Are Customer Service Deserts the New Reality?

I walked out of a big chain grocery store this morning a bit dazed and confused.

No Employees in Sight

At 8:25AM, with dozens of shoppers, there were no cashiers. The eight or ten lanes where a human should be checking out customers were empty, their lights off. The only place to checkout were the self-service lanes.

Even here, where there were ten to twelve automated machines, over half had “Closed” displayed on screen. A single employee (I don’t exactly know what title she does or should have) was playing traffic cop to navigate customers to open terminals or ordering them to “wait a few minutes” until one of the units became available.

I looked around because I really didn’t want to self-check. If I have a handful of items and timewise it makes sense, I have no problem doing self-check. But, today I had a few bags-worth of groceries and a heavy 24-pack of bottled water that I would have to wrestle out of the cart, on to the scanner, and then, back into the cart, if I used the self-check terminals. Besides, I remembered how many times this grocery chain’s self-check terminals demanded I put everything, including the bottled water, on the poorly designed bagging stand where it could detect the weight before it would allow me to go forward with my scanning or it would stop the checkout process to hail an employee to make sure I was not stealing. I hate having to wait when they want me to do the work.

If there was a cashier in one of the human-operated lanes, I could leave the case of water in the cart and she would use the portable scanner to effortlessly add it to my bill.

No one was in sight.

Self-Checkout Creates Poor Experience

As I stood there contemplating my options, no employees were even around to ask me if they could help.

So, I did the only thing I could do if I wanted to buy my groceries: I entered the self-check lanes.

Firefighters Struggle with Using Card at Self-Checkout

As I checked out I observed the three Nashville firefighters to the left of me trying to get the machine to accept their card. It was either the loyalty card so they got the “discounts” or maybe a payment card. I wasn't exactly sure. Either way, it wasn’t working and the three of them were discussing what should be done. The employee directing traffic did not come over to help them while I was checking out. Their frustration started to become obvious.

Mother Challenged to Manage Son and Self-Checkout

Behind me a mother tried to herd her three or four year-old son while taking groceries out of her cart, scanning, and then bagging them herself. Every item or two she had to stop to chase her son down. At one point he started punching buttons on the “Closed” terminal next to me just to hear the beeps. The employee did not offer to help. It was not her job to provide grocery scanning or child care services.

As I finished scanning and bagging the small items I turned to wrestle the case of water from my cart so I could put it on the scanner.

Elderly Woman Confused by Self-Checkout Process

That’s when I noticed an elderly woman behind me with a very confused look on her face. She was roaming from terminal to terminal trying to figure out what to do. The employee finally noticed and simply told her, “These machines are closed. You can use his (motioning toward me) when he is done.”

The elderly woman, even more confused, approached my cart. The employee stepped in front of her and coldly said, “You’ll have to wait a few minutes.” I felt uncomfortable to the point of pain for the women. Just remembering the moment turns my stomach.

Even I Struggle to Understand Self-Checkout Payment Process

I turned to pay my bill with my card. I could barely hear the audible instructions and the card device had different instructions than the scanning terminal. It took a few moments for me to understand what I had to do. The employee did not seem to notice I was having an issue.

As I rolled my cart out of the store, I thought to myself, “Why in the world would I ever come back here? It is nothing but a warehouse where I do all the work. I didn’t even get a discount for scanning my own groceries. Hell, I would be willing to pay to have Amazon deliver rather than have this experience again.”

This is when I was reminded of a story a friend told me recently. She works for a highly-educated, but non-tech savvy academic. Her employer shared his experience (similar to those I witnessed) when he went shopping late one night at another location of the same grocery chain. In his case, when he did ask for help with a problem, the young employee did not help. It was unclear if this employee did not know how, did not have the authority, or was unwilling to provide the requested service. In the end, my friend’s employer left the store without completing his intended purchases, vowing to never return. The store lost money and a customer for life.

It was in that conversation with my friend that I had an insight.

We are entering the era of customer service deserts.

My working definition of a customer service desert is a geographic area, market segment, industry sector, customer interface, or timeframe where human-assisted customer service is desired or required but non-existent.

Examples of Customer Service Deserts

• Geographic Areas - Communities, neighborhoods
• Market Segment - Non-tech savvy elderly
• Industry Sector - Gas stations
• Customer Interface - Apps like Facebook
• Timeframe - 10PM to 10AM

In the past, these customer service deserts were only apparent in businesses that squeezed every penny out of their operations to reduce cost so they could compete on price.

That worked...for a while.

Now we are seeing customer service deserts spreading into a variety of businesses that had been focused on (and still often advertise) their customer service. In the case of the grocery store I visited today, what they are doing is only providing human-assisted customer service during high traffic hours. This means that customers have a choice to come during busy hours and receive human-assisted service or to come in low traffic hours when it is likely more convenient to the customer and receive no service whatsoever.

I am witnessing these customer service deserts spreading into many sectors of cities, including the lowest socioeconomic areas. Like the food deserts in major cities are impacting the choices and well-being of the most disadvantaged communities, I am seeing customer service deserts having a similar impact.

In some cases, (e.g. communities with large elderly populations) those who are least able to adapt to self-service and the technology that supports self-service are the very people who have no choice but to frequent these businesses.

One study found that “24% of older people are deterred from shopping by automated checkouts.” The study reported that the elderly have a “miserable” experience when they don’t talk to a single person while shopping. They seek human interaction because they are lonely, but they find none.

Customers are Seeking Human-Assisted Service as a way of Connecting with Other People

The issue of loneliness is not only a problem for our elderly. While doing research to redefine “customer happiness” for my book, ProphetAbility, I came across these shocking statistics reported by Emily Esfahani Smith:

“At a time when we are more connected digitally than ever before, rates of social isolation are rising. About 20 percent of people consider loneliness a ‘major source of unhappiness in their lives’ and one third of Americans 45 and older say they are lonely.”

~Emily Esfahani Smith

Large businesses drive down their costs using self-service technologies so they can be more competitive in pricing than both the local neighborhood store and Amazon. This allows them to establish a large enough footprint to bring in a wider range of inventory at a lower cost than the neighborhood store. As Amazon continues to expand, these same retailers will continue to cut costs and will likely close stores in communities where the ROI of self-service technology is not still enough to maintain profitability. The more automation that is introduced to reduce labor costs, the more these retail stores will resemble automated warehouses where customers are left alone wondering the aisles.

This cost-effective strategy comes with high community economic costs.

There are many challenges for the community. The neighborhood loses jobs because new self-service options require few, if any, cashiers, baggers, or customer service employees. Customers with low income, will continue to flood into these stores because they are trying to make their paychecks stretch as much as possible. As a result, the money that was in the neighborhood now flows out of the neighborhood to the corporate headquarters. And, the neighborhood store cannot compete on prices or selection. It dies a slow, agonizing death.

Human-assisted service dies at the same time, thereby creating customer service deserts.

Some people argue that this is good because it makes a more efficient market. Others will claim that it ultimately provides a wider range of goods to the consumers in these disadvantaged areas. These points may be factually true, but they miss a terrible reality.

Customer service deserts come with a great human cost.

I analyzed the online reviews for the grocery store I visited this morning. Over 90% of the 5-star reviews the store earned specifically mentioned one employee by name or generically said the employees were “very helpful,” “very good,” “very kind,” or in some way described the employees using both a superlative modifier and a positive human quality or behavior.

Reviews that had a rating of less than 5-stars, often no mention of the employees, unless a very low rating was given and the employees or their behaviors were called out as being extremely negative or unpleasant.

Just to be clear, not a single 5-star review I analyzed mentioned how amazing the self-checkout lanes or other self-service options were.

This might be the cost of creating efficient markets and low-cost, high variety shopping options. But, there is more at stake.

5-star reviews are not just nice to have. They are essential to businesses that want to thrive.

We have done extensive research across industries and found in nearly every case that 5-star reviews are correlated to higher spending in the transaction that is being reviewed as well as higher lifetime value for the customer doing the review.

Let me be clear.

Companies can survive a long time with a majority of their transactions not being worthy of a 5-star review. But survive is all they will do. Eventually they will die because the market turns and/or their model is disrupted.

We don’t encourage our clients to seek 5-star reviews.

Seeking 5-star reviews often focuses the team on behaviors that are egocentric, manipulative, or even unsustainable. What we do teach our clients to focus on is understanding what causes a customer to feel such admiration that she wants to write an unsolicited 5-star review.

This means the company must provide 5-star customer experiences. I use the term “5-star customer experiences” because this is about the experience the customer has, not whether they actually write a 5-star review. Understanding this nuance is essential for long-term success.

5-star customer experiences matter, not just for the company, but more importantly for the customer who has the experience and for the employees who co-create the environment and event that evoke the customer’s 5-star experience.

The Unique Emotions of the 5-Star Customer Experience

Analyzing the feedback of customers who had 5-star experiences in a wide range of industries, we discovered that they feel one or more of the following emotions:

1. Admiration for the goodness of the employees and leaders
2. Admiration for the skill of the employees
3. Awe for the company, brand, experience, event, environment, etc.
4. Gratitude for the employees and company

These four emotions have been identified by psychologists as outward-facing emotions. They are classified as this because these emotions have a unique effect on the person who feels them. These emotions trigger action that is outward-facing with a result that is good for others. These emotions cause the experiencer to want to be a better person, to master new skills, to see their place in the world, to give back, and more. In short, these outward-facing emotions that are triggered by 5-star customer experiences make the customer better and their world better.

What's the Alternative to Customer Service Deserts?

If we return to the fast-growing customer service deserts with this new understanding in mind, it is possible to see that 5-star customer experiences require high quality human-assisted service and that such service is not just good for the company from a profitability perspective, but also for the communities that need the most help.

We can now ask ourselves,

Is it possible that, instead of having some infrequent 'community outreach' programs that are funded by the slim margins of high-volume, 3-star (or worse) customer experiences, that these same companies could make more profit and much more impact in these struggling communities by providing a level of service on a daily basis that makes every member of the community better, and thus, making the community itself a better place?

Maybe my mind is just wondering this morning because I had a very lonely shopping experience, while being surrounded by dozens of my fellow humans having their own version of a disappointing shopping experience.

Or, maybe, we need to realize that 5-star customer experiences are not just about making more money...

...That will happen if we do the right things.

In fact, evoking 5-star customer experiences are about making lives better, in this moment. And, as a result of this moment being a little better than the last moment, customers like you and I, will change how we see the world and how we see ourselves and our fellow travelers on this planet.

Maybe we will see ourselves and each other with just a bit more compassion and admiration.

Maybe these tiny one-degree shifts will alter the very trajectory of human history for future generations.

But then again, maybe customer service deserts are inevitable and we should simply write off large segments of humanity as not worth or worthy of 5-star customer experiences.

Maybe we should give up because doing what’s best for customers is really hard work.

***

Tony Bodoh is the co-author of ProphetAbility: The Revealing Story of Why Companies Succeed, Fail or Bounce Back, published in June 2018.

Preview the book at www.TonyBodoh.com/ProphetAbility

From the Back Cover of ProphetAbility:

"The most admired CEOs (like the kings of old) win because they master the ability to harmonize two competing forces in their leadership teams: The priests who maintain tradition, structure and order; and, the prophets who hear the unfiltered voice of the customer and promote disruption. 

This book is heralded a "masterpiece" and a "must-read" for CEOs and leaders who want to run a successful customer-centric business because it provides critical insights into the human experience that show what works, what doesn't and why.