'Service' was delivered by living, breathing humans and department stores did it better than anyone.
No longer.
In a recent survey of 6,000 US consumers by the Temkin Group, the top three companies rated for excellent customer service were Amazon, Kohl’s and Costco. Department stores didn’t rank in the top 10.
Think about that for a second. Amazon is an internet retailer, Kohl’s is a value department store, and Costco is a wholesale club. Essentially, these are self-serve retail environments, yet customers are rating them very highly indeed on service. So what’s going on?
Firstly, service perceptions are very much based upon expectations. As a customer, you don’t expect lavish personal attention from, say, Costco. So a smile here or a helping hand there is all it takes to surprise and delight you.
Secondly, customers these days are comfortable with automated service processes, so long as they deliver an outcome. When you visit Amazon, the site remembers who you are and what you’ve shopped for previously, makes helpful product recommendations and allows you to purchase with a single click.
2011 customers want to be in control. Self-serve environments and automated processes put the customer in charge of their own service destiny. The personal touch? A nice to have, but not a got to have. In the new retail era, no service (at least in the traditional people-based sense) can be considered great service by customers. It’s a case of service outcomes being more important than human inputs.
