Empowerment, Neglect, Incompetence, and Mistrust

I've heard the phrase "customer wants to do things for themselves" a bit too often lately, to the point that I'm beginning to feel it should not be accepted without some reluctance.   Perhaps it's a dour state of mind, but I sense there is value in questioning this notion, because I have the distinct sense it is not as axiomatic as it might seem, and that the motives have less to do with wishing to empower the customer than to conceal a flaw in the customer-vendor relationship that stems from neglect, incompetence, or mistrust.

Primarily, it's in conflict with another set of premises.  First, the customer purchases a product to achieve a goal, and they wish to achieve this goal with as little cost as possible.   Second, the notion of cost is not merely in the money-price of the item, but in the effort to obtain it.   This is particularly clear when the product in question is a service rather than a physical object, the customer seeks a vendor to perform the service is paying for their competence to do it well, or the convenience of having someone else do it.

So when someone insists that the customers want to do something for themselves, it begs the question of "why?"   I'm not confortable with some of the answers to that question - as they lead to the conclusion that self-service by the customer is a hack for poor service by the vendor.

Neglect

In some instances, perhaps many, the notion that "the customers want to do this for themselves" is a disingenuous rephrase of "we don't want to do this for them."   At best, the service provider has failed to accept the responsibility of contributing their effort; at worst, they are looking for ways to shirk the duties they know they should be performing.

Consider the example of grocery-store self checkout kiosks: I don't suspect that a survey of customers, if one was ever done, suggested that customers really wanted to perform this menial and monotonous task of being their own check-out clerk; instead, I suspect that it was a financial decision intended to reduce staff expense by asking customers to do a task so the store could save the cost of paying an employee to do so.

Neither do I accept the premise that the cost-savings to the company are passed along to the customer because there is no direct connection between performing the task and saving any cost on purchases.   It would seem a natural incentive to adopt self-service by offering customers a discount, even a few percent, for performing the task to encourage them to do it - and I have never seen a single self-service checkout that offered such a thing, and the suggestion that there is some vague connection to price reduction seems specious.

Incompetence

In other instances, the customer wants to do a task because they do not feel confident the service provider can do it properly.  And so it follows that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself - which seems acutely inappropriate when you are hiring a professional to do it for you.

An example for this premise is self-service stock trading.  Brokers and financial advisors, for all the resources at their disposal and claims of expertise, are woefully unable to achieve consistent success in identifying profitable investments.  And so, their customers feel that even with less information and experience, they are capable of doing as good or better a job of evaluating and selecting investment opportunities as the "professionals" who have failed to serve them adequately.

In this example, unlike the checkout kiosks, there is a financial incentive for the customer  to engage in self-service trading in the form of substantially reduced commissions.  So likely the waters are a bit muddied - but saving ten dollars on a commission for a modest investment seems unsound if the customer believes in the competence of a professional trader: if he could earn a few percent more by choosing a better investment, this would more than compensate for the higher commissions.   And sadly, this proves out to be true in the perception of the customer - because a person who engaged in self-service trading and achieved poor returns would go gladly back to using a full-service broker and there would be a revival in the profession.   Given that has not happened and a substantial number of investors prefer self-service trading to broker-assisted trading, the complete lack of faith in the competence of financial professionals is indisputable.

Arguably, this may fall into the category of neglect - I don't sense that they are mutually exclusive at all - but my sense is that the root of the customer's desire to serve themselves is not a false premise created by a business that wants to hire fewer employees, so much as it is belief on the part of the customer that the vendor lacks competence.

Mistrust

In other instances, likely the worst-case scenario, the customer wants to do a task because they do not trust in the service provider, and only by taking on personal involvement in the service can the customer be certain that their interests are actually being served.   It is not merely that the customer feels the provider is incompetent to do a good job, but that they feel the provider has ulterior motives to exploit the relationship.

An example to support this premise is the popularity of healthcare web sites, in which people who suspect they have a condition that needs treatment consult reference information and converse with others who have similar problems to decide what course of treatment they need before seeking a physician to provide it.   Even if they do not presume to tell the doctor how to treat them, they will cast a suspicious eye on the healthcare provider who suggests a different course of treatment.

Again, it's a gray area, and it could be that people do not trust in the competence of healthcare providers - but it's my sense that mistrust plays a larger role: that doctors will prescribe a costly or long course of treatment because it's in their financial interest to do so, or are required by an insurance company to use an inferior but cheaper treatment in order to be compensated for their work.   This is a common refrain in the healthcare debate that has been going on for decades, the chief casualty of which has been the trust in the healthcare industry in general.

Begging the Question

Ultimately, all of this is speculative and general.  Each customer has his own preferences for the level of service he expects a vendor to provide, but even that is superficial.   For any given instance, I cannot accept the premise that a significant number of customers have ever expressed a preference for self service without asking the reason that it should be so.

When someone within a business suggests that customers want to do things for themselves, I strongly suspect that this attitude is simply a dodge for wanting to cut costs by providing a lower level of service - and suggest that if the level of service is diminished, the result may be a loss of business.   There should be some research to determine whether the compromise is acceptable to customers, at the very least.

When a customer responds that they would like to do certain things for themselves, research the reasons they feel that way.   Do they feel that the service provider cannot serve their needs adequately, do they distrust in them, or is there some other reason that has not been identified that they feel that the value they receive is better served by doing it for themselves?

Where the numbers work out right, such that the cost-savings of "empowering" the customer to do certain tasks outweighs the revenue-loss of disappointing customers who expect better of a service provider, then enabling self-service may make financial sense, at least in the short term.

But I'd like to conclude this meditation with a different consideration: doesn't it seem that customer self-service is merely a hack to avoid solving a deeper issue that should be addressed?  If the customer does not feel your service suits their needs, would it not be better to improve the quality of service?  If the customer doesn't trust you, would it not be better to address this serious problem with your relationship?   My sense these questions are, or ought to be, entirely rhetorical.