Voila! Cheeseburger.
Since then, things have changed, though some would say at a glacial pace.
I first noticed this change when the Studio Restaurant came on the scene, in the mid-1990s. Service with a smile was introduced, as was the ability to make menu substitutions, and other niceties one expects at a moderately expensive restaurant.
Additionally, clerks in markets became more friendly, and in grocery stores, you were less likely to be followed around by the ubiquitous stalker, evidently paid primarily to make sure you didn't stuff your pockets with bananas or such.
Ukraine, I felt, was beginning to catch on to this thing called service, something of particular interest to me since I have held sway in this industry sector going back to the first package of Thompson's Donuts I sold door to door at age 12.
Service, in fact, is one of the ways we judge the depth of civilization of society. And Ukraine had emerged from the dark ages.
Until I was 19, I worked in menial jobs, and often made much more in tips than salary, including working as a carny for kiddy rides, bagging groceries, setting pins in a semi-automatic bowling center and, of course, there were the usual paper routes.
I eventually went into the news business, thereby taking a pay cut. However, as the newest and third man on the city desk, an island of huge wooden boxes in the middle of the newsroom, I was primarily in the service business, whether writing obituaries or covering civic functions on what we called the rubber chicken circuit.
In nearly 40 years, nothing much has changed. Service is service, whether selling donuts or advertising and PR, the field on which I somehow, some way landed.
I still insist on what I term First Class, as opposed to economy class, service. Our Ukrainian staff actually caught on to this more quickly than did my West Virginia team of a decade ago. Perhaps that is why I am still in Ukraine.
Recently, I came across a small handbook produced by the agency with which my company is tethered as an affiliate, called "Service with a Snarl".
It seemed to say that service is dead, and that we may as well adjust to the fact.
Various reasons, including computerization and automation, were given to the fact that wage costs are rising three percent faster each year than the profit to be made from a particular service. Hence, according to the booklet, eventually all service becomes unprofitable, though production increases.
The result is that flight attendants have learned to serve 70 drinks in an hour, instead of 30, and that call center operators have learned to cut off prospects the moment they have made the sale, bringing about a definite decline in the quality, if not quantity, of service.
"But all this has happened at a price," the booklet continued. "As the number of customers dealt with per hour has gone up, the time for smiles and customer care has gone down."
The thrust of the 30-page discussion was that this is not all bad, and that advertisers were going to have to learn to market this diminished service as an attribute, telling us that automated bank tellers are actually "more friendly" than real people.
It also suggested that there were consumer benefits to be found in "tangibility," such as McDonald's providing a playground for youngsters, or the promise "not to do something," like Ryan Air's vow not to serve food on its flights.
I felt the booklet missed the point. It wasn't about marketing attributes other than service, but finding a way for service to coexist and thrive in this new world.
This suggests a compromise where service can exist side-by-side in an economy that is pushing down costs for services. However, this begged the question, really an economic truth, of why the costs of services is being pushed down when real wages are increasing?
Doesn't it stand supply-and-demand economics on its ear? Have people simply decided that they don't want service, and thus are willing to pay less for less service.
Isn't the opposite true?
The main complaint I hear on business trips is about the lack of service. Presumably these people, including myself, would pay more for good service, the timesaving avoidance of lines, the experience of being treated as a human being.
Without knowing it, I fear, the manual presented a confusing paradox.
Service is a benefit, just as quality is a consumer benefit. If the cost of delivering service is going up, then these services should cost more. This seems to be an economic fact. The problem lies not in the delivery of service, but perhaps in other areas.
I believe the answer is in differentiating between clients and customers. The person who pays a premium to have Tommy Hilfiger stamped on his shirt or Calvin Klein on his behind would seem to want to pay more for pampering, whether we’re talking goods or services.
Most of the people I know value their time, and would pay extra not to stand in a long line. VIP lounges exist for a reason. The Business Class compartment on Aerosvit's flight to Moscow is almost always full.
Wouldn't most of us pay a little more to talk to a real banker, instead of being given a confusing array of telephone options, none of which, quite often, represents the one needed? Do we really like hanging on the telephone listening to Muzak?
Most of us, as the burger commercial used to say, would like to "have it our way," even if it cost a little more. In other words, we are chasing the wrong rabbit by dumbing down the service field to its lowest-common denominator.
But the real truth is that, nowhere in the equation of First Class or Economy Class should there be room for "service with a snarl."
|
