The End of Customer Service

The people of Memphis had never seen anything like it. When Clarence Saunders opened his first Piggly Wiggly in 1916, a grocery store was a place where you told the clerk behind the counter what you wanted and he fetched it. In Saunders\' store, patrons roamed freely among shelves packed with goods. They took what they wanted and paid on the way out. The "self-serving store," as Saunders called it in his patent application, revolutionized retail, much as atms and pump-your-own gas later re-engineered other industries.

Yet it was all simply prelude. Only now are technology and public sentiment aligning to truly shift the responsibility of collecting goods and services to the consumer. Consider the last time you rang up your own purchase at Wal-Mart, checked into a hotel at a kiosk or bought a ticket from a machine in the lobby of a movie theater. Companies love self-service for the money it saves, and with consumers finally playing along, the need to interact with human beings is quickly disappearing.

Now that companies have gotten you used to the idea, they are poised to go all the way. The British retailer Tesco has opened dozens of its Fresh & Easy grocery stores in the U.S.: all the lanes are self-checkout. By summer, Alaska Airlines will finish building its "Airport of the Future" in Seattle. The ticket counter has been obliterated; only islands of self-check-in kiosks remain. In Britain, NCR, a company that sells self-service systems, is trying out machines that let customers not only buy merchandise on their own but also return it. In Malaysia, IBM has outfitted a chain of sushi restaurants with ordering screens linked to the kitchen; so much for waitresses. And in Pennsylvania, Heritage Valley Health System will soon join the ranks of hospitals using check-in kiosks for emergency-room visits. Simply touch the image of the human body where it hurts.

Increased efficiency and cost savings aren\'t the only result. Slowly, we are separating services from the places where we are used to receiving them. Continental Airlines is testing a program that would allow PDA users to wirelessly check their flight\'s standby list. No need to talk to a counter agent anymore, let alone be in the same terminal. For supermarkets, Motorola makes a handheld scanner that customers carry around; it lets them ring up and bag groceries as they go.

Of course, clerks aren\'t completely going away. You just don\'t have to see them. "We\'ve all had the pushy salesperson," says NCR CEO Bill Nuti. "Business will get smarter about when to serve you."

The less cheery way to look at it is that we\'re doing the work of employees without being paid. "The company is more productive, but we\'re shifting work to consumers. So from a macro perspective, are we more productive or less?" asks Mary Jo Bitner of the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University. And by adding all these new tasks to our daily routine, are we overstressing ourselves and reducing our quality of life? It\'s an interesting debate. Just don\'t expect to have it with a clerk.

10个想法改变世界：客户服务的终结

此前，孟菲斯居民从来没有看过如此场景。1916年Clarence Saunders的第一家Piggly Wiggly开业，当时，在这样的小杂货店里你需要什么东西就跟柜台后面的售货员说一声，他会帮你拿。而Saunders的商店里，顾客可以自由地在布满商品的货架间走动。他们可以自己随意挑拣需要的东西，只要出门前付账就好了。“自助服务商店”，如Saunders在他的专利申请里称呼的那样，是零售业的一次革命。这种改革被后来的其它行业复制，诞生了如自动取款机和自助加油站这样的服务。

但所有的这些不过是前奏。只有到了现在，技术和公众情感才真正的抛弃了挑拣商品这样的客户服务。你可以回想一下上一次在沃尔玛超市购物，通过自助终端进驻旅店，或者在电影院大厅的自助站点买票的情景。公司们满意于自助服务所省下的人工费用，顾客也乐于此道，与人沟通的必要正在迅速消失。

现在公司已经摸清楚了你一贯的想法，他们准备彻底开发这一业务。英国零售商特意购（Tesco）已经在美国设立了几十个Fresh&Easy食品商店：所有的结账通道都是自助式的。待到夏天，阿拉斯加航空公司在西雅图的“未来机场”（Airport of the Future）将会竣工。检票柜台将会取消；仅提供自助检票终端系统。英国NCR，一家销售自助服务系统的公司，正在研制一种机器，不仅可以让顾客购买所需商品还可以处理退货。在马来西亚，IBM公司为一家寿司连锁店配备了可连接到厨房的点餐屏幕；那服务员呢？到此为止（不再需要服务员——译者注）。并且，在宾夕法尼亚州，Heritage Valley健康系统不久将会进驻医院，它通过检查终端来观察患者的病况，仅需要简单的模拟触碰虚拟人体的患处。

效率提高和费用节省并不是唯一的结果。渐渐的，我们在分解曾经需要人工处理的服务工作。大陆航空公司正在测试一项系统：允许PDA用户通过无线网络检查航班的待机名单。可以独立的通过同一个终端查询，不需与柜台服务交流。摩托罗拉公司为超级市场制作了一个手持式扫描设备，顾客可以携带；他们可以帮助顾客结账，并在离开超市之前装袋。

当然，店员不可能完全消失。只不过你看不到他们罢了。“我们有一支精英销售队伍，”NCR首席执行官Bill Nuti说，“只不过在为你提供商业服务的时候，变得更加灵活。”

让人有些许不快的是，我们在做一些零报酬的工作。“公司的产量增强了，但是我们服务顾客的工作没了。那么从长远来看，我们到底是增加了产量，还是不是？”亚利桑纳州大学领导服务中心的Mary Jo Bitner提出这样的疑问。并且加上我们日常工作中新增的任务，我们是不是对自己太严苛了？降低了生活质量？这是个有趣的论点。不过别指望可以找个店员就此耍耍嘴皮子。

回目录