News

Less labor = more service

Is service lost with self-service? What's really driving our adoption of this technology?

August 8, 2005

A recent story in the Chicago Tribune carried the title, "Service gets lost in self-serve world." In it, writer Steven Swanson does the reader a disservice himself by putting a negative spin on the growth of self-service: "American consumers are shouldering an ever-growing chunk of the work involved in everyday transactions" and, he says via a quote from a forthcoming book on the subject, "Â… we are exhausted from doing all of this work."

To read Swanson's article, one could envision the drained masses cowering as the latest bit of self-service technology is thrust at them, wielded by a corporate culture bent on cutting every service employee it can.

But Swanson has it wrong. Self-service is increasingly prevalent not despite public opinion, but because of it. Folks are growing fond of serving themselves, and even Swanson's examples tell that story. "Many like the convenience of zipping into a bank to get cash from an ATM," he writes. And, in a quote from Dennis Galletta, a professor at Temple University, he writes, "I think nowadays people are less patient. People not only want this technology, they demand it."

In a recent MarketWatch interview, Carol Tome, chief financial officer of The Home Depot, said that self-service check-outs deployed in Home Depot stores are popular with customers. In fact, one out of three customers chooses self-service machines when they are available. Why? Because when the machines are available, a customer can reduce his check-out time by 40 percent. Also, whether the customer realizes it or not, he benefits from increased help with shopping because employees who used to operate the check-outs are now free to patrol the sales floor.

Swanson may not like it, but the self-service trend is just getting started. IHL Consulting Group, which recently studied the self-service market, estimates that $128 billion in sales were recorded on self-service machines in 2004, up 80 percent from the previous year. That number is expected to grow to $1.3 trillion by 2007.

U.S. Postal (Self) Service?

One of the quotes used by Mr. Swanson comes from Alex Halavais, a communications professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He said, "Now that (the U.S. Postal Service) is making the move to self-service, I think we've really reached the last bastion. Â… I think the post office is the acid test."

That may be, but there are still plenty of opportunities to improve retailers' levels of service using self-service devices:

• Planning a shopping list online and downloading it to my supermarket smart cart
• Printing airline tickets at my hotel via kiosk
• Transferring money from my bank account with a biometric thumb scan

Each is an improvement many of us would be happy to adopt. They are not labor-saving technologies that were supposed to liberate people from mundane tasks but didn't deliver on the promise, as Swanson charges.

I will acknowledge that like any new technology, not every self-service machine makes sense either economically or practically. The self-service and kiosk industry, however, doesn't deserve to be thought of as delivering less service or transferring the burden of the process to the consumer. In fact, the industry seeks to transfer repetitive tasks from store personnel to a machine. That - in nearly all cases - makes the process easier, more convenient, faster and cheaper.

And who can argue that isn't a higher level of service?