Are we turning into a self-service world?
I can only speak for the USA, but it seems like every company in existence is striving as hard as it can to hand you the reigns of whatever service or product they provide. About ten years ago I found this really exciting. Do you remember the first time you didn’t need to stand in line behind a counter at a gas station to pay for your fuel? What a great idea! It saved everyone time. It saved frustration. It saved the gas stations money. As far as I can tell that didn’t hurt much of anything. Surely this was the dawn of a golden age!
Or maybe it was the death knell for customer service?
There are plenty of benefits
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot of situations where I like this business model, and would be a bit lost without it. I don’t remember the last time I had to go inside to fuel up a vehicle, and I think that’s how it should be. It makes sense. There just isn’t much to it, so I don’t need to interact with anyone.
On the same note, I love the self checkout lanes at the grocer. I should qualify that better–I love them when the people in front of me know how to use them. For me, they save a lot of time. I can scan and bag nearly as fast as the best of cashiers so I’m happy to do so if it saves me a bit of time. This isn’t true for everyone. Sometimes it’s faster for me to go to a standard checkout and wait behind two or three others instead of wait for someone to fight with the self-check lane.
Some of the airlines have it half-right. The self check-in terminals save a lot of time getting your boarding passes, but then you still have to wait for them to print your luggage tags and take them. Then again, with all the insecurity measures we take nowadays, all the time saved ends up being wasted somewhere else.
It doesn’t apply to everything, or: I don’t want to cook my own burger!
Some companies seem to have taken the concept of empowering the customer and run with it… all the way out the door and into rush-hour traffic. They will push their automated systems at you, and not give you any chance to talk with someone to actually get service. At one point, this must have seemed like a good idea to them but it’s very hard to say how they can continue to see it this way.
Have you called up a support line for a service lately? It could be your phone, cable, satellite, bank, or support for a product. How many times have you gotten to a human in less than 5 minutes? In less than 15? I don’t know if it’s a stroke of bad luck, or just that I’ve become more particular and demanding, but I’ve had several experiences with phone systems lately. They have all been apalling. I called my bank one day and had to go through seven different people before I got to someone who could help me. That was after going through countless voice menus.
On the topic of banks, many are now charging an extra fee to talk to a teller in person. What once was an obvious/given part of their service to you has become an add on charge. I do like being able to view and manage my finances on line, but it’s become a huge headache if I have a question or problem.
Have you been to the buffet-type restaraunts that still add a gratuity to your bill in large parties? What for? The priviledge of sitting in their building?
De-personalization becomes an excuse not to do your job
So we have systems taking the place of people. That can be convenient and helpful until the moment something goes wrong, or you need to do something a little out of the ordinary. Then it all falls apart.
Because so many companies rely on the systems, their staff are ill equipped to deal with exceptions, or even provide service at all. It can manifest in many ways. Not enough support staff, not well trained support staff, non english-speaking support staff. Or worse.
Have you run into the “not-my-job” disease? You have a problem, or a question, and you go to ask a service person (or call them.) You hit a brick wall. It can be as simple as “I don’t know the answer to that, sir,” or as rude as “that’s not my job.” This should never happen. Anyone who has an ounce of people skills realizes how rude this is. Anyone who has an ounce of business skill knows how harmful this is to the business/customer relationship. It would be so simple to say “I don’t know, but let me find the person who does,” but this hardly ever happens.
People forget that their job is not “push that button every 107 minutes,” but instead “push that button every 107 minutes for our customers.” There’s only three words different in those two descriptions, but it completely changes the attitude and effectiveness of a business.
I’m not sure where all the automation and “empowerment” is going to take us, but it’s a mixed bag.
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