Be Different or be dead

November 3, 2011

Why being efficient by reducing cost results in worse service

Source: Unsplash

Why being efficient by reducing cost results in worse service.

Efficiency is the enemy of humanity

I can hear the efficiency experts and technology pundits screaming. The process re-engineering guru’s laughing at my outrageous declaration.

But here’s the thing. Any person charged with employing a new way of conducting business — a process, procedure or system — always looks for the cost savings involved.
Streamlining is measured by how much we reduce operating expenses; how the customer experience will be enhanced is never the starting point of a redesign project.

Technology adoption is rarely measured by how much it enhances the customer experience notwithstanding the application of AI in the customer engagement environment.

It is the norm that when we seek to apply new methods of doing business we extract a nano-gram of humanity from our organizations.

We reduce our ability to dazzle a customer to save a dollar in operating expenses by substituting humans with technology.

If you migrate a person-function to a machine, you reduce humanity in your organization. If you rush a person-function to make the process ‘more productive’ (save expenses), chances are that you are reducing the value of the customer engagement.

It’s virtually impossible in my view to mechanize a customer contact function and preserve the warmth of the human experience. The delight of a customer reaction to a caring act by an employee.

Some advocates say AI technology can replicate an amazing human- based experience, but I have yet to see it. Yes, Chatbot technology, for example, are improving because the controlling algorithms are getting more exhaustive and they are now able to deal with the most rudimentary and predictable customer transactions. But they quickly run into trouble when customer behaviour doesn’t fit the predictive algorithm.

And I also think in general that technology acceptance is governed by the fact that people are now resigned to receiving the lower grade of service they provide.

If you are doing something for the sake of efficiency and cost reduction, be honest enough to declare it.

Then tell everyone how your actions will preserve the humanity in your business — good luck with that.

Cheers,
Roy
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• Posted 11.3.11 at 09:50 am by Roy Osing
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