Service Wasteland Germany—Reducing Costs

You might have already heard of the term Service Wasteland Germany (Servicewüste Deutschland). In case you haven’t, you will feel it if you will live in Germany one day.

Companies in Germany are—even more than politicians—fascinated by modernization and especially by reducing costs. However, not for the sake of customers, but instead for their own wallet. Moreover, the technology is often more complicated than communication with a person and it also cannot check the best variants all the time.

On the other hand it is only a matter of how much you are familiar with a specific technology, I am sure many people do not feel as easy as me when searching for prices on the internet, while I find it very handy. It is better than discussing with a clerk or using a vending machine, because I have all time I need at the PC.

Drawbacks of Machines

However, there are also concerns with regard to privacy when you buy your products via internet. For example, buying train tickets via internet or by credit card at the vending machine leads to the problem that the railroad company knows where you travel. If you pay with cash, nobody will be able to find out that exactly you have bought 7 tickets to Berlin, 5 tickets to Paris, one to Prague, two to Vienna etc.

Besides, if the machine does not work you really have a problem. Let’s stay with the example of trains: If you are at a train station and the vending machine is not working, you cannot buy a valid ticket. It is then your duty in Germany to search for a ticket inspector and tell your problem–immediately after entering. This would be easy if there were inspectors in all trains all the time, but sometimes you cannot find an inspector, because railway companies (not only Deutsche Bahn, but also smaller ones) want to reduce costs. I think you then should go to the train conductor, but I am not sure if that’s right or if you are not allowed to disturb him. And that’s when the problems arouse!

Content Customer will Return

German shops and service providers do not seem to understand that only content customers will return. An American study has shown that 100 uncontent customers could lead to 30 people not coming to the shop. This does not mean that all of these 30 people were really customers before, but they might have heard of other people how bad the service is and decide on going somewhere else.

Instead, they tend to see the possible loss of material value. I read a story where the children of a man had been criticized for only touching a package in a toyshop, not damaging it. This of course leads to a disappointed customer who might not come back to this shop the next time.

Switching barriers

Some companies also hope to find their luck in so called switching barriers which include both emotional and financial aspects. In an interview, the economist Joachim Büschken claimed that satisfaction was not a reason for customers to come back anymore, because other companies would copy your ideas quickly. Thus, according to him, it is more important to create so called hard switching barriers by menu navigation, proprietary adapters etc.

One example are printers which only work with their own cartridges: While the printer itself is pretty cheap, you have to pay a lot for the cartridges since you cannot switch anymore. The economist gives cars as a bad example, because each car is pretty similar and the user can handle each car by knowing one.

Of course, this attitude can be criticized a lot, because it makes world more complex and only focuses on the capitalistic view of economy.

Problem for our Psychic Condition

The reduction of social interaction is also a problem for our psychic, because by always communcating with machines we suffer from a lack of neurotransmitters for happiness. This means by always using machines for interaction we destroy ourselves.

A solution for this problem could be the human robots (called androids) developed by scientists in Japan (Repliee R1-Q2), USA (Albert Hubo) and South Korea (EveR-1). They act  and look like humans thus leading to a feeling as if we were talking with a real person.

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Monday, March 8, 2010