a brick-and-mortar store? If you can’t purchase something from an online store – what is the point? Imagine Amazon.com or ebay.com saying: sorry our store is closed, please come back tomorrow during normal operating hours. This is not only illogical, but it is also BROKEN.  Seth Godin was right.

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