Self Serviceless
Illustration: © IoT For All
When did companies give up?
When did we quietly agree to do everyone else’s job? Clear your own table. Bag your own groceries. Check yourself into a hotel. Troubleshoot your own order. Teach English to a customer service rep halfway across the world. Navigate a 20-minute phone maze just to ask a basic question—if you can reach a human at all. The list keeps growing, dressed up as “convenience,” “efficiency,” or worse, a “premium experience.”
Let’s call it what it is: a massive shift of labor from companies to customers—rebranded as innovation.
And the quality? Often worse. Corners cut in the name of “streamlining.” Service stripped to the bone. Yet somehow, prices haven’t followed suit. In many cases, they’ve climbed. The pitch seems almost comically bold: charge more, deliver less, and have the customer do the work. Credit where it’s due—the marketing teams selling this deserve awards.
Because we’ve bought it. All of us.
We’re surrounded by campaigns promising frictionless, world-class experiences—ads that insist we’re being taken care of like never before. But the reality feels increasingly hollow. The gap between promise and experience isn’t just noticeable—it’s exhausting.
For those of us who design brands and experiences, this should sting a little. “Put yourself in the customer’s shoes” used to be the north star. Somewhere along the way, that compass started pointing toward speed, scale, and cost-cutting instead. Convenience became the justification for everything, even when it quietly eroded the experience itself.
To be fair, not every interaction needs white-glove service. But when an experience leaves you irritated, unheard, and questioning its value, something’s broken. Efficiency without empathy isn’t innovation—it’s neglect.
There’s a better path, and it’s not about turning back the clock. It’s about offering real choice. Let customers decide how they want to engage:
A fast track for those who want speed
A guided track for those who need help
A human track for those who simply want to be heard
Technology has made incredible things possible. But too often, it’s been used to optimize systems instead of experiences—to make the machine run smoother, not to make the moment better.
And that raises a bigger question: growth for what? At some point, the system gets so optimized, so scaled, that it becomes hollow—efficient, but empty. All infrastructure, no soul.
You can feel it in places that once defined customer experience. Walk into a modern store or café that used to set the standard, and something’s missing. The personality. The care. The sense that someone thought about you being there. What’s left is functional—but forgettable.
The next wave—AI, automation, hyper-efficiency—is already here. But the brands that stand out won’t be the ones that remove the human element entirely. They’ll be the ones that reintroduce it, thoughtfully. Not as nostalgia, but as differentiation.
Because if every experience becomes frictionless, automated, and identical… then memorable becomes the new premium.
And right now, it’s in short supply.