No matter how hard people try to get services right - both for the benefit of their customers and out of a sense of enlightened self-interest - it's the little things that seem to go wrong. Let me tell you a story....

I had to replace a set of wheel covers on a small car - I'm not going to go into the family politics of what, why or who, suffice it to say my partner is spatially challenged when it comes to certain parking maneuvers. Whatever,. Two of the covers were missing and the other two somewhat the worst for wear. Just as well they sell them in fours I guess.

In the UK there is a chain of 'car care' stores - H*******s - in the absence of a local shop they are as good as anywhere to make good your partners excesses. And they were as good as their advertising, two minutes later I was at the counter with a box of covers.

Professional nosiness encouraged me to look over the teller's shoulder as he scanned the box and took my payment. The screen asked the salesman a simple question - 'have you asked the customer whether he needs cable-ties' (I paraphrase to protect the guilty). No hesitation on the part of our man, he punched the 'yes' button and moved on to extract the moolah.

As it happens, I had forgotten them - stupid, and dangerous, the next time a wheel cover came off, no matter what the cause, a lack of a restraining cable tie would banish me to the sofa. So I interrupted -

'Where are the cable ties?'

'Oh - over in the corner' (the corner being almost as far as one could travel point to point in the store, and almost half as far again as the wheel covers)

So off I trogged, picked up a set of ties and paid, a happy punter.

It got me thinking though - another IT solution to a problem (actually an opportunity to upsell) that was being wasted. Why? Well in a busy store, the last thing the cashier wants is to stall their queue (miss their service metrics, irritate other customers). In fact if you take a service as an opportunity for 'co-production' - customer and supplier, then this is the last thing the customer wants. In front of the queue, crying children waiting in a hot car outside - does he/she really want to humiliate themselves in that way ('that jerk - didn't even know he needed cable ties'). Social pressure, a very strong driver, is responsible for far more cock-ups than you might think.

In the spirit of co-production, this is an example of co-supression, leaving the store selling less than they could and the punter unsatisfied (especially when he is blamed for not fitting the cable ties in the first place).

So what could we do about this - a systems problem - other than remind the cashier to ask a question he does not want an answer to? There are several obvious options

• audit the responses to the question - force awkward customers and cashiers to co-operate (go that industrial/customer relationship management)
• put the cable ties a little closer to the wheel covers (and then put them next to every other component that might require a tie - love that inventory)
• move the low cost, high value (required) components closer to the cash registers to make it easier and faster for a missed component to be collected - possibly give the cashier a small stock of useful widgets?
• put a sign by the wheel covers - 'DO YOU NEED....'

What is clear is that a well meaning IT intervention - likely to irritate both customers and cashiers, is probably not a good idea. According to my server, lots of components have this type of prompt and most of them are ignored, especially on a busy day. An intervention intended to 'deskill' the guy serving is likely to result in a major degradation in effective customer service.

So what is the answer? Well in this case I don't have the numbers, I don't even know how regular the shop layouts are - can solutions be rolled out nationwide? What is obvious though is that a bit more thought about the systems involved would improve the customer experience, improve the cashiers job and probably generate more revenue.

Relying on IT to improve services via aide memoirs without thinking about context is short sighted.

Caroline Bosworth {caroline.bosworth@concinnitas.co.uk}