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CONCEPTS 4-A Building a Bad System? IN ACTION Several years ago, a well—known national real estate
company built a computer—based system to help its real
estate agents sell houses more quickly. The system,
which worked in many ways like an early version of
realtor.com, enabled its agents to search the database of
houses for sale to find houses matching the buyer’s cri—
teria using a much easier interface than the traditional
system. The system also enabled the agent to show the
buyer a virtual tour of selected houses listed by the
company itself. It was believed that by more quickly
finding a small set of houses more closely matching the
buyer’s desires, and by providing a virtual tour, the buy—
ers (and the agent) would waste less time looking at
unappealing houses. This would result in happier buy—
ers and in agents who were able to close sales more
quickly, leading to more sales for the company and
higher commissions for the agent. The system was designed with input from agents
from around the country and was launched with great
hoopla. The initial training of agents met with a surge of
interest and satisfaction among the agents, and the pro-
ject team received many congratulations. Six months later, satisfaction with the system had
dropped dramatically, absenteeism had increased by
300%, and agents were quitting in record numbers; turnover among agents had risen by 500%, and in exit
interviews, many agents mentioned the system as the
primary reason for leaving. The company responded by
eliminating the system—with great embarrassment. lCine of an agent's key skills was the ability to find
houses that match the buyer’s needs. The system
destroyed the value of this skill by providing a system
that could enable less skilled agents to perform almost
as well as highly skilled ones. Worse still—from the
viewpoint of the agent—the buyer could interact
directly with the system, thus bypassing the “expertise”
of the agent. Questions 1. How were the problems with the system missed? 2. How might these problems have been foreseen
and possibly avoided? 3. In perfect hindsight, given the widespread availa—
bility of such systems on the Internet today, what
should the company have done? Adapted from: ”The Hidden Minefields in Sales Force Auto-
mation Technologies,” ,‘oumalr of Marketing, July 2002, by C. Speier and V. Venkatesh.

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