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Do Kiosks and IVRs Threaten Human Interaction?
DavidGilbert99 writes "According to research by the Hyatt Hotel group, one third of customers are already checking in at self-service kiosks in their hotel lobbies, eschewing the traditional route of the receptionist. This is indicative of a wider trend according to voice recognition experts Nuance who believe we simply never want to talk to a real human again, preferring the clipped, efficient tones of its Nina virtual assistant. Expanding this from mobile to now include the web means we could soon be living in a world where speaking to a real live human is the exception rather than the rule." When things go smoothly, I prefer the automated versions of many things (airport check-in, ordering products to arrive by mail, depositing a check); it's when things go wrong that voice menus and web sites just seem to make simple problems into complicated ones.
I just want to check-in faster. I don't care if it's with a person or a kiosk. And if you charge me to talk to a real human, I'll use the machine.
It seems 90% of the time I can't use the IVR since for that kind of thing I would have used the web page, which means I am now stuck trying to get a human which is getting harder and harder. I suspect that this is intentional, the longer you have to play around with the IVR the shorter the queue wait times are in the call center.
Place item in bagging area how about place a real person at the check out.
Just make sure the complaints department has plenty of them. I do not want to talk to a machine.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
There is a difference between interacting with an average human and interaction with someone getting paid minimum wage. There's no value added by the later.
On two recent trips I had drastically different experiences. Front desk clerk at a cheaper hotel took 25 minutes to check in the three people in our group. We asked about simple things like which of the three restaurants next to the hotel was better and he couldn't even tell us what restaurants were next to the hotel. The second was at a much nicer hotel. The person behind the counter was clearly paid more, smiled, and was very nice. It took them all of about 10 minutes to get all four rooms of the group checked in, including changing floors for one of them. They also made some great recommendations for food.
What people want is value added. I'd never check in via a kiosk for the second hotel, but I'd be very glad to check in via a kiosk at the first. Not wanting interaction with idiots isn't the same as not wanting interaction with people.
If I'm at a counter and the person behind the counter is just reading things off a screen to me, what's the point? If the person adds nothing to the transaction, what I really should be talking to them about is what they are going to do after their job is eliminated.
1/3 of the Hyatt's guests are tech savvy introverts who have figured out that they can lessen stress inducing interactions. The other 2/3s are either extroverts or introverts who haven't figured out how to use the kiosks.
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If I want to talk to someone, I will.
If I want to get something done, unless said "something" is to speak to someone, I want to get it done - whether or not interaction with others is required.
Remember: you are not special.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Yes, I don't want to speak to a human. Humans are rude and unhelpful, and they don't need to give me askance looks when they see all the weird stuff that I'm buying at the drugstore.
But I don't want to speak to a computer either, because I don't like repeating myself. Just let me push buttons.
When I talk to one of the machines over the phone, they usually give me a list of options, none of which relate to my problem. I have no problem starting with a machine, but PLEASE, give me a way to get to a human when the machine doesn't cut it.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
slide credit card and/or enter a few numbers to identify yourself
answer a question or two about checked luggage
grab your ticket/key
most times you talk to a person their computer system is some ancient software where the person has to type in war and peace to get the same thing done
How many times recently have you tried to call say a cell phone or cable company only to go through the decision tree hierachy that does not give are you an option your need, but you don't find that out until you are 3 or 4 levels down on the tree and you have already invested 10 minutes and then r put in a wait queue for another 20 just to find out you are in the wrong place. That design may save on some human salaries but at the cost of many very pissed off clients.
I think most people would like to talk with a person that can understand what you need and help. We certainly don't have a technology yet that allows a machine to take that place.
There also seems to be the effect if not the intent to limit access to only certain problems or complaints which you can do by design with an automation but not a person. So limited access for complaints is the other problem.
"Coffee with milk and no sugar"
"That will be three dollars"
"thanks"
OMG! The meaningful interactions I will miss! What am I going to miss out on? Meaningless protocol driven exchanges? The occasional moments where protocol breaks and customer and server have a brief moment of human interaction? Frankly, if it bothers you to lose these minute interactions, then you have bigger issues.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
"Not Sure" - Idiocracy.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
While the overly-aggressive push to IVRs in areas where they are clearly too immature to be viable is a rather annoying penny-pinching move, it hardly seems like most of the situations being described are really the sort of 'human interaction' that we want to hold on to.
Interacting with the poor bastard getting paid not-enough to push whatever paper is connected to my situation isn't all that pleasant. I hate to think how it is for the CSR, whose reward for finishing with me is yet another customer...
It is certainly possible for technology to be isolating(or, perhaps more accurately, quietly ease somebody into isolating themselves); but if your quota of 'human interaction' is currently with people slated for replacement with voice recognition and expert systems, I have some bad news about how isolated you already are.
Maybe a kiosk at a hotel is fine, but self-checkout at the grocery store is usually a pain in the neck. More often than not there is some sort of problem, even when scanning normal items, so you end up needing the help of a person to clear the error anyway. Of course the person who does this also attends to a register, so they have to wait until the people in their lane have been helped first before they can help you, so it ends up taking longer than if I just went straight to the human cashier.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Is it just Hyatt's and other similarly priced hotels that have the kiosks? I'm an introverted traveler that has never seen a check-in kiosk. Does the kiosk spit out the room key?
I always like talking to an actual human better. I spend enough time dealing with (or building) automatic systems. And I know how much they suck. The machine at the airport NEVER recognize my passport. Voice system NEVER recognize my foreign accent. Systems ALWAYS assume you know why you are there or the proper term for what you are trying to do or the procedure.
Rant mode on: I work on laboratory equipment for a university. I spend a lot of my time and frustration on the phone with the companies who make scientific gear. Breaking out of canned menus and hold only works sometimes and often just results in voicemail sans returned calls or email.
Yes, for the 14th time this call, I did know that you have a web site.
If the answer I needed was on the web site, I would have gotten it there.
If I wanted to order a new machine, I would've dialed sales directly. You make that easy.
If my user wanted to drop N thousand dollars to have your tech come out three times again to fix a simple problem, they wouldn't have come to me out of frustration
I want tech support so I can ask a technical question that YOU (the company) removed the manual that had the answer from your web site.
And when we drop half a million on a machine, I expect better than some lame voice menu system with only a very few highly overworked tech support types on the other end.
(There. I feel better. But only till I get in another phone runaround with the instrument makers. Don't let me get started about them dropping support and parts for instruments after as short a time as possible.)
I can't stand talking to humans, for basic day-to-day stuff. I don't have any great desire to answer how I'm doing or hear how other people are doing, or comment on how the weather is or what some rich guys did playing with a ball. I just want to get on with my day and not be distracted from the voices inside my head.
I drank what? -- Socrates
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Sun
"The book focuses on the unusual traditions and culture of Solarian society. The planet has a rigidly controlled population of twenty thousand, and robots outnumber humans ten thousand to one. People are strictly taught from birth to despise personal contact. They live on huge estates, either alone or with their spouse only. Communication is done via holographic telepresence (called viewing, as opposed to in-person seeing)".
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
The Machine Stops
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
What was possible the most prophetic movie of the 20th century nailed this one.
Erwin: "Greetings and salutations. Welcome to the emergency line of the San Angeles Police Department. If you prefer an automated response, press one, now."
For routine stuff, the automated systems are usually faster and smoother. When I know what to expect, have everything ready and don't have anything exceptional to deal with, I much prefer to punch a few buttons on a machine and be done with it. When I want a human being involved is when the exceptions pop up: there's a problem, or I don't know exactly what to expect or what I need, or I have something that's not part of the normal flow that needs dealt with. That's when I want to take it to a human being who can exercise some judgement or explain to me what's going on. And ideally having the automated systems handling the routine stuff should improve things by freeing up the human reps to concentrate only on those exception cases.
The above, though, is probably why people prefer the machines: all too often the human reps can't apply any discretion or can't explain what's needed. Policies don't allow them any leeway, and hiring and training policies select against actually understanding what's happening. Given the choice between the machine and a human drone who can't do anything except follow the book, most people will go with the machine that'll get it over with quicker.
Any company that gets you to a human fast is likely only doing that so they can give you a sales pitch. I'd rather have a screen I can just click on "no". It wastes less of my time that way.
I caught an episode of Undercover Boss awhile back, where the CEO of Great Wolf Lodge was the principle character. She started at the front desk, and was appalled that it took 20-25 minutes to check in each family. Apparently, over time the tasks required to check in customers had increased so that it was impossible, even for competent help, to check in people quickly. I suspect it's much quicker now. Don't underestimate stupidity at the top level as the cause of poor customer service.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
I don't want to wait in a line if I have a simple transaction - like checking into a hotel or printing tickets. Faster line to the kiosk, faster service by the kiosk, (usually) no confusion on the part of the computer. I like to have the opportunity to do things for myself, before having to rely on another person - often, this is not possible. Complex problems require human intervention. Computer errors too. And customer service by a computer exacerbates problems, because it is perceived as insincere and says, "we don't care about you and we aren't going to waste our time on you". Human workers will always be necessary - but in declining numbers, as machines become increasingly efficient and capable of performing complex tasks that could only have been done by a human before.
And for as fun/cool/effective as technology is, Slashdot readers are innovating their own demise.
If people in general didn't want to talk to other human beings, most of our planets population wouldn't be crammed into tiny areas ridiculously over crowded of land, better known as villages, towns and cities.
What people don't want is to deal with the lip of the teenage prick behind the counter who thinks his shit doesn't stink and that you're an asshole because you didn't realize that your 6 pack of soda counts as 6 different items so you now have 21 items in the 20 items or less line.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Wouldn't this be more of a Western culture issue? Many parts of the world value the human interaction much more that Western, industrialized cultures, especially the American culture, which is off the end of the chart with its task oriented nature. This is NOT America bashing. Our culture is what you want when you want to get task done in the shortest time possible. We are good at business and getting projects done. Other cultures are not nearly as concerned with "git 'er done", if it sacrifices human interaction.
Would other cultures prefer the kiosks?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Ever turned up at a hotel and you've been traveling all night and it's after midnight and the front door is locked and the employee is in the bathroom? Not the best start to a stay. (Same chain as yours. I don't hold it against them but humans are humans).
I'm sick and tired of automatic systems that say "please be sure to listen to all of the following options as our menu has been changed". As a rule, they never give you a date when the menu has been changed, so this statement seems to typically be a lie used as an excuse to convince people to listen to the options every time.
The problem with human interaction in much of the service industry today is that most of the corporate employees we have to interact with are so dis-empowered, they really are just robots... they act according to very limited scripts with neither real knowledge about the systems of which they are part nor any real decision making power. So they are just robots with the additional defect that they execute their programs imperfectly because they human and even have hurt feelings when you swear at them because of their incapacity to actually help you. This is frustrating for the customer and dehumanizing for the employee. So better real robots than fake (human) robots, right? Just so long as they understand "let me talk to a human"...
(And then there's the small problem of all the low-end jobs we're eliminating, etc, etc, but hey, progress is progress.)
faster? automated checkouts have speed limiters in the software that you don't have with the stations with store cashiers.
my personal experience is that voice recognition systems are slow. buggy and practically never give me the options I actually want. As a Brit living in the USA I cant tell you how annoying it is that I have to put on a very exaggerated nasally American accent to make those things even understand me.
Besides, I nearly always end up eventually talking to a real person anyway so IMHO they are just a total waste of cellphone and life minutes.
The supermarket self checkout systems are a model of how automated kiosks can work and make things a little more humane.
Typically they have one person monitoring and helping people for 6 machines. If it's done well that person engages each person pro-actively to make sure they are getting what they want and the process goes smoothly and is watching to make sure nobody is gaming the system. That last thing is the real reason the person is there and so helpful, but because of that the process is much smoother and *more* personable. Contrast that with the typical human supermarket checkout. The cashier is scanning the items as quickly as possible looking down at the groceries and the screens. The customer is staring at the card swiper and entering a pin or loyalty card number. The only time they make eye contact is when there's cash back or handing over the receipt.
It appears that an automated replacement for the barrista has already been developed.
Have gnu, will travel.
Wow! Where do I have to go to find the stores where they actually enforce that maximum number of items rule? I'm the guy with 6 things and a $20 bill waiting behind the person with 25 items and a malfunctioning debit card. The kids at this store where I often buy groceries have told me they're not supposed to give the customers a hard time even if they're over the limit.
it's when things go wrong that voice menus and web sites just seem to make simple problems into complicated ones.
My experience is that when things go wrong the LAST person you want to have to deal with is an under-trained, demotivated human who just wants you and your problem to go away. They'll tell you whatever gets you out of their way and woe betide anyone who rocks up to their counter within 5 minutes of going-home time.
Give me a computer every time.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
When I get somewhere Im tired. Im brain dead. I want a shower and a drink. I would rather step up to a desk, hand someone my passport and let them take care of everything. Just tell me what the room number is and hand me the card key. I've checked into dozens of airports and hundreds of hotels around the world.
I deal with IVR's day-in and day-out at my current 9-5.
By "deal with," I of course mean "try and find the workaround to get to a real person as quickly as possible, before the goddamn automated system causes me to drive this handset through the wall, repeatedly."
No, I don't think we have to worry about automated systems threatening human interaction anytime soon.
Smartphones, on the other hand...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Looking at it negatively is one way to look at things; it'll stop human interactions, bla bla bla. The other way of looking at it is that with all these new automations, it'll free up people from menial tasks and give them more time to spend with people they would actually like to spend time with.
I'll take the bate.
How quaint indeed. I find this whole notion of people still using checks as means to transfer money unbelivable. Having checks still as *the* way to pay for anything and not something from Victorian age London you go to a museum to wonder about. Weird. I really can't understand, how it is possible, for a technologically highly advanced country to not be able to switch to something other form of payment.
Greetings and salutations. Welcome to the emergency line of the San Angeles Police Department. If you prefer an automated response, press one, now.
Long after ATMS could hand most physical money transactions and online banking about everything else. Maybe I visit a physical branch once a year at most. But I still see plenty of people in them on Saturdays.
+5 funny
Laughed so hard it made my eyes water.
Everywhere in the US, more and more low-end jobs are being phased out and being replaced by self-service or bots.
But instead of transitioning our society to celebrate and support folks having more time for themselves and (horrors!) caring for their families, or being free to pursue intellectual and artisitic creation, this self-same society increasingly looks down on the great unwashed. We think they are lazy scum for not desiring to be an asshole robber baron, or not wanting to join in on the American Dream of six-figure debts - most of it ironically incurred from the higher education that is supposed to bring the Good Life.
You lost your living wage to a robot? Tough shit; get two minimum wage, zero-benefit jobs to make up for it. The puritain work ethic, so beutifully advocated by Ebenezer Scrooge thrives still in 21st century America.
This is part of what Roddenberry was expressing in Star Trek; a golden age of exploration and discovery instead of the old, savage ways of hunter-gatherer greed.
Congress is not acting fucktarded. They are acting like the greedy, self-serving bastards they have always been. They are just so blatantly obvious of their greed now than in the past, that they seem so fucktarded.
Nuance who believe we simply never want to talk to a real human again, preferring the clipped, efficient tones of its Nina virtual assistant.
I don't think that's it. I like lilt in a voice. I don't need a human for simple procedures, like checking in to a hotel, as some have noted.
Here's another dimension, though: Dumbness. For things more complicated than a simple checkin, like checking out at the grocery store with produce, or finding out the details of the data plan on a possible cell phone purchase, what I care about is dumbness. I'm looking for the least dumb inteface, which usually goes in this priority order: Smart human, smart computer, average human, average computer, dumb human, dumb computer.
The reason I avoid the human interface is because the corporations are hiring the cheapest idiots they can find, and their computer interfaces are average. So checking out with produce at my local grocery is painful at the computers, but a nightmare with the human. The human -- looking bedraggled from working the night shift at the meth lab -- asking questions like, "What is this?" "It's asparagus." "Is that a fruit or a vegetable?" "Argh. You're a vegetable."
My ideal case, including RoI considerations, is to use an average computer most of the time, and have a token service fee for using a human ($5 or 5%, something on that order) -- but that human should be skilled and have both the knowledge and authority to complete the transaction, answer my questions, etc. I'm thinking they're getting paid $15 - $30/hour, and bringing in $30 - $50/hr in "enhanced service" fees (average including downtime).
Obviously the details would change from context to context, and it doesn't work in all cases (like the Home Depot people wandering the aisles). Where it works, though, it would turn skilled human service people into a profit center instead of a cost center.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Decades ago, when the first bank ATMs were being marketed, bank managers were skeptical. They thought that customers preferred human tellers and thought that "people are not going to walk up to a machine and use it".
The fact that people often prefer automated systems is *not* evidence that people don't like talking to or interacting with other people. It's evidence that people would rather deal with a robot than deal with a human in a stylized, scripted, robotic interaction. Efficiency, lack of fuss, predictablity, just getting it done, etc FTW!
So, yeah. Automation threatens some roles previously done by humans. Editor as troll?
tl;dr It's often preferable to interact with real automation than humans playing robots.
Grocery stores! Even if you self-check out (I don't as the post-scan loading areas are freaking miniscule!), you are handling the same items five times!
1) Select items and place in cart.
2) *Unload* everything to be scanned.
3) *Reload* everything back into the cart for the short trip to:
4) Unload into your car.
5) Drive home, unload one more time and put your crap away.
In this 'day and age', Steps 2 and 3 should not even exist, period!
Are one-third of Hyatt customers are men staying on their own? Could it be that after they check in, a woman arrives, on her own, in very high heeled shoes, and after an hour in his room, she then leaves again, and doesn't stay for breakfast?
I must be doing it wrong. You are supposed to tip the hotel check-in person, too?
Will these people get a nametag that instead of their name, says "You are supposed to tip me". How am I supposed to know who to tip and who not to tip? Are we supposed to tip everyone nowadays? We already tip the baggage handler, the valet, the hotel cleaning staff, and the elevator guy. How many more people do I have to support, because employers are too cheap to pay their staff?
Bring out the Manager, perhaps they need a tip, as well. Sorry for the rant about tipping, not because I am cheap, but because it is becoming a PITA to figure out who to tip, who not to tip, and how much to tip. Also, frustrating to carry around that many single bills in my pocket. I just really wished they started including all these tips into the room cost and stop nickle and diming me.
They'll just do what Walmart did, increase the limit number. Instead of the 10 items or less line, they have the 20 items or less line. I miss 10 items or less lines.
The acceptance and use of self-service checkins is not evidence that people don't want to talk to other humans. I can speak with some actual professional experience as a call center programmer that people are only interested in the straightest line betwen points A and B. That's it. If that means using self check in - great. If you have a severe problem, resolving that problem would very likely mean speaking with an actual person as quickly and easily as humanly possible - kiosks are not an appropriate mechanism for a complicated issue and a person in need needs an assurance from another human being that their problem has been addressed fully and promptly.
During my high school stint at a grocery store, we were told not to be sticklers for going over the item limit in the express lanes (especially since it's pretty easy to have over 10 or 15 grocery items), but that it was ok to strongly suggest customers with egregiously large orders go elsewhere, as long as you made an actual attempt to direct them to another, non-express, lane.
Typically, though, grocery customers are pretty self-policing; most people don't like to be embarrassed with a huge order with a bunch of people behind in line, judging them. Those that don't care about the people behind them are 1) thankfully far rarer and 2) going to go through the express lane anyway while giving roughly 0 fucks.
In general, I sorta learned there that when providing customer service you can get people to do pretty much anything if you're simply professional, courteous, confident, and genuinely attempt to be helpful (ie, do your job). The vast majority of people will listen to you without making a stink, and the assholes who *do* make a scene are typically just looking for someone to yell at.
LegendMUD
True story: A few years ago I got sick as a dog, running fever, having chills, and relevantly to this story, I had a nasty case of laryngitis. I wasn't just hoarse, I just plain couldn't talk. I called my insurance company to get some information I needed to go to the doctor, and I had one of those damn voice menus. "Please say your social security number!"...
I tried entering it in using touch tones, but it wouldn't work. The damn thing insisted that I say my social security number, and it wouldn't let me talk to anyone until I did. And I tried, too. Oh lord, I did try. I could get enough weird sounds out that a human could probably understand what I was saying, but my voice was breaking up so badly that the IVR couldn't decipher it.
I ended up going to the doctor anyway, and they had someone from the receptionist desk help me out with the insurance stuff because according to that insurance company, if you can't talk, you don't get help.
To this day, I think that any company worth its salt should give you the option of dropping to a human operator to help you. There are just too many things that can go wrong with an IVR, and too many problems that are simply unsolvable via automated response systems.
In case you were wondering. It's telephone menu systems taken to the next level.
The reason I prefer the machine interface, the reason I prefer shopping online, is that machines have manners, don't stink, don't have 5 pounds of metal in their face (well actually they might but it would be required metal), and can hold a simple instruction like "medium coffee with room for cream" for longer than 2 seconds "uhhh...that was a large Americano...?" "no a medium coffee with room for cream".
People can be stupid, unreliable and just plain unpleasant to look at.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Thats what I heard 20 years ago: people prefer ATMs to human tellers because the ATMs are friendlier.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I see what you're doing Anti-social world, but you will be unable to avoid social interaction once the Human virus has fully infected Earth and the only Air you breathe is that of the Humanoid squished against you with the slight stench of Garlic radiating from his orifice and the only space you have is located two inches away; between the untied Shoe laces and Human excrement.
Your Future awaits.
Did the study evaluate the amount of non native speakers visiting the hotel? If you do not speak fluently the receptionist's language, it is much more comfortable to deal with the virtual keyboard of a kiosk.