The Wall Street Journal posted an interesting story regarding self-service on Monday in regard to supermarket self-checkouts. If you haven’t gotten a chance to see the story, you can check it out here. In a few words, the story found that supermarket chain Albertsons is phasing out its self-checkout systems, while Kroger is ramping up its self-service technology to incorporate an airport security-like tunnel that automatically scans all your items.

I could very well see both sides of the story. There’s the stay-at-home parent who buys $200 worth of groceries every week and absolutely despises self-checkout, with its troublesome bar code scanners and lack of personalization. Then there’s the all-I-cook-are-things-that-I-can-make-in-10-minutes casual shopper, like myself, who goes in the store for a few ingredients and prefers the self-checkout because you don’t have to speak to anyone and you can get out in the quickest time possible.

For me, a grocery store that doesn’t have self-service is a deal-breaker. News of self-checkout removal is bewildering to me, and in my mind, means standing in longer lines and pretending to be warm and friendly to the equally phony cashier. Seems as though the current landscape is split down the middle. My local Shop & Stop, for example, has approximately the same amount of self-checkout lanes as it does traditional checkout, and since it’s a well-managed branch, you can usually find an open traditional checkout lane relatively easily. Shop & Stop also has the option of taking a bar code-enabled shopping cart that lets you scan as you go, then simply pay for the total at the register. Additionally, Shop & Stop also has teamed up with Peapod, which is by far the easiest way, and preferred by my lazy car-less roommates. It allows you to order groceries online and have them delivered to your door at a relatively affordable delivery rate. It seems as though Shop & Stop truly caters to every classification of shopper.

Back to Albertsons. Their perspective is that the self-service checkout lanes have eliminated the store’s human touch. Is this true? If it is true, does it matter? Do you, as a consumer, desire human interaction in the supermarket?

I’m sure you saw this coming, but I have to relate this back to phone customer service interactions. However, I’m not too sure this is a comparable situation. Supermarket self-service checkout lanes are a tried and proven practice. Most customers know that they can use the self-service lanes effectively and without error, reduce waiting time, and use all their coupons, even if it requires a little extra work involved in swiping and bagging on their own. If you have a problem where a bar code won’t scan (Shop & Stop’s scanner never picks up my iPhone-stored membership card) or if the credit card machine malfunctions, an employee is alerted and will usually come over to offer immediate assistance. You don’t have to start the process over on the self-checkout, and you don’t have to resort to going to the traditional checkout lane (see where I’m going with this?).

When we’re going through the IVR, regardless of the IVR provider, we consumers don’t have that assurance that we’ll be able to complete our self-service requests without having to start the process over or getting transferred to an agent who knows nothing of what we’ve attempted thus far. We just don’t trust that going through the IVR self-service process won’t be a waste of time for us. Even in a routing application, I believe that the main reason why people are so quick to attempt to ‘zero-out’ is because they foresee that the menu tree won’t address their needs, and that going through the process is a waste of time.

This is where an Interactions-enabled system more closely parallels a self-checkout system in a grocery store. If the automated system can’t answer a question, the process won’t start over, all the information is saved, and when you get transferred to a live agent, they have all the information that was already acquired through the automated process at their disposal. (In my favorite Interactions-enabled system, the self-service process can take up to 20 minutes, and much like a supermarket, the caller has the option to go through the automated process or use an agent instead. Additionally, if the caller uses the automated system and fails, the live agent picks up right where the virtual agent left off.) Ok, I’ll stop bragging. The point is, Interactions picks up where most IVR systems leave off. But eventually all automated systems will advance, and at that point, I believe people will choose to go through the automated process for the same reasons they choose the self-checkout in the supermarket.

I have a few questions for you that I’d like to gain your opinion on. Do you side with Albertsons or Krogers? Do you believe that supermarket self-checkout and automated phone systems are comparable? And lastly, do you agree that if the automated system was a proven way to accomplish your problem, your preference between live agent and automated system would parallel your preference for self-checkout and traditional checkout?