Hidden costs of self-service

Posted on October 26th, 2008 in Task Management.

A self-service website can only be effective when people can complete the tasks they came to complete.

The toll booths on a motorway I regularly use were removed recently. In their place is an automatic system called Eflow that captures your car registration. You then have a number of options for payment.

I happen to have a device that allows me to use all the toll-motorways in my country without having to pay cash. I do have to slow down as I approach the booths so that the sensor can scan the barcode but that’s all.

With this new system you don’t have to slow down nearly as much. Also, the traffic congestion that was caused by the booths has been eliminated. The only problem is that the system doesn’t work very well.

So far I have received four letters from Eflow. Letter number one told me I owed Eflow some money. I rang up Eflow and explained that I was a subscriber to another system that they were supposed to be collaborating with. They said they were very sorry. They took my details and said everything would be okay.

Then letter two arrived. This was a sterner letter, warning me that I didn’t have much time left to pay. I rang up again and got another round of apologies. Then letter three arrived. This time I had been levied with a significant fine. I rang up again and got another round of apologies. Then letter four arrived threatening that I would now be taken to court. I rang up again and got another round of apologies.

What does this have to do with websites? Quite a lot. When self-service doesn’t work there are consequences. If someone can’t complete the task they came to your website to complete there are costs and consequences.

If you manage a commercial website you risk losing your customer to a competitor. If the customer still wishes to buy from you then they will have to pick up the phone or walk into your shop/office.

Badly designed and managed self-service is more expensive than manual service. Look at what this single failed transaction has cost Eflow. Look at what it has cost me.

If your search engine is awful and people waste lots of time using it and never find what they’re looking for, then why have a search engine? It would be a much better management decision to have no search engine than a bad one.

If your web content is badly written and very few people can make sense of it, then it would have been a much better management decision not to have published that web content at all. Unfortunately, many websites are management-free zones.

The purpose of a website is to help people complete tasks by themselves. If the website fails then the costs can be substantial. The whole logic of self-service websites is that their task-completion costs are lower than phone or face-to-face interactions. But the costs are only lower if the tasks are actually completed.

 

4 responses

  1. Paul Higgins says:

    Added on October 27th, 2008 at 10:10 am

    Spot-on, Gerry, and applies not just to websites, but to any business or commercial software or process which, in theory, was supposed to make life easier for the individual/manager/customer, but actually makes things more difficult. Whether it’s self-service HR, self-service procurement, self-service data access, self-service check-out at the local supermarket, etc.

    The key factor is understanding what people want to do, and how they want to do it. Then make it intuitive.

    A personal example of when it works: yesterday I needed to get a security code for a car radio (the garage had asked £35 to do this for me). I went to a website (top one in Google), which asked for the serial number for the radio. I entered it, was asked to pay £8.99 by a number of different cards, or PayPal, and then the security code appeared on the screen, and was e-mailed to me as well. Small-ish saving on cost, but huge saving on the inconvenience of going to the garage. Every aspect of the transaction was customer oriented - the site can even advise on where to find the serial number on a huge range of radio models, and also on how to enter the security code (which is not always obvious if you’re lacking the original manual!).

    Best regards,
    Paul

  2. Ben K says:

    Added on October 28th, 2008 at 8:21 pm

    Another bulls-eye, Gerry, and kudos to Paul for recognizing the extension of this into other customer-facing business processes. I had just begun preparing a post of my own regarding the irony of customers essentially “paying” for supporting the service or product for which they’ve already paid. (This stems from my struggles with a certain telephone service company whose dial-in customer service system is undoubtedly the most frustration-inducing and time-wasting experience I’ve ever endured.) In my case, the company largely has a monopoly over my communication options, so I am stuck spending my own time (mostly on hold and being routed in circular menus with redundant options) to correct their errors. Usually, once I can track down and get the appropriate service person on the phone, the error takes only minutes to resolve. But I know every time I have to deal with this company it will cost me at least an hour out of my own pocket.

    Keep the great insight coming, Gerry.
    -Ben K.

  3. Bob Johnson says:

    Added on October 28th, 2008 at 9:37 pm

    What a novel idea… remove the search engine when it doesn’t work well. That, for sure, would result in far fewer college and university search engines and, one suspects, far fewer frustrated users.

    Does anyone ever test these things against the results most often returned for common search terms? Not likely anyone’s responsibility to do that, is it? Indeed an example of a “management-free” website.

  4. Brian Anderson says:

    Added on November 11th, 2008 at 1:35 am

    Self service websites are the efficiency master’s dream; however, all of the theory work is done in the laboratory, i.e. the office, and the various hypotheses or programmed scenarios are not subjected to the rigors and reality of real life in the big city. And, typically, the program and the other people in the company have not been formally introduced to each other. The right hand doth not know what has been cooked up by the left hand. Who loses? The customer.

    I witnessed the same principle at my country’s largest telecom company in the mid to late 90s. Software was supposed to ‘replace’ the humans formally providing the personal service but mostly what it did was introduce impersonal service.

    On the subject of websites, wouldn’t a clearer navigation system suffice instead of putting the onus on the individual to try to wade through the nuances and irregularities of an on-board search engine? The fundamental problem with website-based search engines is that they created in the same spirit as those toll booth gizmos: no usability testing, little thinking about the problems a customer might encounter using it, whether the search terms written into the code are those that customers use, etc.

    Overall, websites - again - are treated as abstract nuisances instead of vehicles (no pun intended) for company-customer interaction.

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