The End Of Customer Service? I Don’t Buy It March 21, 2008
Posted by Bruce Temkin in Customer experience, customer service.trackback
Time Magazine just published “10 Ideas That Are Changing The World.” One of the items on the list was ‘The End of Customer Service.” The article describes the rise of self-service technologies like airport kiosks, pump-your-own gas, and new wireless capabilities as the end to human-assisted service.
My take: I disagree. There’s no question that self-service is on the rise and that consumers will be doing more things via the Web, phones, kiosks, and other devices. Consumers can handle many of these simple interactions on their own; often times as well as, or maybe even better than, going through another person.
But does that mean that customer service is dead? No! The following five issues will ALWAYS keep human-assisted service alive:
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Some interactions are too emotional
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Some topics are too complicated
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Some self-service is not easy to use
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Some people can’t self-serve
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Some people don’t want to self-serve
Given the push for self-service, though, there’s an opportunity for companies to differentiate themselves by going against the tide and beefing-up their human assistance. That’s why I defined “service infusion” and “service amplification” as two of the five disruptive customer experience strategies.
The bottom line: Don’t trash your customer service agents, embrace them.
[...] Bruce Temkin wrote on his blog that, despite what a Time Magazine articles says is a top trend, customer service isn’t dead yet. And i agree with Bruce. [...]
Yea! And embrace the in-store experience too and how that relates to your service reps. I posed about this and Starbucks bringing back in-store coffee griding :http://www.annoyingdesign.org/blog/2008/03/21/service-companies-will-always-need-a-human-touch/
My insight is that ‘Customer service will go back by a few years’, as I am yet to see anyone who appreciates mechanical customer support.