I just spent a week in NYC, partly for SpeechTEK and partly for vacation. The conference always gets me thinking in big terms about design and self-service, and the rest of the trip gave me plenty of opportunities to test or prove my theories.
One thing that came up a couple of times again this year is that people have a pretty good idea of when they can successfully use self-service and when they need help. I say pretty good because those of us providing the service occasionally surprise the customer with something that can be automated that they didn't expect. And honestly, the converse is sometimes true as well.
The proliferation and adoption of kiosks is often cited to support willingness to use self-service when given the choice. I encountered kiosks in a variety of places during my trip. Here are my reflections on each.
Airline Checkin
OK, so the first one wasn't in NYC but here at DFW. I very happily used the kiosk to check my bag in. Although what I will never understand is why after checking in and getting a mobile boarding pass on my phone, the kiosk prints me a new one without asking me if I need it.
The Subway
All subway entrances have kiosks, and they tell you where to find a person if you need it. Buying a MetroCard should be easy enough, so I set out to use the kiosk. My first question (which I couldn't find answered) was if more than one person could use the same MetroCard. Did all four of us need our own? Or could I load one up and pass it back for the next family member to swipe?
I decided to not chance it and buy four. There is no way to buy more than one at a time from the kiosk. I had to buy each one individually, and had to start completely over each time. I even played around a bit trying different options to see if I could get more than one at once by going down different paths. No such luck. Strike 1.
Strike 2 may or may not be a design problem. I was paying with credit card, and on the third MetroCard, it denied the card. No idea if it senses fraud and blocks it or if I simply had a hiccup with my card. But frustrating nonetheless. Good thing I had a second card on me. Overall the subway self-service got a thumbs down.
Natural History Museum
The museum has a typical line for buying tickets at a counter with multiple agents. They also have several kiosks. The line was about 10 people deep while the kiosks were completely empty. I gladly chose the kiosk although I wondered if something was wrong with them at first since nobody was using them. We got our tickets quickly and easily and bypassed the line. Worked great, although I'm not sure why the rest of the folks didn't key in on their availability.
Airline Checkin, Part 2
For the return trip, I didn't have an assigned seat (not sure why) so couldn't check in on my mobile. The rest of the family had middle seats in consecutive rows. Not exactly ideal, but I wasn't going to spring for the fees to put us together (they charge for everything these days!). Lines at LaGuardia are definitely not short, but we went straight to them, bypassing available kiosks because we knew we had to get the seats taken care of.
Agents would regularly come to the line and tout the speed of the kiosks, and people would duly change over. After the second or third of these, and since we had two of us there, the hubby jumped out of line just to see if the kiosk could do what we needed, but no such luck. In this case we were willing to wait in line for an agent.
Summary
If I'm typical (which I may not be, being so heavily invested in the self-service world), then yes, people often know what can be done with and without an agent, and choose their service modality appropriately. But there is still loads of improvement in the actual delivery of the self-service tool.
