Is Your Great Service Outdated?

Another great service provider just lost to the innovator’s better experience. That reality is an everyday occurrence for those who overvalue outdated service platforms.

Last week I shared this Rayism.

“Once, you could beat your competitors by delivering better service. Now innovators are winning against great service providers by delivering better experiences! In other words, better experiences eliminate the need for service.”

In this article, I share more on the subject.

Innovation is always a change in processes. Innovators are looking to disrupt the status quo and, as a result, deliver a better experience to the customers of the industries they disrupt.

Think about all those desired outcomes that required a great deal of human service intervention, which are now accomplished through the intersection between the digital and physical worlds.

It is at that intersection that the customers are leveraging technology to reduce delays in achieving their desired outcomes.

Who remembers when the store you shop at got its first cashierless register? How many thought the human cashier provided a much better service? Today, most stores have more unattended registers than attended. More importantly, the cashierless register offers a great experience to shoppers. Yes, even an old guy like me.

The reality today is that customers are better equipped than ever to participate in the resolutions needed to maintain a great experience with the products or services required to reach the outcomes they desire.

“Emotional Collaboration is when both the service provider and their customers are responsible for the experience to reach a desired outcome.”

When you think about the technologies today, it is clear that end-users are taking on more and more responsibility for the experience to achieve their outcomes. Yes, there is still a need for human intervention; unfortunately, today that intervention is increasingly welcomed by end users themselves. In other words, service processes built for a different time are quickly deemed more of a nuisance than any benefit.

Think about the advancements in the IT Services sector. For example, today’s exceptional cloud and Wi-Fi services have eliminated many on-site infrastructure needs. MSPs are shifting to become more about compliance and cybersecurity. MSP firms are replacing their labor service platforms and creating firms based on intellectual consultative services. Even the once human help desk is quickly being replaced with AI.

Over the last decade, so many once-great service deliverables have disappeared, and at the same time, the end users of those services are still achieving desired outcomes; however, today their experience in reaching them is better than the old way’s perception of how excellent their outdated service processes still are.

Those friends in the business print sector hopefully now see why I started the A4 Revolution and recently the Inkjet Revolution. Both those revolutions are about eliminating as much service as possible to align with the industry’s disruptions.

Any industry under pressure from its end users’ declining demand for the product, along with declining revenues and rising costs, has to eliminate as many human service interventions as possible.

Today’s buyers will not evaluate your products based on how good your service is; they are assessing products that don’t need you to show up and service.

Buyers today are well-equipped and more technology-savvy than ever before. Today’s buyers are also more than happy to participate in processes that help them manage their own experience.

Innovators will always seize the moment when the old way misunderstands its value-add or refuses to go where end users are headed.

“Those who focus on saving an industry or the old way will always attempt to innovate from the past forward. While those focused on reinventing an industry will innovate by bringing the future to the present without any concern for maintaining the comfort of the old way.”

“Status quo is the killer of all that will be invented.”

This article was originally published on Ray Stasieczko’s LinkedIn and is republished here with permission.

About the Author

Ray Stasieczko is a forward-thinking and often controversial writer and speaker. You may not want to agree with everything he says, but you are compelled to read and listen. To do otherwise could spell doom.

He has called the imaging channel home for over 30 years, served in various roles, and contributed over 100 articles to the industry’s publications. Ray has also spoken at the RT VIP Imaging Expos in Cairo, South America and China.