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Nov 21, 2023

Baranyai: From customer service to service by customers

When did the phrase "customer service" become reflexive? Which is to say

When did the phrase "customer service" become reflexive? Which is to say (curmudgeon alert): A good deal of what was once considered service is now provided by customers themselves.

When did the phrase "customer service" become reflexive? Which is to say (curmudgeon alert): A good deal of what was once considered service is now provided by customers themselves.

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We check ourselves in at the airport, pump our own gas and scan our own groceries. We have become our own cashiers, from building supply stores to fast-food outlets.

It's no surprise people have embraced apps for online orders. They’re convenient. In-person self-service, however, is something else entirely. It is astonishing how quickly we submitted to the cattle-herding lineups at fast food kiosks, tapping order screens touched by a thousand other hands, then hovering near the counter, waiting for our number to be called.

The takeover started incrementally, as takeovers often do. We pumped our own gas and bagged our own groceries to economize. When we could pre-pay online for movie tickets, it seemed like a genuine service improvement. Never again would we drive to the theatre for a sold-out show. Then the ticket ordering stations arrived in the lobby where box office attendants used to be.

In all kinds of stores, cashier lanes disappeared to make space for larger self-checkout areas. If there are still checkout lines with conveyor belts, they often sit empty and unattended, a row of numbers over darkened lights, like taxis no longer taking calls.

In the early days, at least, there were floaters – former cashiers, presumably – hovering near the self-checkouts, ready to lend a helping hand. It seemed like a perversely masochistic occupation, instructing shoppers how to put you out of a job.

Even sadder than the sight of workers facilitating their own obsolescence has been their gradual disappearance. Technical assistance is getting harder to come by. This isn't a pilot project anymore; customer-cashiers are the new normal.

As customers take over unpaid service, more paid employment is transitioning from service to surveillance. Gas station attendants, once adept with a squeegie, now sit in a cage and watch the cameras, making sure no one drives away without paying. Self-checkouts are closely monitored.

In fairness, these "efficiencies" don't just save corporations money; they’ve become popular. In 2019, pre-COVID, a Dalhousie University study found just 11 per cent of shoppers had any intention of using self-checkouts regularly. Within two years, grocery self-checkouts were the preferred option.

Although "option" is often an overstatement. Sometimes there is one cashier on duty; sometimes there are none.

I will stand in long queues for the lone cashier, in my own quiet protest of job-killing self-checkouts. Once, in an apparently unstaffed drugstore, I pressed the help button at a glitchy self-checkout and waited. My impatience was amplified by waiting for someone to coach me through the steps of someone's eliminated job. After several minutes, I left without my purchase, repressing the urge to exit Jerry Maguire-style, calling to the other customers: "Who's coming with me?"

My curmudgeonly experience seems to be atypical. Dalhousie's recent survey found more than 85 per cent of Canadians were satisfied with their grocery self-checkout experience. Moreover, nearly half (47 per cent) would be willing to have digital sensors scan their grocery basket and bill them without using a checkout. No checking your bill for errors, no job for a cashier, and no human interaction.

Some stores in the Netherlands and Great Britain have moved in the opposite direction, providing "slow checkout" lanes for customers who’d like a chat. A store in Edmonton has adopted the practice, and people love it. The initiative not only helps battle loneliness and isolation; it gives customers and curmudgeons a choice.

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