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ARTICLE
”Customers are companies’ best working-force”
Get Your Customers
‘Working’ for You;
They Will Love it
In today’s world customers are more valuable
than ever. As customers have become experienced
and multifaceted, and thus harder to classify,
companies continue fighting ever harder to
keep current customers and to acquire new ones. In
my last contribution to HAAGA-HELIA SIGNALS , I
recommended that companies stop being subservient
to customers. Instead companies should encourage
customers to chase them (and their offerings)
by tempting, tantalising, teasing, and tormenting
them (e.g. Sony has been a leader in teasing customers
with a lust for electronics). In this issue I go
further, and suggest that companies should put customers
‘working’ for them as they will love it.
The right to work is something man conquered
relatively recently in the Western world (in many
developing countries, starvation and misery are still
part of the populations’ daily life). Since the XIX
century, work is the mother of all virtues, changing
man into ‘homo faber’, even though in recent decades
man, via technological achievements and social
revisions, has been liberated from work or part
of it. Indeed, the right to be lazy through rest and
play made man ‘homo ludens’. However, the love
of work is an earnest desire and ubiquitous. I work,
therefore I am.
Workers in the service industry are increasingly
acquiring power and responsibility so that, within
specified limits, they are able to provide the best
possible service experience (which satisfies customers).
Empowerment of employees (Do-It-For-Me)
is normally regarded as a critical factor in services.
However, empowerment should not be only applied
to staff, but also to customers (Do-It-Yourself).
Do-It-Yourself, often referred to by the initials DIY,
is a term used by various businesses that focus on
customers creating/doing things for themselves. In
short, by empowering customers companies put
customers ‘working’ for them.
There is certainly a growing trend in terms of proliferation
of business models where customers are
playing miscellaneous roles. Over the past decades
DIY customers (DIY’ers) have evolved from relative
obscurity to a major multibillion euro per year market.
Companies doing business in carpentry, painting,
electricity, gardening, plumbing, sewing, wall/
floor covering, masonry, and others alike have been
putting customers ‘working’ for them for quite
some time. The IKEA business model represents a
great understanding of DIY’ers.
Another means with which companies put customers
‘working’ for them is by offering self-serv-
Ascenção, M. P. 2007. How to Move Away from the ‘Average-Fantastic’ in Hospitality. HAAGA-HELIA SIGNALS. Issue 1, pp. 14-16.
TEXT MÁRIO PASSOS ASCENÇÃO
Principal Lecturer
HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences
mariopassos.ascencao@haaga-helia.fi
ice. Self-service is the practice of serving oneself,
usually when purchasing items. Self-service is often
described as a way of improving the customer experience
by providing more choices, whilst eliminating
inefficient customer interaction ‘bottlenecks’. For
example, giving the option of using internet checkin
allows customers to choose a less personal service
that will, however, result in not having to stand in
line and wait for the check-in clerk.
Other common examples include petrol stations,
where customer pump their own gasoline rather
than have an employee doing it; Automatic Teller
Machines (ATMs) in the banks that have revolutionised
how customers withdraw and deposit money;
shopping carts that customers use in the store, placing
the items into the cart and then proceeding to
the checkout counters; or buffet-style restaurants,
where customers serve themselves, eventually returning
the used tray; slow food businesses (cooking
your own meal); grocery stores’ self-checkout lanes;
self-service online booking sites; Internet banking
and many more.
It seems clear that instead of serving customers
some companies allow them to serve themselves. In
addition, with the help of technology, companies
are increasingly finding new ways of eliminating
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