Is It Really the “End of Customer Service”?
Time Magazine recently published a special called What’s Next 2008. Within the normal discussions regarding trends were its list of 10 Ideas that are Changing the World.Number 2 on this list was “The End of Customer Service.” They pointed to self service lines in airports, grocery stores, hotel lobbies and movie theatres.
But is this really the “end of customer service?” I think most people would point out that in most of these examples, these are simply places where we conduct a transaction, and where human intervention is often slower than machine help in many instances. More importantly, these are places where people wait in line to transact. Waiting is not something we are good at.
So, while Time Magazine might be calling for the end of Customer Service, I see that we are simply automating routine tasks so that people don’t have to wait. I sure don’t relish standing in box office lines, check in lines at the airport or behind a person with a cart full of groceries when I just have my two items to pay for.
More importantly, and more germane to this blog, how will we measure the Customer Experience when parts of the experience are automated?
We already face this in many industries, particularly financial services. Banks have offered ATM’s and online banking for a while now. The same with airlines. So many passengers check in before they get to the airport that many do not even go to the ticket lobby unless they need to reprint a boarding pass or check a piece of luggage.
It is sensible that automation be measured when we are measuring the Overall Customer Experience, but what are we measuring when we do so? As many banks do, they look at problem handling as a key indicator of whether customers are getting what they needed to do done. Customers are probably OK with your automated solution so long as they can complete their task. When they aren’t, it is pretty important that you provide a way to fix the problem.
As more things become automated, it will be interesting to see what Core Customer Metrics are being used to understand the changing landscape of the Customer Experience. If you have a good example of how this is done at your company, please share.
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2 Responses to “Is It Really the “End of Customer Service”?”
March 28th, 2008 at 3:02 am
[…] Core Customer Metric asks Is It Really the “End of Customer Service”? - Despite the active campaign for better customer service, we continue to receive bad service. So […]
May 16th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
I certainly do not mind certain aspects of automated help. When it works, it is great and saves time. What I do mind is calling a location and being put through dozens of steps before I speak to someone. It is literally a maze of “press 1 and press 5 and then press 16″ and so on and so on.
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