10 ideas that are changing the world: #2 The End of Customer Service.

This particular article from the Time magazine is basically talking about replacing customer service with technology in airports, grocery stores and movie theatres. Due to this. the world is losing customer service.

Indeed, we have been making use of machines and technology in whatever we are doing in our life such as paying of bills or even sometimes when we are calling to the customer service, it is a machine that picks up the call. However, this does not signal the end of customer service. It is a change and improvement to how people are served in the world. By doing so, it saves a lot of our time as we can settle our things at a shorter time. Comparing the time taken to queue for bill payment and the time taken to pay it using a machine, it is half an hour or longer and five minutes respectively. This difference has convince people to depend on machines more than anything else. Machines make our life easier. In the perspective of companies, machines increase efficiency and save the cost for employing workers to serve.

Having said so, it is never good to depend on technology. Just like what the article has mentioned, the interaction between human beings is disappearing. If everything can be done, settled and solved using machines, there will be no interaction between people, the society will become hostile. We need human interaction to foster relationship between people and reduce conflicts. Depending too much on technology will also link to the controversial issue abt replacing human with machines as it is able to perform as well or even better than what humans can do.


Besides, it is unfair for people to pay service charge when they are actually served mainly by machine. In that case, companies are actually trying to earn more money from the consumers which is not a nice thing to do. Companies which only focus on their own benefits and advantages and not concern about the well-being of consumers will never succeed. By emphasising on self-servicing, it also means that consumers are working more than the workers when consumers are paying and workers are paid. It is ridiculous because customers are expected to be served since they are paying for the service.

Hence, I think that customer service should never come to an end. In fact, customer service should combine wif self-service. If customer service were to end, consumers should pay lesser for the goods and there should not be any service charge.

h. xinyi.