Is Automation Good or Bad for Customer Experience?

The discussion about automation often focuses on jobs.

A 2019 study by Indeed showed 60 percent of Americans think automation will put a significant number of jobs at risk. This certainly includes customer service jobs. You see machines replacing humans in parking garages, at supermarkets, and in customer service departments.

But is automation making customer experience any better? I recently took a trip to Seattle to find out.

Seattle is home to two of the largest companies driving automated customer service: Amazon and Starbucks. The travel industry is also increasingly automated, giving me more opportunities to experience automation through the eyes of a customer.

The hope is my conclusions are illuminating for both companies and employees.

Automation is already here

The transition to automation has been happening for a long time. 

Air travel is a great example. I bought my plane ticket to Seattle on the Alaska Airlines website, checked in for my flight via the airline's app, and used the app to pull up my boarding pass when I got to the airport. 

The TSA agent at airport security was the first human I interacted with on my journey. This is nothing new. It's been possible for more than 10 years:

• 1995: Alaska Airlines became the first North American carrier to sell tickets online.

• 1999: Alaska became the first airline in the world to enable online check-in.

• 2007: Continental Airlines debuted mobile boarding passes.

When I arrived in Seattle, I bought my fare for the light rail from a kiosk. You had to buy individual subway tokens from a cashier when I lived in Boston in the mid-90s, but those days are long gone.

However, I did notice one helpful employee assisting another passenger.

You pass through the parking garage on the way from the terminal to the light rail station, where there are several kiosks where you can pay for parking. These kiosks were widely used by the mid-2000s.

In fact, there's a good chance you regularly use automation that has replaced a human customer service employee at some point in history.

• Withdrawing cash from a bank

• Making dinner reservations

• Renting a movie

• Buying gas

• Paying bills

So automation isn’t new. It’s evolving.

Automation can remove friction

Waiting in line is one of the worst parts of the customer journey.

Airlines have already solved much of this (see above). My journey to Seattle gave me several opportunities to see how other companies are eliminating the line.

I checked in to the downtown Courtyard hotel via Marriott's Bonvoy app when I landed in Seattle. When I arrived at the hotel, I by-passed the front desk and used the app once again to access my mobile key. (Full disclosure: my wife works for Marriott.)

It was a strange experience. 

On one hand, it was convenient to go straight to my room without waiting in line at the front desk. On the other hand, I somehow felt less welcome by skipping the check-in patter you typically get from the front desk associate.

The hotel's elevator had a security feature that doesn't allow you to select a floor until you insert a room key. Of course, I had no key since I was using the app, so there was a small moment of worry.

Fortunately, the security feature was disabled and the elevator worked without a key.

I got to my room, dropped my bag, and headed back out. The afternoon fatigue was getting to me, so I decided to go to Starbucks.

Lines can also be a problem at Starbucks. Based on my own experiments, the percentage of customers who enter the store, see the line, and turn right back around increases dramatically once the line reaches eight people.

You can prevent this problem by ordering ahead via the Starbucks app. 

The barista was setting my drink on the counter just as I walked in the door. There were four people in line, so I saved a little time by ordering ahead. 

The experience was convenient, but it was also disconnected from the Starbucks mission: "To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time." 

Nothing inspired or nurtured my human spirit. Two baristas were standing and talking by the counter when I picked up the drink. I looked at them and smiled, ready to exchange a pleasant greeting, but neither even looked my way.

The next stop was Amazon's cashierless market, Amazon Go. 

You enter the store by using the Amazon Go app to open an automated gate. I had downloaded app before my trip and was greeted with a helpful tutorial that showed me how the store worked.

My favorite part of the tutorial was the final screen. Amazon perfectly anticipated the feeling I would get when I had finished shopping and was ready to leave the store without stopping to pay for anything.

Shopping was amazingly easy.

The app automatically tracks the items you remove from the shelf as you shop. It's also smart enough to identify when you put an unwanted item back. There are no cashiers—you just walk out of the store with your purchases once you're done.

Prices were also significantly cheaper than similar items at nearby convenience stores. Making the experience easier at a lower price is Amazon's specialty, and competitors should be worried.

Employees were the one thing missing from the experience. 

I didn't notice any employees when I first entered the store. After a moment, I spotted a couple of employees stocking shelves and talking to each other. Neither said anything to me.

Then I noticed another employee as I walked out. He was standing by the automated gate, I suppose to help people who were trying to figure out how to get in.

He gave me a curt nod as I walked out.

Automation is sure to continue replacing cashiers. It speeds up the process and makes the experience more convenient for customers. One study by QSR found that using kiosks to take orders in fast food restaurants increased the average check by 15 to 30 percent over human cashiers.

I also think cashiers can find more ways to add human value to their jobs.

A CVS near my home stood out in a comparison versus Walgreens and Right Aid in part because of a friendly, helpful cashier. He greeted customers on the way in, and took time to make each purchase a little more than a transaction.

The cashier at my local True Value will get a colleague to swap out my bbq propane tank while she's ringing me up, so I don't have to wait for it once I've completed my purchase.

Automation augments the customer experience

Years ago, I had a client in downtown Los Angeles. I took the train from San Diego to LA's Union Station, and then caught a cab to get to my client.

The trouble would start at the end of the day when I wanted to get back to the train station.

I had to call the cab company at least 30 minutes before I needed a cab to actually arrive. The driver frequently got lost, which led to awkward calls to the cab dispatcher. Once we got to the train station, it would always take a few minutes to settle the bill via my company credit card. 

In Seattle, I used Lyft to go from my hotel to the University Village shopping center. Another Lyft quickly got me back downtown. It was a far superior experience than taking a taxi.

Here are just some of the friction points that Lyft removes:

• Finding a ride (or scheduling one)

• Getting a ride quickly

• Letting me know exactly where the driver is

• Calculating the fare ahead of time

• Paying for the ride

It's still up to a human to deliver great service and drive you to your destination once you're in the car. Lyft drivers are almost always friendly and interesting to talk to, which makes the trip go faster.

Of course, Lyft is hard at work to replace drivers with autonomous vehicles. This means ride hailing will be fully automated in the near future.

Back at my hotel, I decided I wanted to request a late check out for the following day. There was no obvious place to do this on the app, so a live human would be needed. I decided to skip the messaging feature in the app and go to the front desk.

I have a LinkedIn Learning course on how to get great customer service. One secret I can tell you is a special request is more likely to be granted in person than via messaging. My late checkout request was quickly granted.

There are many instances like this where automation and humans work together to create a better overall experience.

The thermostat at The Overlook, a vacation rental cabin my wife and I own, recently emailed me about a possible issue the day before guests were checking in. The message was part of Ecobee's automated monitoring system:

"There may be a problem with the Furnace. For the past 2 hours the thermostat has been calling for heat, but the room temperature has decreased by 3.0F."

The problem turned out to be a bad furnace motor. A new one would take a week to arrive, so our property manager provided our guests with extra space heaters to keep them warm during their stay.

Automation identified the issue, but it took people to fix it.

Conclusion

Back to the question at hand: Is automation go or bad for customer experience?

The answer is automation is generally good. There are many instances where automation markedly improves the customer experience by removing friction and making it more efficient. 

Yet automation is not a total solution. 

During nearly every part of my trip to Seattle, a human made the experience better, or would have made one better if a person had been available. Studies show that customers prefer to have a human readily available when using self-service, even if they choose not to contact the human for help.

There's insight here, too, for customer service employees worried about losing their jobs. Jobs that are repetitive, routine, and monotonous are likely to be automated sooner than later. This includes cashiers, drivers, and clerks.

The secret is finding a way to bring something uniquely human to what you do.

I stopped by the world famous Pike Place Fish Company while I was in Seattle. It's not just a market, it's an experience that's powered by employees who go out of their way to connect with the people they serve.

Take a moment to think about your own job. How can you bring something uniquely you to the way you serve customers?

The Unexpected Way to Improve Self-Service

We've all experienced a self-service fail.

Perhaps you've found yourself yelling "Human! Human! Human!" into a phone. 

Maybe you've sat at a parking garage exit trying to get the machine to read your ticket while an impatient line of drivers behind you honk to signal their displeasure. 

Surely you've spent an eternity exploring a website to find the answer to the simplest of questions. When you couldn't find it, you spent another eternity finding the "contact us" page.

Or you might have angrily muttered under your breath, "I did place the item in the bagging area!" while using the self-checkout lane at the grocery store. 

Those terrible experiences are all designed to save costs by taking human employees out of the equation. Self-service is fine when it works, but it often doesn't.

Customers really hate when it doesn't.

Many will take their business elsewhere, buy less per visit, or spread negative word-of-mouth. Studies have found widespread theft among self-checkout customers at grocery stores.

There is a counterintuitive solution. 

Researchers have found companies can improve self-service customer satisfaction, increase sales, and keep costs low by making a human readily available.

The solution to self-service problems

Harvard researchers Michelle A. Shell and Ryan W. Buell conducted a series of experiments to test how human contact can reduce customer anxiety. They discovered that merely giving people the option to connect with a human while using self-service increased customer satisfaction and improved sales. 

Here's a summary of two of the experiments.

Experiment 1: Retirement Planning

In the first experiment, participants engaged in a retirement planning simulation. They were asked to allocate investments in a fictitious retirement portfolio over the course of several rounds using a simulated online portal.

Participants were divided into two groups: low-anxiety and high anxiety. 

• The low-anxiety group experienced normal returns on their simulated portfolio.

• The high-anxiety group experienced returns that were far worse than normal.

Participants in both groups were given an assessment to evaluate their anxiety levels at several times during the experiment. As expected, participants in the high-anxiety group with lower than expected returns experienced much higher levels of anxiety.

The participants were further divided into three groups, with each group receiving different types of self-service support: 

• Group only had access to a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for support.

• Another group had access to FAQs and could chat with an expert.

• The third group had access to FAQs and could chat with a peer investor.

The high-anxiety group that had access to an expert reported 20 percent higher satisfaction with their investment choices than the group that had no access to a human:

The surprising discovery? Only 16 percent of the group that had access to an expert actually contacted the expert for help!

Experiment 2: Credit Union Loans

This experiment was conducted with real customers. A credit union tested whether loan applicants sms text updates throughout the approval process impacted whether customers ultimately accepted the loan once they were approved.

Loan applicants were divided into three groups. The first group received no updates. The second group received updates via text like this one:

“Hi John, my name is Rachel and I will be working on your loan application. A decision will be returned to you by Wednesday and I’ll text you updates along the way. Thank you for working with us!”

The third group also received updates via text, but these updates contained the loan officer’s phone number and an invitation to contact them. Here’s an example:

“Hi John, my name is Rachel and I will be working on your loan application. A decision will be returned to you by Wednesday and I’ll text you updates along the way. Feel free to contact me at 555-5555 with any questions. Thank you for working with us!”

Once again, a more personalized approach yielded better results. The third group had a far higher percentage of approved customers accept the loan offer:

How to get customers to like self-service

The key to helping customers use and enjoy self-service is making a human readily available. Keep in mind that many customers prefer self-service for simple tasks, and they won't contact a human unless they feel it's necessary.

It's just comforting to know someone is there.

The payroll provider, Gusto, sets a great example by making contact information very clear and obvious on its help page. Notice the phone number and “contact us” link in the top right corner:

The wine tracking app, Vivino, has a clear "contact us" link on its in-app support page.

Side note: there’s a small fail here, because the "contact us" link takes you to a chat bot. Research from CGS revealed that 86 percent of consumers prefer humans over chat bots.

Airlines, grocery stores, and other businesses often station an employee near a bank of self-service machines to provide help when needed. Here’s an example from the self-checkout line at an Ikea:

One word of caution: make sure employees who help customers with self-service kiosks follow these steps to avoid sabotaging the experience.

Subscribers can sign themselves up to receive my Customer Service Tip of the Week email. Many receive the email without ever contacting me, but I'm still easy to reach. 

Subscribers can reply to any email and it goes straight to my personal email address. My phone number is also included in every message.

Executives sometimes worry that customers will inundate them with contacts if they make a human readily available. In reality, the contact rate is very low. Less than one percent of Customer Service Tip of the Week subscribers email me each week, and rarely do I get a call.

I even include my phone number and email address in every book I write. It makes me look like a generous guy, but very few people actually contact me.

Take Action

Conduct a review of any place where you offer self-service, whether it's online, on an app, or in-person. You can use this guide to look for opportunities to make connecting with a human even easier.

As a bonus tip, try personalizing all of your communication channels.

Phone and in-person are easy, but its helpful to make the name of the employee clearly visible in written channels like email, chat, text, and social media.

T-Mobile provides a great example of personalizing contacts via Twitter. The support team personalizes each message with a card that humanizes the individual agent:

Those are not problems we ever want to see you experiencing. I would love to dig into things with you, DM me so we can get to the bottom of things. https://t.co/jUueWiMypn ^AmandaCross

— T-Mobile Help (@TMobileHelp) October 7, 2019

You can learn a little more about Amanda when you click on the card:

Customers want convenience, but they also want friendly, helpful service from a live human when things get tricky. Strike the balance between the two and you'll keep costs low and satisfaction high.

Why Great Self-Service is Backed by Humans

Advertising disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Self-service technology is everywhere these days.

In Champaign, Illinois, you can go to the public library and check out a book from a self-service kiosk. Interacting with a human is entirely optional.

Library assistant Ruairi McEnroe explained, "We have self-checkout kiosks at the library where customers can checkout, make payments (using credit cards), and check their account status without the need for a staff person."

This is a win-win for both customers and the library. Customers can avoid waiting in line and are often able to check-out faster using the kiosk. The library is able to save money in an era where many libraries face chronic funding shortfalls.

That doesn't mean humans aren't needed. Great self-service is almost always backed by capable humans.

Ruairi McEnroe assists a customer at the Champaign Public Library.

Nobody Likes to Wait

Think of all the places where self-service helps us avoid a line.

We use the Starbucks app to order our coffee ahead of time. Airlines allow us to check in and display our boarding pass on a smart phone. Even the grocery store may soon eliminate checkout lines with the advent of Amazon Go.

Nick Francis, CEO of the customer service software company, HelpScout, told me he initially struggled with the idea of offering self-service.

"I felt like we wanted to provide the greatest personalized service, but at some point, that's actually quite inconvenient."

Over time, he realized self-service was an essential customer benefit. Customers didn't like the hassle of waiting on hold to talk to a person for something simple like answering a basic product question, tracking a shipment, or resetting a password.

The realization that self-service can often be a better experience prompted Francis and his team at HelpScout to develop some really good self-service tools. HelpScout and other customer service software companies now strive to make self-service as convenient and accessible as possible.

That doesn't mean humans are no longer needed. McEnroe told me that humans serve as a sort of service lifeline at the library in Champaign.

"Generally there is one staff member on hand to clear up account issues, take cash payments, or direct customers to the area they desire. We are often now able to help customers a lot more rather than having to send them to a different desk. There are customers who would rather have a person check them out, so we can also do that.”

Where Humans Are Essential to Self-Service

There are several places where humans are the key to great self-service.

Escalations

Kiosks at the airport, the grocery store, and other places often have a customer service representative standing by. These reps can dramatically improve the self-service experience when they are properly trained.

That's because self-service doesn't always work as intended. Sometimes it can get confusing while other issues can't be solved without a customer service professional.

The 2017 Customer Service Barometer published by American Express and Ebiquity revealed that just 23 percent of customers prefer to speak to a person over the phone or face-to-face for simple issues, like checking an account balance. 

That number jumps to 63 percent for difficult issues, such as disputing a charge.

Updates

Information drives a significant amount of self service.

For instance, let's say you're shopping for a pair of running shoes online. You spot a new model from one of your favorite brands and are about to order them in your normal size when you spot a helpful note suggesting you order a half-size larger.

You make the sizing adjustment, order the shoes, and they arrive a few days later. The shoes fit perfectly and you're very happy.

Think about what went into that experience. The retailer or shoe company had to collect sizing feedback from customers and then share that insight in a meaningful way to help guide other customers like you. If the sizing information had been wrong or out of date, you would have ordered the shoes in a different size and you would have been disappointed with the fit.

Humans are the key to identifying those insights and keeping self-service functioning.

Fixes

Self-service sometimes breaks or fails to work as intended. 

Snack vending machines are terrific until your bag of chips gets stuck. It just sits there, suspended on the rack, taunting you. This is exactly when you need a human to fix a self-service fail.

Some failures aren't so obvious. A customer might search a knowledgebase for a solution, fail to find it, and then contact customer service. The customer service rep might never know about the customer's failed attempt or the 100 more customers who experience the same issue.

In The Effortless Experience, authors Matthew Dixon, Nick Toman, and Rick DeLisi detail a helpful exercise to help identify and fix broken self-service experiences.

It consists of three simple steps for customer service reps to follow:

1. Identify customer issues that could have been solved via self-service.

2. Tactfully ask customers if they tried self-service.

3. Note any feedback about unsuccessful self-service attempts.

This information can then be collected so broken self-service systems can be fixed.

How to Stop Automation From Stealing Your Job

The woman walked into Starbucks, glued to her phone.

She never said hello and wasn't greeted. Eyes fixed on her phone screen, she strode over to the counter where you pick up your drink and waited without saying a word. She continued staring at the phone until her drink appeared on the counter.

The woman grabbed her drink, turned around, and left without ever engaging with another human being.

You may have guessed she ordered her drink via the Starbucks app, a technology that allows customers to by-pass the cashier line. It may eventually eliminate cashier jobs.

Other positions may not be far behind. Computers, bots, artificial intelligence, and other forms of automation are threatening customer service jobs everywhere. 

But what about the barista who made the woman's beverage at Starbucks? That person was voluntarily giving up her job to automation because she never once brought something that was uniquely human to the service interaction.

That's the key to staving off the rise of automation — humanity.

The Rise of Self-Service

Look everywhere and you'll see machines doing customer service jobs that were once performed by humans.

Banks are replacing tellers with ATMs. Hotels are starting to offer mobile check-in options, a feature airlines have had for years. Contact centers operate automated phone menus, self-help websites, and use bots to respond to text messages.

The IBM Watson artificial intelligence platform is being tried out in multiple customer service roles, such as retail salesperson. Uber might soon offer a fully autonomous car service, right after Amazon cuts out delivery drivers and sends your order via automated drone.

Andy Puzder, the CEO of the CKE Restaurants, the parent company of the Carl's Jr. and Hardee's fast food chains, has openly talked about opening a fully automated restaurant in response to rising wages. Puzder is also Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of Labor.

What Drives Automated Customer Service?

It's helpful to understand why businesses might want to automate your job. There are three pressures businesses face that drive this trend: speed, cost, and quality.

Speed is crucial because you can generally serve more customers faster in an automated environment. Do you remember waiting in line at a highway tollbooth? Now you can whiz past an array of sensors that automatically deduct the toll from your account.

Cost tends to decrease with automation. You have to pay customer service employees for every hour worked, and that cost is ever-increasing. In my hometown of San Diego, minimum wage just increased to $11.50 per hour and many businesses, such as restaurants, are struggling to absorb higher labor costs. You typically pay less for automation over time.

Quality is another concern. Automation leads to greater consistency since machines can repeat the same task over and over. There are also several studies that show customers spend more in fast food restaurants when they order via a kiosk, so machines may be outselling humans.

The Big Risk: Employees Who Act Like Robots

If automation will eventually win on speed, cost, and quality, the only area where humans can continue to excel is being human.

People like human-to-human interaction. When we talk about great customer service, we still inevitably talk about people. 

Perhaps it was someone who was extra kind or engaged us in some way. It could be a person who solved a persistent problem, or maybe it's just someone who has become a friend over years of service.

A lack of humanity is where many customer service employees routinely put their jobs at risk. 

When I go to the post office, I usually use the kiosk because it's faster than waiting in line. I'm always amused at the end of the transaction when the screen reads, "It's been a pleasure to serve you." Unfortunately, at my local post office, I'll likely to get just as robotic a thank you from a live person. Why wait longer to get the same level of interaction as the machine?

Supermarket cashiers are another example. Too many fail to engage their customers. Or they don't know what to say when they ask, "Did you find everything OK?" and the customer says, "No." We're all excited to see how the Amazon Go grocery store concept works out because the supermarket checkout adds no perceived value to the customer.

Contact centers are seeing an increase in complex phone calls, primarily because customers are handling simpler transactions on their own. This means phone agents need to be empathetic, problem-solving humans who engage customers and make them feel better. All too often, agents instead sound like monotone robots and who either lack the caring or capability to resolve an issue.

If you want to save your job, you need to bring humanity to service.

Five Ways to Bring Humanity to Customer Service

This isn't an exhaustive list, but these are five things you can do to make yourself indispensable to your customers and your boss.

Build Rapport: Customers like feeling special, and people can do that in a way that no robot can. Find ways to develop rapport with your customers like learning and using their names. You can search the Customer Service Tip of the Week archives for more rapport-building tips.

Listen Intently: We've probably all yelled "Live agent!" at a phone menu. The frustration comes because the machine isn't listening. You can transcend that by becoming a good listener. It's harder than you think. Our listening skills erode with experience. We also find ourselves robotically using stock phrases like, "How are you today?" which causes us to miss amazing opportunities.

Empathize: Machines don't express genuine empathy, but you can. Try to understand and acknowledge your customers' feelings, especially when they are annoyed or frustrated by a problem. You can find some good empathy tips using this guide.

Develop Expertise: Find ways to solve problems that automation can't. My local UPS driver once brought a package to my house that had the wrong address on it. He explained he knew it was mine because he recognized my last name and it was wine. He succeeded as a human because he understood his delivery route and his customers better than a machine.

Find Icebergs: Help your customers avoid getting stuck in an infinite loop by finding and fixing recurring problems, called icebergs. I recently had to contact Time Warner Cable 23 times to get new cable, phone, and internet service. It was a frustrating experience because everyone I encountered was so heavily scripted they couldn't see the root cause of the problem until I connected with Rich, a Tier 3 specialist who spent several days unraveling the mess that Time Warner's automated system had created.

Let's go back to the Starbucks example at the beginning of this post. It's inevitable that some customer service functions will become automated, like ordering via an app instead of a cashier. That doesn't mean that the people in the service chain should act like robots too.

It's up to us to create such a fantastic human-to-human experience that companies will recognize the irreplaceable value of having people involved with the process.

How to Use Simple Video to Save Your Customers Headaches

Product assembly is a moment of truth.

For some customers, this is no issue. For others, its a potential exercise in frustration. If the assembly process doesn't go well, the product may be returned and that customer may never buy another product from your company again.

Hayneedle is an online home furnishings retailer. Many of their products require assembly. The instructions provided by the manufacturer often leave a lot to be desired.

The company solves this challenge using simple video. Here's how they do it and how you can do it too.

Let's say a customer purchases this Orbelle Contemporary Solid Wood Toddler Bed:

Image source: Hayneedle website

There's a little bit of assembly required. The written instructions from Orbelle can be a bit confusing to most customers. (See the instruction booklet here.)

Here's a screen shot:

This may seem simple to you, given your innate mechanical ability and savant-like grasp of obscure terms like "mattress base mullion," but think like a typical customer.

When I was a customer service manager, I once had to walk a customer through how to operate a music box!

"Now, turn that key to the right a few times. To the right. The other way. Yes, now let it go. The key, let go of the key. Yes, that's it. Do you hear the music?"

Fortunately, Hayneedle provides a video explaining the assembly instructions.

This simple video is very clear and makes the assembly process look much easier!

Notice there's nothing fancy going on. You can shoot similar videos using basic equipment, even your smart phone. There are just a few keys:

• Make sure the person on camera speaks clearly and slowly.

• Get enough lighting so everything is well-lit. 

• Zoom in on detail work so it's easy for your audience to see.

You can find some basic tutorials on lynda.com, such as this one for shooting video with an iPhone. (A lynda.com account is required, but you can get a free 10-day trial.)

Applications & Benefits

Video like this can be a great self-service option for customers. It can help your company in a few ways:

• Reduce customer contacts

• Reduce product returns

• Improve repeat business

Keep in mind that many customers don't complain about a poor experience. They simply give up and take their business somewhere else.

These videos also give your customer service agents another tool to help customers. Verbally walking customers through instructions over the phone is difficult and time consuming. 

Much better to direct customers to the video, which provides a clear visual reference. Customers can also stop, rewind, and re-start the video to review key parts.

There is one thing that Hayneedle can do a little better. The video link isn't always obvious. Let's look at the product page for that toddler bed again:

Customers may not see the link to the video, or they may not realize that it's a product assembly video. And, you won't see the videos mentioned if you go to Hayneedle's customer help page.

You'll make your videos even more useful if you can put them right where customers go looking for them.

This could mean your help center, your product page, or even your customer contact page. Better yet, put a conspicuous link in all three places since you never know how your customers will navigate in search of help.

The Undeniable Power of Using Experts to Get Better Service

Coppa seemed all wrong.

It's an Italian tapas restaurant in Boston's South End. That's a neighborhood I avoided when I had lived there in the 90s.

They didn't have any reservations available. My wife and I didn't like that uncertainty. We had other things we wanted to do that night and didn't want to get stuck waiting for an hour.

It was tiny. I've been in a lot of tiny places in Boston. Tiny usually equals cramped, crowded, and unpleasant.

Coppa turned out to be perfect.

They had amazing food, a wonderfully cozy atmosphere, and great service. The restaurant was crowded, but they found a comfortable spot for us at a small bar looking out the window.

We never would have gone there if we had relied on Yelp. Good thing we asked an expert instead. When it comes to getting great service experiences, a knowledgeable person is still the go-to option.

The Limits of Yelp and AI

Yelp makes recommendations based on two things: algorithmically-culled recommendations of an anonymous crowd and the searcher's ability to enter appropriate search criteria.

It generally does a good job. 

Just last week, I was traveling and needed to find a place to get a haircut. Yelp was able to narrow down my search to a few highly rated places that were all within walking distance of my hotel. A quick scan of the reviews helped me pick a winner. It worked out well.

But, there are a few problems with how Yelp delivers its recommendations.

First, how do I know that the anonymous crowd shares my interests and tastes? Coppa has over 500 Yelp reviews and a strong four star rating, but I really don't know who is rating them. 

There's been plenty of times when the crowd has absolutely loved something that I just couldn't get into. For example, I've tried many times to love The Godfather movies and still don't like them.

The second problem with Yelp is the user. It's limited by whatever search criteria you use. So, if you decide to exclude the South End, then Yelp won't recommend anything in that neighborhood. That's why Coppa didn't appear in my Yelp search.

The problem, of course, is customers often don't know exactly what they want. Or, they think they do, only to be delighted later on by an option that didn't fit their criteria at all.

I experienced a similar challenge when I tried to use IBM Watson to pick out a jacket. Watson was limited by the search criteria I thought matched my needs. I received better service from an in-store sales associate who could interpret my criteria and think laterally to suggest options I hadn't considered.

The Power of Experts

My friend, Patrick Maguire, had suggested Coppa. 

Patrick knows a lot about restaurants in Boston. He writes the popular I'm Your Server, Not Your Servant blog about hospitality service. He also consults with Boston-area restaurants on PR, promotions, and hospitality. I definitely consider him an expert.

I had told him my wife, Sally, and I were looking for a place for dinner. He asked a few thoughtful questions that led to his recommendation.

Patrick used his extensive knowledge of area restaurants to make his suggestion. He used his perceptiveness to interpret my criteria and understand what was truly important to us. And, he used his relationship with me to effectively persuade me that things I saw as obstacles (South End, no reservations, etc.) weren't really obstacles at all.

Yelp couldn't do that. 

The other thing that Yelp couldn't do is validate my choice. Getting some insider information makes me feel good. Heck, look at the title of my blog and you can tell this is something I obviously value.

Accessing Experts

I wrote a little about connecting with experts in this blog post about Do-It-Yourself Learning. 

Chances are, you know a lot of people who are an expert in one thing or another. The thing I've learned is you have to approach them directly.

So, if I had made a general post on Facebook asking for restaurant recommendations, I might have gotten several suggestions from well-meaning friends who may or may not have been on-target. If I was lucky, Patrick would have seen my post, but there's a good chance he wouldn't have. 

The direct approach worked much better. I went to him because he's an expert in that area.

This means you have to think about who's in your circle that knows something about what you know. Check up on your friends' profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks if you can't remember who knows what.

Employees are often experts too.

They've received specialized training. They spend a lot of time answering questions and familiarizing themselves with their company's products and services. And, I can tell you that most customer service employees love getting the chance to share their knowledge.

This means your restaurant server knows the inside scoop on how menu items really taste. A retail employees knows the ins and outs of their products.

As I noted in a recent blog post, self-help tools like Yelp are gaining in popularity, but employees (and your friends) still hold the edge when it comes to nuanced or complex requests.

How To Assist Customers With Self-Service Kiosks

Note: This is a revised version of a post that originally appeared in 2014.

It's weird to see an employee standing by a self-service kiosk.

These kiosks are, by design, intended to be self-service. They're supposed to be cheaper than the humans they replace when it comes to handling basic transactions. 

(Side note: Check out this recent blog post on who is better at service, Employees or Robots?)

The reality is customers often need extra help, especially if they are a first-time user or use the kiosk infrequently. 

You see this at the airport where a mass of infrequent travelers are trying to check-in for their flights. It happens at the post office, where a postal worker is available during busy periods to help people figure out how to buy their postage from the machine. You also see it at the grocery store where there's usually one employee stationed in between a bank of four self-serve check-out lanes.

Unfortunately, the employees assigned to help customers use kiosks are rarely given any training on how to do this.

There really is an art to it. Do it wrong and you'll annoy your customers and actually slow things down. Do it right and you've convinced another person to join the self-service revolution.

Here are three steps employees should follow:

Step 1: Ask

The first step is to ask customers if they’d like assistance. Never assume they need or want your help.

It can be seen as an annoying intrusion if you just start offering assistance. Many times, your customers already know how to use the kiosk. Or, they'd really prefer to figure things out on their own.

You can even make it sound like an invitation.

When the Portland International Airport installed kiosks outside their parking garage to allow customers to pay for their parking, employees were stationed by the kiosks to help out. They invited customers to save some time by paying for their parking right there.

This embedded a clear customer benefit inside their offer of assistance.

Step 2: Guide

Avoid pushing buttons.

If a customer would like some help, guide them through the transaction using verbal directions and pointing to the appropriate buttons. This approach incorporates a basic tell, show, do learning approach into a mini-training lesson on how to use the equipment.

• Tell: give the customer verbal instructions

• Show: point to the correct button on the kiosk or visually describe it's location

• Do: have the customer complete the transaction themselves

Two bad things can happen when employees operate the kiosk for the customer.

The first bad thing is it can be rude. I've experienced this several times where an aggressive employee just cuts in front of me and starts pushing buttons faster than I can even read the screen.

The second bad thing is operating the kiosk for the customer prevents the customer from learning how to use it. That means they'll likely need help again the next time around.

Step 3: Encourage

The final step is to encourage the customer. Making sure they have a pleasant self-service experience is key to getting them to do it again.

This can mean the difference between self-service kiosks taking off or being neglected. My local post office provides a great example.

During busy times, a postal employee is stationed in front of their self-service kiosk. He or she invites people over to try the machine, but this same employee frequently sabotages the process. The employee takes over each customer's transaction, shooting out rapid-fire questions and pushing buttons before the customer really understands what's going on.

Confusion and anxiety are apparent on most customers' faces. The self-service kiosk isn't a pleasant experience for them. 

Meanwhile, the employee adopts an aggressive attitude. It's clear their top priority is to process each transaction as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, their lack of encouragement actually slows things down.

This spills over to slower times. There is almost never someone using the kiosk when I go to the post office. People would rather wait in line because it's less stressful.

Meanwhile, I cruise over to the kiosk and complete my transaction in less than a minute. With nobody there to push my buttons, using the kiosk is a breeze.

Employees vs. Robots: Who Is Better At Service?

This is a real question.

According to a recent report from Execs In The Know, 47 percent of companies are trying to shift traffic from traditional channels (phone, email, etc.) to lower cost channels such as chat and self-service.

It's self-service that's really grabbing headlines. 

Companies want to lower costs. With California leading the charge towards a higher minimum wage, executives feel pressure to spend less on service. Carl's Jr. and Hardee's CEO Andy Puzder recently speculated about building a fully automated restaurant with no employees. (No word on whether it will be called the Skynet Cafe.)

Customers are demanding faster, more frictionless service. That often means self-service. There's even a rumor going around that Millennials are causing this ruckus because they don't like to talk to people.

So, can robots really serve better than human employees? This post examines both sides of the discussion. 

Note: I'm using the term "robot" loosely to mean any aspect of automated service or autonomous self-service.

The Case for Robots

Imagine booking a airplane ticket in the old fashioned days.

You had to call the airline to make a reservation, which required an expensive employee to take your call. Or, you made your reservation through a travel agent, who took an expensive commission out of the price of that ticket.

Either way, you spent valuable time calling, waiting on hold, and then explaining your travel needs to the person on the other end of the line. That person needed to be compensated, and that compensation added to the price of your ticket.

On your day of travel, you had to wait in line to check-in at the airport. If you got to the gate and decided you wanted to change your seat, you had to wait in line for that too. 

Today, you book your ticket online or via a mobile app. You use the app to check in and download your boarding pass so you can by-pass the check-in counter. You can also use the app to change your seat.

Thanks to automation and self-service, air travel is much more convenient than it used to be. It's also cheaper to fly today than it was 20 years ago (in inflation-adjusted dollars).

It's not just air travel. Robots increasingly deliver better service for a lower price. 

Uber is disrupting ground transportation with it's ride sharing app. You can do your taxes on TurboTax or TaxAct using their simple, question-based system. Or, you can deposit a check using your smartphone without ever having to step foot in a bank.

Netflix recommends movies you might like using an amazing/creepy algorithm. Amazon recommends nearly anything you might like using an amazing/creepy algorithm, and then gets it to you in two days. Or, you can just install an Amazon Dash button and use it to re-order supplies with one click. 

IBM is poised to shake up the world of retail with their Watson artificial intelligence technology. In one experiment, they partnered with North Face to use Watson to help customers pick out a winter jacket.

In short, robots make service easier, faster, and better.

The Case for Humans

Automation is great, until something goes wrong.

Take air travel as an example. American Airlines used an automated system to rebook my flight when a delay caused me to miss a connection. That would have been great, except the dumb robot booked me on a flight to the wrong airport. I needed a human to fix it.

Guess who ultimately drives you when you order up an Uber? Autonomous vehicles haven't yet arrived, so you still need a human to drive you from A to B.

Last year, I discovered a bug in TaxAct's software. Getting past it required a full manual workaround by this human.

Order something online and you still need a delivery driver to bring your purchase to your door. My local UPS driver once delivered a package that had the wrong address on it. Some robot screwed up and he fixed it because he knew where I really lived.

Watson may win on Jeopardy, but it's not ready for retail. I tried to use Watson to find a North Face jacket. It didn't do nearly as well as the helpful, in-store sales associate.

Don't even get me started on Interactive Voice Response or IVR. That's the annoying automated phone menu that never understands anything you say.

Robots also can't do warm and fuzzy.

Sure, the automated kiosk at the post office displays "It's been a pleasure to serve you" at the end of each transaction, but I don't really feel it.

OK, so robots can fumble the service bit at times. But, what about cost reduction? Certainly, robots can save money, right?

Not so fast. In her book, The Good Jobs Strategy, Zeynep Ton profiles how low-cost retailers like Trader Joe's and Costco offer low prices by counterintuitively spending more on their employees.

These employees drive both operational excellence and outstanding customer service. They do it by making decisions that simply can't be automated. For example, spotting that "I'm lost" look on a customer's face and then expertly recommending products that customer never even knew existed.

The Winner

Calling a clear winner is tricky.

That's because it's not one or the other in a perfect world. When service is done right, robots and humans can co-exist perfectly.

Here's how I see it:

• Robots are good at: simple or transactional work.

• Humans are good at: complex or relational work.

The challenge for companies is getting both robots and humans to do their jobs, and do them well. Here's one more example. 

I recently had to call a certain satellite radio company to merge two accounts into one. This problem occurred because a I had bought a new car, and the new car automatically created it's own account (robot fail). 

Even worse, the only way to fix it was to call.

So, I called and spoke to a helpful and friendly customer service rep whose only problem was he had limited English skills. We both worked patiently through the issue and he was eventually able to fix everything the robot couldn't handle.

While I was on the phone, repeating every third sentence, I noticed that my account had an old credit card number attached to it. So, rather than fumble through this simple transaction over the phone, I updated my account with the new card number myself.

Human + robot for the win!

The One Way Employees Sabotage Self-service

I stood in front of the airport self-service kiosk, navigating my way through the airline’s check-in procedure.

The airline employee behind the counter greeted me and we exchanged pleasantries as I continued checking in. It's a procedure that's burned into my memory from countless flights.

And then, she committed an act of unthinking sabotage.

She stepped from behind the counter and, without asking, started pushing buttons on the kiosk for me.

I wasn’t going slowly. There wasn’t even a line. I’ve done this too many times to count and I don’t need any help.

Her intrusion was annoying. It slowed me down. I had to tell her to back off so I could complete the process.

Let's imagine I really did need some assistance. This well-meaning, smiling employee still got it all wrong. The one thing you should never, ever do in self-service is push your customers’ buttons.  

The proliferation of self-service kiosks is amazing. A recent WhaTech report estimated that interactive self-service kiosks are growing at a rate of 7 percent in North America. The same report predicted the value of transactions conducted on these kiosks will reach $1 trillion in 2014.

These kiosks provide a double benefit when done right. The customer saves time because kiosks eliminate waiting in line and can actually speed up some transactions. The company saves money because they don’t have to hire costly employees.

Sometimes, employees are needed. Customers might need a little training or encouragement to learn how to use a self-service kiosk.

Other times, employees intervene simply because they can. They genuinely desire to help their customers but don’t understand how to do it correctly.

Whatever the situation, the one thing employees should never do is operate the kiosk for the customer.

There are a few good reasons why:

1. It can be annoying to the customer.
2. The customer is disempowered when the employee operates the kiosk for them.
3. Customers won't learn how to do it themselves, defeating the purpose of self-service.

Self-service done right is faster and easier for customers. It gets slower and more annoying when a button-pushing employee gets in the way.

Employee can still play an important role in helping their customers use self-service kiosks. They just have to be taught how.

Here's an example:

The Portland Airport unveiled self-service kiosks in 2005 to allow passengers to pay for parking. The kiosks were a huge success in part because helpful, friendly employees were stationed near the machines to help customers learn to use them.

Parking employees were carefully trained to never push a customers’ buttons. They were given a three-step service process to follow instead.

Ask

The first step is to ask customers if they’d like assistance. Never assume they need or want your help.

Portland Airport parking employees took it a step further by inviting customers use the kiosks to save some time. They explained that customers could pay for their parking at the kiosk rather than waiting in line for a cashier at the airport exit. This embedded a clear customer benefit inside their offer of assistance.

Guide

If a customer would like some help, guide them through the transaction using verbal directions and pointing to the appropriate buttons. This approach incorporates all three basic learning styles into a mini-training lesson on how to use the equipment.

• Auditory: the customer hears your verbal directions
• Visual: the customer sees the correct button for each step in the process
• Kinesthetic: the customer does the transaction themselves

Encourage

The final step is to encourage the customer. Making sure they have a pleasant self-service experience is key to getting them to do it again.

These tips can mean the difference between self-service kiosks taking off or being neglected. My local post office provides a great example.

During busy times, a postal employee is stationed in front of their self-service kiosk. He or she invites people over to try the machine, but this same employee frequently sabotages the process. The employee takes over each customer's transaction, shooting out rapid-fire questions and pushing buttons before the customer really understands what's going on.

Confusion and anxiety are apparent on most customers' faces. The self-service kiosk isn't a pleasant experience for them. 

This spills over to slower times. There is almost never someone using the kiosk when I go to the post office. People would rather wait in line because it's less stressful.

Meanwhile, I breeze over to the kiosk and complete my transaction in less than a minute. With nobody there to push my buttons, using the kiosk is a breeze.

Self-service or customer service?

I read an article today that said many supermarkets were re-thinking the strategy of installing self-service checkout stands. Some customers seemed to like them while many customers found it easier or more pleasant to have a cashier ring up their purchases. (Read the article here.)

The article reminded me of an oft-asked question: Should we offer self-service or customer service?

My response is that’s the wrong question.

When self-service is great, it’s really great. Printing out my boarding pass at an airport kiosk or downloading it to my smart phone is a terrific time saver compared to waiting in line for a ticket agent. Looking up nearby coffee houses on a website or mobile app is much easier than spending 10 minutes calling a 1-800 number to get directions. Visiting a software company’s online learning center is much faster for me than signing up to take a class.

On the other hand, self-service can waste of time, cost money, and be extremely aggravating. Automated phone menus at the other end of 1-800 numbers often needlessly waste five minutes or more of my time before I can get to a person who can actually help. I don’t appreciate being charged a $7.50 “convenience fee” if I want to buy tickets to a play or sporting event online when I can buy them in person from a box office agent without paying a self-service surcharge. And, I really don’t like feeling like an idiot while I’m trying in vain to scan, bag, and pay for my groceries faster than the cashier in the checkout line.

Companies considering a self-service or automated option should start by asking themselves, “How can I offer the best possible service at the lowest possible cost?” These aren’t mutually exclusive options. Rather, they are counterpoints to a balancing act between a genuine desire to make every customer ecstatic about your business and the need to maintain fiscal responsibility.

Perhaps the best quote in the article was from Suzi Robinson, a spokesperson for Stop & Shop Supermarket Co. who explained why the company has self-serve lanes in about 85% of their stores. “Our philosophy is giving customers options. People shop in different ways and we want to accommodate their preferences.”