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Part Two
Design
Customer-processing technology
Although, customer-processing operations were once seen as ‘low-technology’, now process
technology is very much in evidence in many services. In any airline flight, for example,
e-ticket reservation technology, check-in technology, the aircraft and its in-flight entertainment,
all play vital parts in service delivery. Increasingly, the human element of service is
being reduced with customer-processing technology being used to give an acceptable level
of service while significantly reducing costs. Two types of customer-processing technologies
are used to do this: those that you interact with yourself and those that are operated by an
intermediary.
Short case
Customers are not always
human 9
The first milking machines were introduced to grateful
farmers over 100 years ago. Until recently, however, they
could not operate without a human hand to attach the
devices to the cows. This problem has been overcome
by a consortium in the Netherlands which includes the
Dutch government and several private firms. They hope
that the ‘robot milkmaid’ will do away with the farmers’
early morning ritual of milking. Each machine can milk
between 60 and 100 cows a day and ‘processes’ the
cows through a number of stages. Computer-controlled
gates activated by transmitters around the cows’ necks
allow the cows to enter. The machine then checks their
health, connects them to the milking machine and feeds
them while they are being milked. If illness is detected
in any cow, or if the machine for some reason fails to
connect the milking cups to the cow after five attempts,
automatic gates divert it into a special pen where the
farmer can inspect it later. Finally, the machine ushers the
cows out of the system. It also self-cleans periodically
and can detect and reject any impure milk. Rather than
herding all the cows in a ‘batch’ to the milking machine
twice a day, the system relies on the cows being able
to find their own way to the machine. Cows, it would
appear, are creatures of habit. Once they have been
shown the way to the machine a few times, they go
there of their own volition because they know that it will
relieve the discomfort in their udders, which grow heavier
as they fill up. The cows may make the journey to the
machine three or more times per day (see Fig. 8.5).
Farmers also appear to be as much creatures of habit
as their cows, however. Mr Riekes Uneken of Assen,
the Dutch farmer who bought the very first robot milking
machine, admitted, ‘I have a bleeper if things go wrong.
But I still like to get up early in the morning. I just like to
see what goes on.’
Figure 8.5 Cows are also customers