The Real Reason We Love Self-Service
One element of our weekly staff meeting is to present story ideas, discuss trends and relevant news, and the like. During yesterday’s meeting Managing Editor Mila Antonio mentioned an article she read about Papa John’s surpassing $1 billion in online pizza sales, and noted that part of its appeal is pizza-tracking functionality that allows customers to follow their pie from order to creation to delivery (supposedly taking the stress out of knowing when your pizza will arrive—but that’s another whole conversation…).
I immediately chimed in with my personal tale of how much I love using Papa John’s website to order pizza. The response caught me off guard.
I talked about how easy it was to use. Then I said that I especially like it because I hate when you call any pizza delivery place and the associate taking the order, who of course is in a big rush to get your order and get you off the phone, gives you that heavy sigh because you’re taking too long to decide between spicy or BBQ wings or because you want your pizza with full sausage and half mushroom on one side and half pepperoni on the other. Heaven forbid!
That’s when Publisher Mike Dandrea noted the real reason I love Papa John’s self-service—or any self-service for that matter. Sure, the convenience is great. But, as Mike noted, I’ll save a company I’m buying from money and effort by doing all of the initial work myself, just to eliminate the risk of a poor service experience.
He was so right.
One of the places I used to dislike in-person dealings most is at car rental companies, where, in the past, I’ve rarely had anything but the most perfunctory service experience. Then, I used the rental kiosk at National Car Rental and I thought I had reached car-rental nirvana. I said to myself, “Great! I’ll never have to deal with a car rental associate again.” That was, until I rented a car from Enterprise Rent-a-Car. The service there is so fabulous that I’d much rather go there—even if that means having to schlep to an off-airport site—than rent anywhere else ever again (even from National with its oh-so-convenient kiosks). Since I’m guaranteed great service at Enterprise, I don’t need to be concerned with the potential risk of bland or poor service. (Check out my blog post about my Enterprise experiences.)
I’m guessing that I’m not alone in my preference of self-service over the risk of poor service. In fact, in my blog post What Would You Rather Do? I cite a Harris Interactive/RightNow Technologies study that presents findings from a survey of consumers on customer service. According to the study, 24 percent of U.S. consumers surveyed would rather clean their house than deal with poor service. And that’s just one activity in a list of torturous alternatives. Worse, as a result of a poor service experience, 29 percent of respondents have gotten a headache, felt their chest tighten, or cried—and 47 percent swore or shouted.
Clearly, part of the value customers garner from self-service is completely avoiding despondent, disinterested, curt, or rude behavior from the people who are supposedly there to serve them in a way that engenders such basic bottom-line builders as customer satisfaction, engagement, and loyalty. You know, things that give people a reason to want to come back, spend more, and recommend.
Where do you use self-service not just for convenience, but because you’d rather not have to deal with an associate or agent?
JT,
Great point in your post about the sense of control when using self-service. I think that's one of the reasons people tend to upsell themselves when using self-service tools to make a purchase; there's no "sales pressure," and in the situation of, say, purchasing tickets, the easy view of what you get for X price versus Y price often prompts buyers to spend more to get what they really want.
Ginger
good points all. I do think technology can help make both service and self-service better - check out this post for instance.
JT
Author, with Neil Raden, of Smart (Enough) Systems
Honestly, the most troubling part of this piece is the notion that anyone could be happy ordering Papa John's Pizza. Ginger .... your palate deserves better! Thanks for the article.
Hi Ginger
I'm intrigued by this post
I have gone back and forth in my mind about the service dimension - mostly because Reicheld (Loyalty Effect) reported, “In business after business, our research has shown that 60-80% of customers who defected had said on a survey just prior to defecting that they were “satisfied’ or “very satisfied”.
It seems that we are all happy to receive great service, disgruntled with service lapses but seem to have a price at which we will be prepared to accept things (or risk unknown experience for a price)
As near as I can figure it - it seems the service dimension is an s-shaped curve
(see http://miroslodki.wordpress.com/articles/brand-affinity-dynamics-part-1-of-3/)
the extreme exceptions have an impact on customers, the stuff in the middle doesn't seem to stick (for long).
You also noted in your last magazine regarding FedEx legendary customer service stories - going way above and beyond - yet in Canada at least, their advertising is based on a humorous campaign platform of how a company can overcome the seemingly insurmountable problems of sending a package from point A to point B.
Seems to me a stronger message would be recounting some of their extraordinary feats of customer service.
"FedEx - the world on time - absolutely positively because you're #1"
cheers
Miro