The psychology of self-service

Although the number is dwindling, there are those who recall the days of milkmen, gas station attendants and bank tellers. Now, we take care of most of those jobs ourselves, and seem happy to do it. There are few areas of our economy that haven't been touched by the growing self-service industry. And, it's not something that's being forced on the customer by budget cuts and lower overhead. More and more people just prefer to do it themselves.

What has transformed the shopper's mindset from a desire to be waited on to a desire to serve himself?

Peter Honebein has made it his business to find out. As a learning psychologist and instructional designer, he has accumulated 10 years experience designing software products and training programs for customers and employees. Along with Roy Cammarano, he has written "Creating Do-It-Yourself Customers: How Great Customer Experiences Build Great Companies."

Honebein sees the self-service industry drawing on five types of do-it-yourself customers. The first is the transactional customer who is willing to carry out the transaction role of doing business. The next is the traditional customer; this is the classic DIY kind of guy: he fixes it, builds it and renovates it himself. Third is the conventional customer. This customer is the co-creator of product value, where all products are viewed as services and - through use of the product - the customer becomes a co-creator of its applications. Fourth is the intentional customer who wants to be in on the design phase. This customer shops Build-A-Bear stores, designs his own basketball shoes at NikeID.com or builds her own Barbie online. Lastly, there's the radical customer. This type discovers new ways to use a product; ways that weren't even intended when it was designed. iPOD is one example; it was intended for music but those radical customers wanted more, so now we have pod casting.

According to Honebein, the trick for businesses is determining what type - or combination of types its customers are and to design a system that satisfies them. Look at your business through the eyes of your customer type and address operations to that type.

Betting on self-service

Looking at business through the customer's eyes was the challenge facing Tim Yeltin, director of new development for Charlson Broadcast Technologies (CBT), a Northern Kentucky that has been bringing IT innovations to the horse racing industry since 1985.

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To help provide a better information delivery system, CBT developed the Replay Kiosk. Instead of a series of numbers and a short comment to display a past race - as one would find in the racing form - the kiosk offered players a chance to actually view past performances. CBT later took the kiosk a step farther with its Super Carrel. Here, it combined the capabilities of its Replay Kiosk with live television signals, archived replay videos, racing forms and the ability to place wagers and order refreshments.

Yeltin believes CBT's products are successful because users - not operators - design them. CBT knows its customers because its employees are racetrack players themselves. That's why when it first introduced Super Carrel at Kentucky's Turfway Park to its top 100 Fast Track members, betting increased 52 percent with that group the first year.

Yeltin said he doesn't see personality type as a critical element of the self-service business because technology in general makes us all self-service users. It has created a nation of people who are used to having everything at their fingertips. With an information-intensive past-time like thoroughbred racing, kiosks and self-service are just a part of good customer service.

Horse of a different color

Some see a darker side to customers' willingness to serve themselves. Jim Mahanes is a former University of Kentucky behavioral sciences professor who is currently with The Psychological Testing Centre in Indiana. Mahanes has been working with IT people and sees a trend with them that he thinks is reflective of more people in general. In IT, IQ is taking precedence over EQ, or emotional intelligence. According to Mahanes, people are less able to deal with their emotions and, as a result, are going into emotional shutdown and disengaging from those emotions. People are sealing themselves off not only from their emotions, but also from others in general. Because of this emotional disconnect, more people prefer the isolation of self-service to the interaction of customer service. He likens the situation to the switchboard operator who has too many in-coming calls and - rather than try to answer them all - gives up, pulling out all of the lines. The cure, he said, is to engage people and their emotions.

Dr. Kathleen Kirby, a licensed psychologist and part-time professor at the University of Louisville, sees self-service motivations a little less ominously. Kirby said they are an example of individuals who want more control over the shopping experience. DIY fulfills that need. She also sees a search for more value being a factor for many. Comparison shopping is easier online or at a kiosk where information is usually more plentiful. And, too, there's the Lake Wobegon factor: Some people are just shy. They are the loners and geeks who would rather not deal with a person when it's so easily avoided. And, as all our lives become more hectic, time management becomes another big factor in choosing to do it yourself.

Peter Honebein concurs. According to his book, increasingly customers are seeing no value in being served. The interaction takes time they would rather spend on other activities. Time has become a precious resource. They want to get in, get out and get on with their lives.

Honebein also thinks many of the motivating factors for self-service customers can be traced back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This theory, developed by Abraham Maslow in 1943, contends that as humans meet basic needs, they seek to satisfy successively higher needs. At the base of the hierachy are physiological needs, followed by safety needs, then love/belonging needs, esteem needs and, finally, self-actualization. A person's needs formulate his goals, and thus his activities. For instance, a person struggling with physiological or saftey needs will have little interest in a kiosk, and someone addressing the need for esteem will have greater things to contend with than shopping and so would prefer the convenience of self-service.

In the end, Honebein said businesses should let customers decide whether they want self-service or not by offering both. As a business, you don't really know which the customer may prefer at this time, so having customer service and self-service is important. Incentives can steer people in the direction you would prefer they go, but, ultimately, it boils down to discerning and fulfilling needs. So, although the number is still dwindling, there are those who recall the days of milkmen, gas station attendants and bank tellers. We're just not yet sure how many want them back, and how many are glad to be moving on.