The cost argument:
Asking a man to do something that a machine could do better is a waste of time and money.
- Why would you ask somebody to do the dishes when a dish washer could do it?
- Why would you ask somebody to add up rows of figures when a spread sheet could do it?
- Why would you ask somebody to give a stock answer when a telephone system could do it?
Good questions
The service argument:
Asking a machine to do something that a man could do better is a waste of time and money.
- Why would you get a machine to open a hotel door when a doorman could do it?
- Why would you get a machine to serve coffee when a barista could do it?
- Why would you get a machine to direct phone calls when a receptionist could do it?
More good questions
The balanced argument:
Not being clear whether your customers want a man or a machine to do something is a waste of time and money.
Whose time and money you are wasting?
Do they think it is wasteful? Or are they happy to pay?
Are you clear what your customer wants?
Read another opinion
Image by Tony the Misfit
Hi James
I like the way you illustrate the way people are important in different aspects of service, but are not always required or expected by customers.
One thing we wrestle with under ‘are you clear what your customer wants’ is that we often experience the full spectrum of preferences. For example in your scenario one customer will want a self-service phone system and another will want an operator to answer.
Any thoughts on how to manage that?
Thanks for your comment Guy, it is a really good point.
I think you can offer an Argos standard of service and make money, you can also offer a John Lewis standard and make money. It is the guys who sit in the middle who seem to struggle.
It strikes me that if organisations have customers who want both standards then they haven’t been clear about who they want as customers (or what those customers want), and operationally they will certainly fail to meet that double standard.
I guess it is just about being clear, and the companies you refer to often aren’t.
How’s that?
James
Hi James,
I concur with your response to Guy’s comment when you say: “It is the guys who sit in the middle who seem to struggle.”
Seth Godin captured this idea very well in Meatball Sundae when he talked about the ‘new Bell curve’ (pages 164 and 165 if you want to look it up), where he talked about how those businesses that are ‘caught in the middle’ are the ones that struggle.
Being clear is hard but is worth striving for. For your business, for your profitability, for your operations, for your people, for your marketing and sales and for your customers.
Adrian
Hi James,
I realize I’m a little late to this party, but your post made me think about a point James Womack brings up in his book Lean Thinking.
At Pratt & Whitney before their Lean transformation they were using a set of $80 million dollar machines to grind engine turbine blades. The machines were top of the line and could do the grinding in 3 minutes that took a human 75 minutes. Sounds great right? The issue is that to use the machines huge batches needed to be made ahead of time to ensure the machine was fully utilized. The result was that to get 1 blade for a specific engine, it took 10 days with all the waiting.
After a lean transformation, 1 blade could be moved in 75 minutes using a human to do all the grinding manually.
So my point is that while machines can be “better” at doing certain things, it is extremely important to evaluate how a machine fits into the overall process and the value it truly adds. If you need to change everything to accommodate a “better” machine, the results of the entire process could very well be worse…
This was also apparent in a Toyota parts warehouse in Chicago that went fully automated. The plant was the most expensive of all the warehouses Toyota has in the states and has since been returned to manual labor. The machines could do everything a human could do and the end customer didn’t really care about how the products got there. It showed that the flexibility of human labor still plays a huge role in process improvement.
Just some food for thought.
Thanks for the post,
Wes
Of course it wouldn’t happen in the service industry, except maybe for a whiz bang new IVR (interactive voice response), or a 1,000 seat call centre.
I suppose the question is what are you optimising around? Your cost base or your customers
A very good point well made Wes, thank you, very much
James
There seems to be a little bit of a trend going on, moving from robotics and automation back to human labor;
I think you’ll find this interesting; Toyota’s Secret Weapon: Low Cost Car Factories
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/02/toyota%E2%80%99s-secret-weapon-low-cost-car-factories/
“Budget car factories, ready for export.”
“Since the turn of the millennium, Toyota has been slowly backing away from heavy automation. The labor saved by robots was wasted by fixing and most of all by reprogramming robots. Ohira is the current culmination of this trend.
For the first time in 30 years, I see people welding by hand. Someone is even putting a rotary sander to a primed body before it enters the paint station. If Ferdi Piech would see that in Wolfsburg, he would stop the line and fire the factory manager.
Why less automation? More flexibility, lower investments.”