Self-service business solutions are all the rage these days and that’s good news in many cases. These kinds of programs can save us all a great deal of time if they’re implemented properly and, frankly, in some cases – like ATMs – there’s little question left today that we actually prefer the machine solutions to dealing with bored and indifferent tellers. But when self-service is poorly done, in big box stores for example, it can feel like you’re wandering in the desert for days without ever seeing a helpful human being. And, as often as not, when you finally do come across a living, breathing person, it’s generally not their department or they have no clue as to how to help you.
It’s always struck me as very sad that so many of these large organizations with hundreds or thousands of front-line, customer-facing employees don’t seem to understand that it’s not simply about the rote training of their people; it’s about building and reinforcing their team’s self-esteem. If you can make their jobs “important” (whatever they are) and make them feel good about what they are doing every day (however seemingly mundane it may be), the people will get their jobs done and done well regardless of how many hours of lectures and useless training they have had to endure. Pride is just as contagious as Ebola and it shows. And, at the same time, when big companies push the acceptance envelope too quickly or too aggressively, even in apparently modest ways where they are basically trying to save a few bucks, they can end up shooting themselves in both feet.
But I’m not really that concerned about crappy traditional self-service which I would call abuses and poor uses of the “Help Yourself” model. I’m more interested in where we’re heading with the new technology-based approaches that shift a lot of the burden of interaction, response and other affirmative actions to the consumer. These programs might better be described as the new “Help Me Help You” model. And here too, as with most of these things, success or sucking is in the details and in the execution because - when it comes to service, everything matters.
It’s also critical to understand the ever-changing boundaries of the typical consumer’s acceptance of these increasingly intelligent (and somewhat invasive) automated interactions which are being driven by the adoption of new in-store technologies. These solutions are predicated on our increased mobility and connectivity and also depend and incorporate the staggering amounts of real-time data which our devices can now provide to interested and activated merchants.
Here are just five examples of what you can expect to see in the retail area alone:
(1) In-store displays that send texts and/or talk to you as you pass by them;
(2) Systems that track what you’ve purchased and suggest what you may have forgotten;
(3) Dressing rooms that read RFID tags on your selections and suggest alternative choices;
(4) Phone apps that make cosmetic recommendations based on analyzing your selfie; and
(5) Systems that project digitized versions of clothing or other products onto your body
Ask yourself just how creeped out you would be as each of these systems becomes more and more personal and personalized. And yet, realistically, as long as these exchanges are designed to provide real value on both sides of the deal – saving us time or money or helping us make better and smarter choices, I think that we’ve just seen the beginning of this trend and we will see expanding variations of it in every business very soon – including yours.
I wrote recently that it was important in trying to keep your own business on the leading edge of what was happening with emerging new technologies and other potentially disruptive changes for you to invest the time and make the effort to keep an eye on both the players and leaders in your own industry and also the smart and aggressive companies in adjacent spaces and market sectors where innovations that are transferable and readily-applicable to your own company’s offerings and ways of doing business may be taking place. I called this process “lateral learning”. (See: http://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/when-to-steal-from-other-founders.html )
I noted there that - as often as not - the observations that really paid off were those about companies which were testing for and continuing to politely push the acceptable limits of consumer behaviors and which were basically asking exactly what it was fair or reasonable these days to expect consumers (and especially your regular customers) to do as their part in the day-to-day transactions that make up our businesses. These companies are doing all of us a great service because, frankly, if these questions were not being asked and the responses acted upon; we’d still be doing a whole bunch of things in the old-fashioned and inefficient ways that worked for us in the past. Change doesn’t happen on its own and someone needs to keep raising the bar and asking “why not” a lot.
But, if you want your own business to succeed, you really can’t leave all the heavy lifting to the other guys and keep riding on their coat tails. The problem with the “After You Alphonse” strategy (playing it slow and safe and letting the other guys go first) is that, by the time you finally wake up and smell the coffee, they’re over the next hill and miles ahead of you. And, the fact is that you’re the ones who are supposed to know your markets, your customers and even your competition the best and so you’re really the most likely candidates to figure out where things are headed in your industry, how to apply these new tools to your business, and just how far to go before you’ve gone too far.
PP YOU GET WHAT YOU WORK FOR, NOT WHAT YOU WISH FOR.
