The end of customer service?

Customer service is a baked-in part of the cost of delivery goods and services. Commodity services like Amazon’s AWS (cloud computing) sell and operate an extremely commoditized product that wins in cost and reliability, not in customer service.

Amazon may be a very singular example, but as more products and services move toward the web and cloud, the first casualty will be in-person (at least on the phone) response to questions and issues.

It simply doesn’t scale.

Cost over coddling

Of course there are and always will be exceptions. Products and services that are not commoditized can compete with customer service because of the need for knowledge management and consultative selling. There will also be services that sell themselves as high-touch but at a premium price to cover the additional cost.

But for us regular people, those who know what we want and are willing to use low-cost ways like email and self-service to manage our needs like, we’ll choose cost over coddling and reliability over reassurance. Someday the next generation will say in astonishment, “You used to call the company…on a phone?”