Goodbye Service Personnel, Hello Disgruntled Shoppers?

The end of customer service is upon us, portends TIME in their “What’s Next 2008″ special. With automated systems and self-service kiosks growing in popularity at movie theaters, hotels, airports, and restaurants (see uWink), it should come as no surprise that many businesses and venues are opting to take the service personnel entirely out of the equation -or at least the customer-facing part. As TIME explains:

Companies love self-service for the money it saves, and with consumers finally playing along, the need to interact with human beings is quickly disappearing.

Now that companies have gotten you used to the idea, they are poised to go all the way. The British retailer Tesco has opened dozens of its Fresh & Easy grocery stores in the U.S.: all the lanes are self-checkout. By summer, Alaska Airlines will finish building its “Airport of the Future” in Seattle. The ticket counter has been obliterated; only islands of self-check-in kiosks remain. In Britain, NCR, a company that sells self-service systems, is trying out machines that let customers not only buy merchandise on their own but also return it. In Malaysia, IBM has outfitted a chain of sushi restaurants with ordering screens linked to the kitchen; so much for waitresses. And in Pennsylvania, Heritage Valley Health System will soon join the ranks of hospitals using check-in kiosks for emergency-room visits. Simply touch the image of the human body where it hurts.

…The less cheery way to look at it is that we’re doing the work of employees without being paid. “The company is more productive, but we’re shifting work to consumers. So from a macro perspective, are we more productive or less?” asks Mary Jo Bitner of the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University. And by adding all these new tasks to our daily routine, are we overstressing ourselves and reducing our quality of life?

TIME: The End of Customer Service