
The Piggly Wiggly way - prostoalex
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21650554-businesses-should-think-carefully-about-continuing-heap-work-their-customers-piggly
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wtallis
> " _If firms abandon trying to differentiate themselves with good service,
> they are making themselves vulnerable to the sort of attack Britain’s
> mainstream supermarkets are now suffering from an invasion of German
> discounters._ "

Hasn't internet shopping shown that "good service" often does mean self
service instead of obsequious staff? Businesses should be eager to get rid of
their large staff of customer service drones and replace them with automated
systems and a handful of well-paid human exception handlers.

~~~
electronvolt
Something I learned during my first job (big box co. tech support and computer
sales): self service is great for people who know what they want or know more
about what they're buying than the salesperson does. Groceries is a great
example of this: I generally know what I like to eat a lot more than most
grocery clerks could possibly know, and I get groceries pretty often.

It's less ideal when you don't know much about the product (just that you need
one) and don't have the time to go spend a few weeks researching the purchase.
I spent some time selling computers: for most customers, they knew what they
wanted to do with the computer already (skype a military spouse, work on MS
Office Documents, play Skyrim, whatever), but if I was helping them chances
were they didn't know how to quantify that in terms of CPU/RAM/HDD/Graphics
card/etc., and being able to actually narrow their selection down to a few
computers that could meet their needs and explain the differences between them
seemed to really put people at ease in what would otherwise been a confusing
process.

To expound on my point: I don't know anything about... say... HVAC systems. A
self service system for purchasing an HVAC would probably be unnecessarily
stressful and confusing for me (at least, it would force me to go become
knowledgeable about HVAC systems), and I might even make a mistake and get one
that can't actually handle heating and cooling my house. This is an obvious
place where a knowledgeable salesperson could save me a lot of time and
frustration.

~~~
wtallis
It's fine for retailers to provide actual experts to help customers where help
is needed. Supermarkets aren't one of those places. They just need one or two
people to answer questions of the form "which aisle has X?" and the rest of
the business would be better run by robots. It's weird for the Economist to be
indulging in their delusions otherwise.

For things like consumer electronics and appliances, it's my experience that
most stores cannot provide employees who make better recommendations than can
be had by just checking the most recent Consumer Reports review, so even
though there is a need for a human staff you can't exactly say that the staff
they've got is a justified expense. If the sales staff never had conflicts of
interest when it comes to helping consumers it would probably be a very
different story.

