automation

Last week Siouxsioux shared a comment on my recent blog: Photo Cops Suck:

“I agree — a “real” traffic cop stop is more humane and allows for exceptions. However, your wake-up call ties in with what I’m feeling in this spy-info-obsessed environment. We like 24-hour automated tellers, expect instant assistance from Google and appreciate GPS-assistance complete with photos of where we’re going or where we’ve been … but no one likes being spied upon. If we keep willingly giving away info and expecting instant, automated assistance, at what point does it lead to too much outside control … with no turning back?”

Siouxsioux’s comment really made me think of how often I am impatient and frustrated when the gadgets in my life are not moving as fast as my brain might be working. It reminds me of Louis CK on Conan O’Brien a few years ago. The part relating to our world of automation starts around 2:45 in the video clip. Another great section is at 3:25 regarding our impatience with the Internet not working while flying on an airplane. He later says how a plane flight now consists of, “you watch a movie, take a dump, and you are home.”

There is a balance of instant access to information on our iPhones, iPads, and laptops, and what security and privacy we may not even know we are forfeiting while searching and utilizing that information. As Siouxsioux mentioned, I wonder at what cost. I know I am slightly addicted to the Internet. Well, more that slightly addicted to instant information at my fingertips. I am assuming that Words with Friends knows how often we play, or how addicted we are, Facebook can tell almost anything about our lives, our local library knows what we read, the grocery store you frequent knows what you eat and buy, and Amazon can tell a lot about your spending habits. If someone put that all together, I am sure there would be plenty of information for your shrink.

So where is the line, and have we already crossed it?

Can you change my feelings and sway me? Seth Godin says: “The only purpose of ‘customer service’…is to change feelings.” I believe him, well almost. I think it should be a part of customer service. We each have a right to be treated as humans, connect with individuals, and enjoy our customer experience. Yet, so often, our experience has little to no human contact, no personal connection, and feels robotic. Where did I find this quote from Godin? I came across this blog post from back in October while thinking about the idea of “service.” The full quote says:

“The only purpose of ‘customer service’…is to change feelings. Not the facts, but the way your customer feels. The facts might be the price, or a return, or how long someone had to wait for service. Sometimes changing the facts is a shortcut to changing feelings, but not always, and changing the facts alone is not always sufficient anyway.”

Imagine if every individual that worked in some type of service environment made it their mission to impact, change the mind of, or shift the thought of at least one customer a day. In the grand scheme of things that would not be that hard, and maybe that is already happening in every company in the world. But, what if those interactions were shared, and we saw the ripple effect? What if we did know of the impact we had each day, or that we changed how an individual felt? Would we do more to ensure that our behavior happened more often? If we had positive reinforcement of our behavior would that start a domino effect?

There are businesses out there that are changing the nature of customer service. Their impact could mean we eventually have a better customer experience, but I shudder as I think about the impact of technology on service. On the one side you might have a more efficient, yet robotic process, allowing the customer to track down their own answer. In many cases, this works. When a customer does not find their own answer, then it is often a dead-end. When the situation needs a personal touch, a ruffled edge smoothed, or when the issue needs live problem solving that only a human can answer, where is that service? Many companies would say it is too costly to provide that kind of service, yet what does that say about the true value of their customer?

What would it truly take to bring back the human interaction and accountability of service? Is customer service heading in the direction of Wall-E?