The Future of Customer Service: Rapid and Vapid

The  Economist posted a story about the hotel of the future, where every need was addressed in technological real time.

Specifically it looks at how a modern hotel might utilise social media to improve the service it offers customers.

For example:



7 AM PST: You hop on a flight from LA to New York. Before take-off, you tweet, “Headed to NYC. Looking 4ward to drink poolside @ThompsonLES.” When you land and turn your mobile on, you have a Twitter response from @ThompsonLES, which reads, “We look forward to having you. Shall we reserve you a lounge chair?”


And later on:



6 PM: When you arrive back in your room, you notice you have a message on your hotel iPad. You open it, and it takes you directly to the hotel’s Facebook videos, and in particular, a video illustrating the hotel spa’s offerings. Beneath the video is a “click to reserve spa treatment” button. You do. And before setting the iPad down, you use the hotel’s custom app to select and reserve a table at a recommended restaurant.


It’s all very clever technically, and doubtless responds to some guest needs, but I find this vision leaves me a bit cold.


For the writer, the problem was the elimination of human contact, where glowing lights forming letters and images was the closest one came to personal interaction.  Certainly something to feel a bit cold about.  But that hardly exhausts the problem.

In the first example, the hotel responds to its patron’s potential interest by offering a convenience directed toward his announced desires.  Very cool, and certainly welcome.

The second example, however, is disturbing.  You arrive at your room to see the message light flashing, and immediately check, worried that your child is lying in a pool of blood on the side of the road.  No, no, it’s just the hotel taking advantage of your concern to thrust its premium services at you, unsolicited and undesired. Sell. Upsell. Forget about the guests’ quiet enjoyment, and spam them with anything that can make the hotel a buck. 

Let’s assume that the hotel twits that it’s taken the liberty of reserving a table for you at its finest restaurant for that evening, and you are thrilled, since that was the plan and it saved you a call.  The miracle of social media, right?

When you arrive for dinner, however, there’s no reservation to be found, and every table is booked.  The maitre d’ asks who took your reservation and you point to your iPhone 37.  His wry smile brings chills. “I’m afraid that the reservation requires you to respond that you want it or it is automatically canceled,” he explains. Since you didn’t respond, you have no table.   

You are standing there, hungry and angry. “We apologize for the inconvenience,” the maitre d’ continues, “but there is nothing we can do.”

Personal communication, even between someone who cares and someone who is paid to pretend they care, involves a level of reality.  Whether the tone of voice, or the ability to pursue an issue to a depth that brings a human element to the communication, there is a level of connection that can’t be replicated on social media.  Especially when it’s human against enterprise. 

The latest trick in customer service is for the representative to say “this is Susie in Des Moines.”  You get a name and a place, to assure that you aren’t speaking to Susie in Bangalore or Peggy in Uzbekistan.  It’s meant to give you the impression that you’re dealing with someone who can fix things, help you.  It’s meant to show that you haven’t been shunted off to Peggy.

In speaking to Susie in Des Moines, you will find out pretty quickly whether Susie has the authority or inclination to do something, or is limited to uttering the words of a David Mamet script.  Susie is a person, and you can talk to her. It doesn’t mean that you will get any satisfaction or help, but at least you have the opportunity to engage, and leave the conversation knowing that there will, or won’t, be a resolution. 

Sure, she’ll end the conversation with the insipid “is there anything else I can do for you today?” ignoring that she would have to do something before she could do something else, but its the same white noise as “we apologize for your inconvenience” when they’ve poisoned you infant.

This may be cold consolation, but it far exceeds what social media has to offer.  Conversations go back and forth.  Social media allows a flow in one direction, whether to spam you with upsells and advertisements or to deluge you with apologies and nonresponsive responses to very real problems. 

Susie, the human being on the other end of the phone, may feel some desire to help someone who should rightfully be helped.  If her authority is too limited, she pays the human price of knowing, somewhere in her brain, that her days are dedicated to making other people miserable. This takes its toll on people, unless they’re a sociopath of the type who leaves callers to Suicide Hotline on hold while she finishes regaling her co-workers with the story of her last shopping venture.

Social media has no soul. Bother them too much and you disappear in the ether.  It’s not the social media couldn’t be wonderful, but that it won’t.  It may offer a change in the mechanics of communication, but it won’t give the person on the other end a soul.  And they will never have to hear the voice of the people they burn.



10 thoughts on “The Future of Customer Service: Rapid and Vapid

  1. Alex Bunin

    I think it depends on the activity in question. I recently changed my cable service to my new address via an one-line chat, and I found it a great improvement over speaking to someone reading their script. On the other hand, I am thoroughly frustrated by the series of automated commands you get when you call any corporate entity these days to respond to a question that is too subtle to be answered by pressing a button.

  2. SHG

    Changing an address is something they want to facilitate, since that means you keep paying them.  That’s easy.  When things work, it’s wonderful, but that’s always the case. 

    What if there was nothing at the end of the voicemail maze, and nothing you could do about it?

  3. Alex Bunin

    I agree. I like going to a website and buying something where no salesperson will pressure me to buy more. I do not like calling (for instance Kitchenaid) and getting a loop of commands, none of which ends in a real person dealing with my problem.

  4. SHG

    “We care deeply about you. Press 1 to spend more money. Press 2 to tell us how much you love us. Press 3 to end this call. Good-bye.”

  5. SHG

    Sadly, I believe I’ve had the experience of that one as well.  I have yet to see any customer service rating that says “complete and utter worthless crap that sucked an hour out of your life for nothing, and left you worse off than when you started.”

  6. SHG

    They apologized for my inconvenience, but told me there was nothing they could do about properly reinstalling my fridge. And, they didn’t give me back my money.

  7. Lorraine

    Interesting post. I personally prefer an electronic and comprehensive online response than the customer service reps that now answer calls.

  8. SHG

    If you were assured of getting a “comprehensive” online response (whatever that means), that would be great. But if you don’t, then you’ve got nothing.

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