I know why I use self-service machines for purchasing tickets and checking in at airports: repeatability and speed. I've memorized my interaction sequence with the German rail ticket machines to the point where I can get a ticket in 25 seconds. No desk service is that fast. Also, I don't have to deal with potential human unpredictability and communicating what I want. My interaction with the machine is already in muscle memory, and I don't feel rude when specifying things with extreme precision. Getting a specific seat on a plane is a multi-step operation at a checkin counter. Some clerks ask you if you want an aisle or window seat, but sometimes act offended when I ask for seat 3C. Some don't ask at all, and print out the boarding card before I can complain (not that it's a big deal where I sit, but it's a factor). Poking the 3C box on the self-service machine allows me to disregard the mood the clerk is in and get what I want. I feel more in control, and don't feel like I'm being a difficult customer. When I first moved here, I had a major language problem, so having machines with a language switch helped me a lot. But even now that I speak the language fluently, I still prefer automated experiences. The article has a point, there are a number of people in my life I care about, but bank tellers and checkin clerks are not important to me. I'll be nice to them when I encounter them, but I much prefer not having to interact with them. After all, they are entering the same stuff into the machine as I would, ideally.
Related point: at the same time that the machine allows me to be more efficient, and to be more precise without being rude, it also lets me be less efficient without being rude. An automated kiosk doesn't care how many times I ask it the same question, and doesn't feel like I'm jerking it around if I cancel out of buying a first class upgrade when I'm at the final confirmation screen.
Unfortunately, sometimes when I'm checking in at US airline kiosks, a "helpful" attendant will come over and start operating the kiosk for me. I can't stand that -- it's the worst of both solutions.
For example, when I'm using the kiosk myself, I can take my time browsing the seats that are available and pick the best one. When the attendant is "helping," I feel like I can't explore my options.
Google has really embraced this in the web world I think.
They reduce costs by eliminating phone/email support most of the time, which allows them to offer free (ad supported) products on huge scales.
This can be infuriating in the rare case where you hit a true bug and can't reach a real support person. But I think the trade off for them was worth it. It's almost like they are saying "we build stuff for smart people and make them free, if you need a lot of hand holding this might not be the right product for you".
The quality of questions coming through a typical support center is so low, it's tough to find people who've encountered a true bug that needs fixing.
I prefer to self-serve because most of the time the human interaction is adding little value.
Go to Best Buy or the Apple Store and ask a basic question, you'll probably get a stumped look or a wrong answer and a pathetic attempt to sell you a $99 HDMI cable or a $29 DVI adapter. Call your cable or internet company and ask if you're on the right plan and you'll get excuses and transfers and have to give them information that they already have, multiple times, and likely get an unsatisfactory answer. These places treat customer service staff as low-skill/low-pay commodity positions, and the results are predictable. Therefore, I want these fruitless interactions minimized, so self-serve it is.
My realtor, on the other hand, answers every question I ask. Maybe not immediately, but he will definitely find the answer and will definitely call me back. He even offers proactive information and next steps. I don't want to replace him with a website. And as a bonus, because he's pleasant AND knowledgeable, I actually want to talk to him on the phone, not even by email.
Summary: If you want "relationships" with your customers, focus on how capable the people they're talking to are, or replace them with a website.
This is really the point I think: companies need to give front-line customer service reps more authority to resolve problems, deviate from scripts, etc. Of course this requires hiring people who are creative and can think on their feet, and probably paying them enough so they are motivated to be helpful. Which is why most customer service is staffed by low-paid scripted drones.
The hypothesis this article makes is that customers don't necessarily want a relationship with companies. I think that that's an overly simplistic view of the picture.
First, all of the examples given involve routine tasks large institutions. I don't generally get good service from airlines and banks aren't great either. I'd love to have an airline or a bank that treated me like a person (and I think a lot of other people would too), but the fact is that most of them really don't. Why would I want to talk to a low-level customer service rep who's following a script and can't help me? That doesn't "build a relationship". Most companies aren't interested in relationships, they're interested in their bottom line. And usually, it's quite obvious.
You have to actually try if you want to build relationships with your customers.
Second, the reasons many people prefer self-service kiosks are not actually all that mystical. Saving time is a huge one, but I think there's another reason that's maybe just as important: people do not like other people seeing them make mistakes. In any transaction, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. When I'm at a bank I might fumble with my wallet, drop something, forget to fill out exactly the right form in exactly the right way, forget to sign the check I'm depositing, etc. People make small mistakes all of the time and they don't like other people to know about them. If they're interacting with a machine, they can hide those. If they don't know exactly what they're doing, they can figure it out themself.
People like to look like they know what they're doing. When they don't, they don't like people to see that.
In my experience, people really like good customer service and being treated well. The thing is that you really can't half-ass it, and you shouldn't try to force people to interact with you when they have no reason to. It's important to recognize that direct interaction often inconveniences people, even if the reason for that inconvenience isn't completely obvious.
If you want to build relationships with your customers, remember why they're there. They're not there to interact with you, they're there to get the service or product you're selling them. If interacting with you isn't helping them in some way, it doesn't matter how friendly you are: it's still a negative experience. Building relationships has to be mostly a byproduct of doing a good job, not the end goal in itself.
I think the kiosk/Internet verses customer-rep/ call choice is actually a convenience issue more than it is a relationship issue.
However, I really do think that the whole relationship with a huge multinational thing is overblown. What does it even mean to have a relationship with a company? When I have a relationship with a person, it means that we know each other, have an understanding of each other, possibly we're friends. Companies however are collectives. I can't possibly acquaint myself with every member of a large company nor can they be expected to all acquaint themselves with me. A company can keep a file on me, tracking what I've with them and who I've talked to, which is sort of a relationship, but not really. They can also appoint someone to be my dedicated representative, but the rep can't represent the company in all of it's aspects.
I think that the nitty gritty of it is that for the most part, my transactions with corporations are ephemeral. If I end up building a relationship over them, then something is wrong. I don't want a relationship with Dell (for example) I just want to buy a computer. If I have to talk to their tech support, that means something went wrong. I'd be nice if my bank's representatives were friendly and polite with me, and if they were helpful, etc, but I don't really care if they remember my name.
Already have friends, I don't need a bank to be one too.
I don't want a relationship with Dell (for example) I just want to buy a computer.
I don't know. Back when I had a job which required me buying lots of hardware it was really nice to have the phone number to a sales person who knew my name. Most of the time it didn't add too much over using a web page, but occasionally I'd have to make a call and say something like "look I know your web page says the delivery time for Widget is 5-7 days, but I really need one this afternoon, can you help me out?" And most of the time they'd pull some strings and work something out and a courier would show up with the Widget I needed. I'd never get that sort of service if I didn't have a relationship with the salesperson at the company.
That's the only experience I've ever had with Dell and I always thought their CS was fine ;) When you're buying 100s or 1000s of computers from them the level of service they give is much better than the person buying the single $300 laptop.
> Why would I want to talk to a low-level customer service rep who's following a script and can't help me? That doesn't "build a relationship".
Exactly. I think the underlying issue here isn't so much automated vs. personal, it's just good service vs. bad service, or if you prefer, effective vs. ineffective communication.
Telephone service is usually the worst: tedious automated menus, up-front warnings about recording this and invalidating that if you so much as breathe during the call, long (or worse, unknown) queuing times, and then you just get to speak to someone who can't deviate from their script to help you, assuming you can even understand what they say if they're based in some far-away call centre where employment is cheap and accents are strong. Neither the automated aspects nor the personal ones are much good here, though I've noticed a trend in the past couple of years for some companies to make a marketing point that they do have local call centres with real people answering the phone and very short queuing times.
Personal favourite anecdote for poor telephone service: I once had to call a credit card company to notify them that someone had been acting suspiciously with my card in a restaurant in a foreign country and I thought they might be trying to double-charge me. The card company left me on hold for so long -- calling from abroad on a mobile phone -- that my phone battery was starting to die and I lost the call, though of course not the charge for it. Since they clearly don't take security seriously, I now use a different credit card.
In contrast, automated on-line services often work fairly well these days: all of the banks, investment firms, etc. I work with have decent web sites, they basically work, they're reasonably easy to use, and they let me do what I want to do quickly.
For some things, I would still rather use a real person, though. For example, I am quite tall, so if I'm booking seats for any sort of show in a venue I haven't been to before, I usually still prefer to call or visit the booking office and ask them about which seats have enough leg room, even if the company has an otherwise excellent web site for ticket reservations.
The most striking example of preferring personal service I know is that several of the supermarkets in my area have recently installed self-service checkouts, where you scan all your own items and pay at the end. Typically there are just a couple of store staff supervising a whole set of these, instead of one staffer per checkout aisle. However, unless you're just buying one or two things, almost everyone seems to have these infernal machines and will join a queue of half a dozen people for a staffed checkout in preference to using an immediately-available automated system. They are just too hard to use without the training that store staff get in all the little options and details, and they are too unreliable, frequently shouting (incorrect) things at you about putting unexpected items in the wrong places or not recognising your card/voucher/whatever.
Amusing anecdote for this one: the other day I went into the store, and in the time that one trained staffer got through six customers on a "basket only" aisle, one customer with a single basket was still trying to get one of those infernal machines to work properly, with three different store staff called over to help by the time I left.
Most important of all, though, is if anything goes wrong. Then I want to speak to a real person who is right in front of me, listening to what I say, and able to do something about it. No automated system is ever going to replace that, and I won't deal with companies that don't even try.
In short, if you want to build customer satisfaction, make the routine things easy, automate where it works, but always provide good personal service as a back-up.
I've had quite the opposite experience with automated check-out. I prefer it over a staffed check-out, but maybe the machines at the local store are simply easier to use.
The reason why I like them is that I don't have a to deal with another variable (staff). The process is automated, I have full control and can be out faster. So for me, automating this process is a superior experience, interacting with another person is unnecessary complexity.
The problem is with the scanning of the bar codes. I think that the checkout clerks develop a technique for passing the items over the scanner quickly yet in such a way that the barcode is read on the first pass. In the self-checkout lane I often have to move the item back and forth, turn it a various angles, before it finally scans. I'm about 10x slower than an experienced checkout operator.
Then, if you're buying alcohol or anything in an aerosol can you have to have your ID checked which is another slowdown. If I'm buying more than about 5 items I will get in the regular checkout or "express" line rather than self services, even if there's no waiting.
It's not just the bar codes, though. The devices I'm talking about simply don't work very well. They complain about unexpected items in the bagging area because their weight checks aren't configured with sensible tolerances. (This is so irritating that it is now routinely parodied on satirical TV and radio shows.) They fail to scan credit/debit cards with annoying frequency. There is little space, so if you've brought some decent bags to put your shopping in but they've been buried at the bottom of your basket as you went around the store, you have to try and unpack everything to reach them but have nowhere to put it. None of these things is a problem on the staffed tills right next door.
I went over to the shop this afternoon, and while I was there, no more than three of the six self-service counters were in use at any given time, even though there were something like half a dozen people queueing for the one remaining manned basket-only aisle right next door, and despite the efforts of a staff member whose only purpose seemed to be trying (and failing) to convince people that the self-service counters really were worth the hassle.
The Stop and Shops near me are delightful. Instead of scanning items at the checkout counter, they have handheld scanners to use as you put items in your bags in your cart. Checkout involves only having the handheld device talk to the store and paying. No need to take everything out, scan it and put it back in bags in the cart.
I use ATM's instead of walking inside because it's typically faster. I search websites for info before contacting because:
(a) I will usually get more information in a shorter amount of time.
(b) I don't have to navigate a phone menu system.
(c) I won't have to wait forever on the phone while listening to bad music.
(d) I don't like sales pitches and pressure tactics that often accompany simple price inquiries.
One idea for wannabe entrepreneurs - look for sectors where the existing competition doesn't list price on their sites. You could probably garner a good deal of business from those who hate the contact.
IMHO, typing "^- " or "^\* " (regexp) should really translate into a <LI>, inside an <UL>. The formatting system of HN is minimal which works well but lists are something so basic it's difficult to live without.
I avoid talking to people because most businesses don't have my priorities. I want to buy something because I need it, and they want to convince me that I want product features I won't use or to spend more money than I thought I did. Everyone says they want to "make the customer happy," but it seems like the only companies that actually make me happy are in the tech industry and the restaurant industry. Everyone else just spends their time bugging me.
When I was younger, I was influenced by salesmen saying, "Oh, look how awesome the frobulator is!" So I'd be excited about the frobulator, and then I'd get home and realize that I don't actually need one. Or I might also be too engaged in conversation to investigate problems in the product like I should have. But too late, I already bought it. I find this happens less as I age, but the instances are more subtle and more money is at stake
Maybe the author is right for routine tasks, but there are times (usually when I have some issue I need resolved) when I really want to talk to a human being, and I will get really angry if I can't.
I've had that experience too, and the end result is that I only talk to companies on the phone when there is an issue I cannot resolve myself. Usually this is a problem I want solved, or an error they made. I guess I'm now somewhat conditioned to expect a negative experience (since I'm usually unhappy about something when I call). Customer service at pretty much every institution I've had to call to resolve an issue has been a pain, further reinforcing the notion that if I have to talk to a corporate human, I'm going to be unhappy as a result.
I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. Obviously no website UI can ever cover absolutely all cases and some queries will need to reach a human, but most companies don't even seem to try. Even if there's a form for other queries it's usually one big text box rather than the more specific questions staff would ask you on the phone. The worst part are the responses combined from canned text blocks, which tend to make no sense at all and don't solve any problems. Or even better, online queries being ignored altogether, or receiving an automated "please call" reply.
One exception to this (in my experience) is amazon. Their help section is pretty comprehensive, each shipment has associated actions you can take which are context (status) dependent and if you do have a specific request it's ridiculously impersonal but very efficient.
* Obviously no website UI can ever cover absolutely all cases and some queries will need to reach a human, but most companies don't even seem to try*
I completely boggled the other day at encountering a "Contact Us" web UI that had no "Other" option in their drop down menu. As my purpose for attempting to contact them was not remotely related to what the listed options covered, I just gave up.
All I wanted to do was suggest to them a totally minor change that would have opened up a whole new market for them. shrug Oh well.
Self-service is great for buying gas, and getting cash at an ATM, and for booking a flight. My favorite, uh, 'restaurant' over here in Japan is 'self-service'; you punch in your order at a vending machine, hand a ticket to the staff, and they bring you your meal.
Self-service sucks when you have a problem that needs to be solved, and it sucks worse when you have a problem that needs to be solved now.
Because, more often than not, you have a problem because you stepped outside the bounds of what the company 'normally' provides, be it rescheduling a flight or getting a refund for a weird-tasting hamburger.
It's exactly at those moments where you want to talk to a human being who can (a) understand the problem, and (b) fix it.
This is the reason my company, Mad Wombat, exists. We do an email-based helpdesk application designed to remove every possible barrier between 'the customer having a problem' and 'you fixing that problem and making them happy'.
This article and its misleading title is a typical demonstration that the chasm between academia and the real world isn't getting any smaller any time soon. Who are you going to listen to, people who spent their lives building businesses around the premise of servicing their customers or people who want to tell you how to do that which they haven't?
OP makes the classic blunder of confusing misguided tactics (poor implementations of self-service) with wrong strategy (excellent customer relationships). And then comes to an absurd conclusion with its sensational title.
I'd prefer to stick with a simple adage I've heard so many times from successful business people:
"All things being equal, people would rather buy from a friend. All things being unequal, people would still rather buy from a friend."
I've spent the past twenty years with more computer interaction than human; the self service till is a friend.
I'm suspicious of the other commenters who say the self service checkout is faster, but what it really does is follow the UI principle "don't make me think". I can go to, through, and out of, a self service checkout in the same mood and mode I went through the shop in. No switching to higher effort 'people' mode.
This article didn't even touch on the most obvious reasons people prefer the self-serve.
First, the ATM example. If banks in the US are anything like the banks in Canada you can use the ATM for free but pay substantial service fees if you go to the teller. So of course people wait in line at the ATM instead.
For the others dealing with a human, because of past abuse by companies, is typically viewed as having a lot of potential friction. The humans are trained to try and upsell you at every turn (would like like this as well? it's only an extra this amount) and the humans are much better at upselling than the machines so it's no wonder we go for the machines. It's much easier to ignore the upsells and just go with your regular routine.
For me, dealing with a human at a company is nearly always slow and aggravating with them going off on tangents I don't want them bringing me in. The best way of keeping them on track is to be rude which I don't like to do to humans but have no problem with when I'm dealing with a machine.
> If banks in the US are anything like the banks in Canada you can use the ATM for free but pay substantial service fees if you go to the teller.
Really? This has never been the case for me (Texas, Bank of America). I go up to the counter, deposit cash, take some out, talk about some weird charges, etc., etc and it's all free as far as I can tell.
Q. Why are fees at the ATM lower than those at the teller counter?A. Teller services are more expensive because they involve caisse employees, unlike other access methods like ATMs, direct payments or AccèsD.
Here's an anecdote that might shed light on this from a different angle.
I used to work with some people who really enjoy coffee. We'd take coordinated coffee breaks and trek a couple of blocks to the local coffee shop. After going there a couple of times a day for a few weeks I started to have "relationship" with the staff. That was pleasant for a while - they knew my name and drink and I knew their names. But after a while the "relationship" hit a wall. We had exhausted the possibilities for superficial chit-chat, and had to either advance to actual friendship or acknowledge that we weren't going to.
But the coffee shop staff wouldn't do either of those things. They can't become after-work friends with all their regular customers - nobody has time for that - and in many cases it could be construed as rude or unprofessional. On the other hand, they couldn't really abandon the "relationship" that they'd work so hard to build in the first place. It became obvious that this wasn't a real relationship, but a deliberate sales strategy. It would have been fine if they had settled for, "Hi Colin, the usual?" and left it at that, but they insisted on asking about my weekend, wishing me a good afternoon etc. That became annoying and I started avoiding the place.
The article deals with attempts by large corporations to build customer relationships, but I think the notion that customers don't want relationships applies even at a small scale. Real interpersonal relationships take a bit of work to maintain, and I think customers will avoid that if the relationship provides no value to them.
> It would have been fine if they had settled for, "Hi Colin, the usual?" and left it at that, but they insisted on asking about my weekend, wishing me a good afternoon etc. That became annoying and I started avoiding the place.
This is why I keep going to a local coffee shop. It would be: "The usual?", except that I usually haven't decided on a drink and take 5 minutes. I've chatted with the owner and the different staff but there is no obligation to chat every time I go. If I need to get work done, I'm left alone without having to ask. :) (Now if only there was places open after 10pm!)
One of the main reasons they don't want a relationship with you is because they're generally less likely to be persuaded they need to pay more for the improved version of the service, or dissuaded from downgrading/cancelling
Conversely those people that enjoy building a relationship with companies are often those looking to negotiate a discount.
You mention downgrading/canceling... this is the ONE thing you cannot do on any customer service site I've been too. Verizon .. ATT .. Comcast... try to find a "cancel my service" button. You can order new services all day long, but to cancel you've got to call the customer service phone number.
The worst case is when the company is trying to push a relationship on you that you don't want. There are certain types of stores where the salespeople are commission driven (in the US, at least) and it is IMPOSSIBLE to get the salesperson to go away in many of the places that these things are sold.
My personal least favorite is furniture shopping. Furniture (for me) is a very personal decision on artistic merit that is best done in quiet solitude. I want to touch, smell, examine, and test the furniture and I want to do it at my own pace and without a shadow who won't stop yammering in my ear. Look, I understand that this is a pressure sales job. I understand that you don't want your co-workers to steal your sale. Give me your card, I'll do my shopping, I'll find you if I have questions and when I want to buy something, I'll let you know.
maybe customers are shifting toward self service because they don't want a relationship with companies
Ding ding ding. Especially when said relationship is just a thinly veiled excuse to upsell us, sidesell us, and/or nickel and dime us. Call it squeeze-fatigue.
Further, no one has a 'relationship' with a company anyway, that's just marketing speak. It's business, not personal, and companies won't hesitate to do what's in their best interests at the expense of customers (or employees), unlike a real friend or family member that you have a real relationship with. Businesses don't make sacrifices for their customers the way real friends do sometimes.
Just because businesses won corporate personhood way back when doesn't actually make them people you can have an honest, agenda-free relationship with.
Using relationship in this context is just marketing koolaid.
How about the concept of control? I would hypothesize that people prefer self-serve at banks, gas stations, and checkouts because they are in full control of the situation.
If they've been there multiple times before, they're familiar enough with the system that they can navigate it quicker than having someone else do it for them, and any inefficiencies they can only blame themselves.
Also, there is a certain effort that goes into human interaction, the smiling, greeting, small-talking, and being polite so you can (hopefully) get them to treat you better and do a better and faster job on your requests. Or you can just do it all yourself and save the trouble.
It's true. I don't want a relationship with any companies. So long as their service works flawlessly as advertised, that is.
And if "self-service" involves a finicky IVR that is pretending to be a person and pretending to 'listen' to me by voice pattern-recognition, then I'd rather speak to a person, even if it's one person in a call center of 1,000 who deals with hundreds of customers every day and doesn't really care about establishing a relationship with any individual one. I'm a problem they have to solve, even the really friendly ones see me that way. Although I'd rather have had an internet service work properly the first time so that I didn't have to deal with any of that crap. Would I enjoy a real relationship with someone at the company? I don't know. No big company's "customer service" has ever achieved this, so I have nothing to compare.
Restaurants might be interesting to look at, though. Although my tastes are fickle: at 5:00 I might like the idea of a long, relaxing dinner where I interact with a cute and cheerful waitress after being seated by a friendly and professional maitre'd. 6:00 might roll around and I might have changed my mind, now I want to walk into a fast food restaurant and pay up front to have a bag of grub left on the counter for me to inhale as quickly as possible on my way somewhere else. And in the latter case, if I could just send a text of my order in advance and it would be waiting for me-- even better.
This may be one component of the success of Google advertising platform versus other online advertising options. If you want to make a significant spend on advertising with a large publisher (or set of publishers) you pretty much have to pick up the phone.
I know when I'm evaluating a service or software package, I'm much more inclined to go w/ an option that publishes pricing up front and allows me to "self-serve" my purchase, versus emailing or calling a sales-person to essentially negotiate the price.
When trying to do routine tasks, many of us don't necessarily want to get into a social situation. We don't want to think about how to phrase our questions, or what impression we make on the other person. A machine does not care about that.
On the other hand, when it's not sure what can or should be done, a live chat or another "low overhead" communication line with a real human who can actually understand us is a blessing.
I don't mind getting in a social situation per se, as long as it's appropriate. I know this sounds terrible, but when I'm ordering something from a menu, or checking something out at the cashier, chances are I don't know the employee that I'm speaking to, and I'm certainly not their BFF. While I try to be as polite as possible, and appreciate some basic politeness in return, I find that sometimes the lengths that these employees are expected to go in order to act like my friend are awkward and inappropriate.
What's worse is, the employees know it. They don't _want_ to sing when I leave them a tip, or ask me if I have plans this weekend. They're required to, by their managers, who think that the general public gets off on employees who are subservient.
Grocery stores figured this out years ago with self-checkout. Scanning each item can be tedious (looking up produce codes, etc.), and yet many customers prefer to scan their own items.
I do not mind at self-checkout when an employee helps to put everything into bags, though.
really? it's funny, I'm mildly human-avoidant, and I generally avoid the self-checkout unless the lines are significantly shorter because it takes me quite a bit longer to check myself out. First, I've gotta scan everything, and not being a professional, i'm slower than the checkout guy is. Next, the machenes just plain suck. "Unexpected item in bagging area" etc... it takes twice as long, at least, to get through the self checkout than to get the human.
Really, I think 70% of the problem is that the machines, as currently implemented, suck. The other 30% is that scanning barcodes quickly is something of a skill.
I find I tend to use the self-checkout only as a replacement for the express checkout, i.e. I only have a small number of items, that will probably fit in one bag, and that won't require keying in a bunch of product codes. I find in this situation self-checkout is the same or faster than regular. For large numbers of items, however, regular checkout is much better.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say I like having a person on the other end. Questions are (for me) more quickly answered by a person. I also think the way the employees treat you is a good indication of the quality of the business.
I think a good balance is necessary. That is, for example, what I really like about my bank. Each time I have a problem that cannot be solved via their web page, the person answering my call is competent, professional and quickly solves my problem. Even if I only have to call 2 or 3 times a year, the fact that I get great service those times is enough for me to not change banks.
