Imagine standing in a retail store desperately looking for help from someone, anyone, and being directed to … a computer screen. “No one here can help you,” a clerk might say. “But someone 1,500 miles away probably can.” This just might be the future of customer service. Two companies, with products named Live Agent and Live Support, hope that consumers who today wander aimlessly through store aisles looking for help would be happy to use videoconference kiosks instead. Already, shoppers in 34 Canadian Staples Business Depot stores all around the country have the option of getting video help from operators based in Toronto, according to Seattle-based Experticity, which makes the video kiosks for Staples.
Stores that are strapped for cash and have trouble hiring knowledgeable employees can offer better customer service through videoconference kiosks, says Chris Woods, chief technology officer of ClairVista, which makes Live Expert. Companies can also save money by leaning on a centralized staff, he said. “Everybody who goes into a retail store today and walks away frustrated that they could not get their questions answered can get the help they need,” Woods says. “We found that consumers are lining up to talk to the person on the screen because they know the dopey kid behind the counter can’t answer their question,” he said. “When consumers start using it, it becomes their preferred mode of engagement.”
Long-distance, video-based help has a number of obstacles to overcome, both companies concede. Chief among them is the impression consumers might get that the machines are there simply to replace humans and cut costs. If companies can’t even bother to greet store shoppers with in-person smiles, why would consumers bother to go to the store?
Once they take away the last of the service industry jobs, the corporations can proudly exclaim “Mission Accomplished”.
If companies can’t even bother to greet store shoppers with in-person smiles, why would consumers bother to go to the store?
Or bother to pay for anything instead of just walking off with it.. I suppose there will be plenty of armed guards.
Is customer service ever that helpful to begin with? As long as doing returns is easy I’m happy.
Retail people are there to explain what they sell, answer basic questions, and make the shopping/returns experience easier. They’re not there to teach people how to use the stuff they buy.
Another side of this story is that the “dopey kid behind the counter” not only can’t answer their question, but couldn’t care less.
I know they make minimum wage or just above it. But most people don’t give a crud how they look on the job or how they treat another person. And yet they will equally complain about service at other stores and restaurants.
Many seem content to languish at the bottom with no ambition to better themselves. Or just offer to help find what I am looking for.
Stores have doors.
#2–“Todd”==pretty much tells the whole story with just one word.
>>But most people don’t give a crud
Hey, I know this is Dvorak Uncensored, but you can’t use that kind of language on this blog! Golly.
It is as if today – all the companies have” Vice Presidents in Charge of Customer Misery”, who meet in annual conventions to devise coordinated plans to make commerce less rewarding, more frustrating and altogether avoidable. Worse yet, they all listen to the same consultants who have handbooks filled with diabolical stratagems to screw customer and employees alike.
The Airlines lead this brigade, but the brick and mortar stores are not far behind. Now that local mom and pop stores are long bankrupt, Walmart and Home Depot have cut inventory in half and hidden the rest out of reach of customers and out of knowledge of their staff.
CompUsa’s new corps of executives still hasn’t gotten the hint about vaporware rebates. Their fellow travelers at Circuit City, Best Buy, Office Depot (and to a lesser degree Staples), all seem to be waiting for someone else to outlaw rebates as an unregulated game of chance.
Insurance companies all taut the lowest rates and fast service at purchase time, but reverse the convenience if you ever have a claim. And do we have to point out the dubious ethics of the oil companies, who only come in second to the tobacco industry for duplicity and greed.
Employers once promoted a concept of: loyalty to the company meant loyalty to the employer. Now loyalty to no one – but the next higher job offer is all you can trust in.
And government is not one to depend on to regulate ethical behavior – they lost sight of honesty and integrity when doing their job – several administrations ago.
Perhaps it is just a gradual precession of ethics that has subliminally spread throughout society. Maybe it is no more than a corollary symptom of economic malaise and malice, which would explain the current numb economy?
Or is it a road sign that we are approaching the threshold of a uniform national decadence? Who do you know, who is morally guided today. And if you say Obama, I’m going to vomit.
Of course the dopey kid behind the counter can’t answer any customers’ questions: he or she is probably the product of the American public school system!
Besides, the message from employers is becoming increasingly louder by the day:
we really don’t want you as an employee;
if we bother to hire you, you’d better be pre-trained;
if we keep you, you’d better work for minimum wage and no benefits;
if we fire you, you’ll just be outsourced.
Good luck finding a job with a future!
No-one knows the meaning of customer service in the UK, so there won’t be much to lose here!
If American consumers weren’t so obsessed with (a) buying things to placate their low self-esteem and (b) desperately needing those things to be as cheap as possible these measures wouldn’t be necessary.
As long as people think that the lowest price means the best value, stories like this are going to continue.
Live customer support was for back when everything was dramatically overpriced.
Think of the early 1990s.
The internet ended the practice of ripping off the customer when companies like Amazon.com and CDW killed markup practices by local stores.
And then Walmart delivered the KO.
What is being missed here?
Opportunity!
If every other store in town features an inept staff and appalling service, then a entrepreneur can succeed by going in the opposite direction. Of course, this concierge and client approach will not appeal to a customer only concerned with cost. Fine, they’ll herd where they pay less and but get treated like cattle. By contrast, people who prefer quality and service will seek the better business with the understanding they get what they pay for… just like their parents may have told them.
If the only thing a building has going for it is location and price, they will lose to a closer, cheaper competitor.
“Stores that are strapped for cash and have trouble hiring knowledgeable employees”
… go out of business!
“As long as people think that the lowest price means the best value, stories like this are going to continue.”
Price is the last thing one should look at. With all the options in electronics deciding what to buy is the problem. knowledgable help is a nessesity.
Brian, I need the price to be low to match my self esteem. That way, those who are incredibly full of themselves subsidize my buying power.