“The ‘self-service revolution’  has been wonderful for companies.  What better way to strip out costs than to replace supermarket cashiers with machines, or make passengers print out their boarding passes?  In a new book, Shadow Work, Craig Lambert argues that “the reason why so many people feel overworked these days is that they are constantly being asked to do ‘unseen’ jobs”, by everyone from Amazon to the taxman. The cumulative effect is to feel like “a slave to the machine”. Some of these developments have in fact been driven by customer preference, but there is now a clear and worrying divide between “cattle class” and “business class” offerings: the service industries have eliminated “the personal touch” from their mass-market products, while “no amount of fawning is too much” for well-heeled customers. And if they abandon trying to differentiate themselves with good service, the effect is “to train customers to shop on price”, making them vulnerable to attack from discounters. Just ask Britain’s mainstream supermarkets”. ( Schumpeter, The Economist)

We encountered  a very charming man who, a year ago, had sold his technology company and is now looking around for new opportunities. He agreed that the idea of customer service is dying or dead. One can never get past the young woman on the phone.  She either can’t or won’t put you through to her supervisor, and often doesn’t know who he is anyway. The management treat customers like cattle, ignoring complaints and suggestions, offering limited training to the front line staff, and imagining themselves customer orientated when they send  out gormless opinion polls,  another means of taking up your precious time.  And by the way, most of the non- financial websites do not need elaborate “accounts” and log-ins, which are marketing ploys and have nothing to do with security.

Time for a revolt by the customer!