The Wall: An Old School Self-Service Example

Over the weekend I spotted out in the wild a classic example of the oldest of old-school Human Resources supplied Employee Self-Service implementations - the Wall of Forms, (see picture on the right and click the image to view full-size).

Years ago, these displays of paper forms to support employee transactions like changes of address, set-up of payroll direct deposit, benefits enrollments, expense reporting, and on and on were once common, particularly prior to the emergence of automation tools designed to simplify these and many other employee initiated processes. If you as an employee needed to get something done, you walked over to HR, picked up a form, filled it out, (hopefully without needing too much help), and turned it in. If you HR or Payroll department was really cool, the person accepting the form whipped out a big red-ink stamper thing and stamped 'Received' on it. Click image for full-size

But as time passed, and more and more HR organizations of all sizes were faced with the insistent pressures to become more efficient, to reduce the risk and impact of errors inherent in manual processes, and often sold the promise of 'chance to do more strategic things' with the decentralization of many manual and administrative tasks, (let's save for a moment the debate of whether and to what extent this has really happened), the 'Wall of Forms' method of employee communication and entry point for HR/Payroll administration seems to be a relic of a bygone age.

And while that is altogether expected and mostly necessary, when I looked at the Wall of Forms pictured above, I couldn't help but be struck by the effectiveness in design from this old-school presentation. Sure, it is not pretty. Sure, it doesn't make one marvel at the amazing use of white space or offer much in the way of personalization or customization, (as far as I can tell, the 'wall' appears and presents exactly the same no matter who is looking at it). And sure, it won't port well to the iPhone or iPad.

However the wall does a few things really well that should not be completely discounted in this age and world of self-service. Here are just a few aspects of this old-school Employee Self-Service portal, (yes I called it a portal), that those of us that design and deploy these kinds of systems should keep in mind:

1. The Wall requires no training. Once the employee knows where the Wall actually is, then no further specialty training is necessary.

2. Maintenance is simple. Once a form is no longer needed, or a new one needs to be added, maybe 15 minnutes of someone's time is required to make the changes to the Wall. Like a good SaaS product, once the Wall configuration changes are made, they are immediately available to all Wall users.

3. Everything you need is there. While many system designers are wondering how to shrink applications and functionality to 'fit' smaller and smaller form factors for mobile and tablet, the Wall happily and unapologetically expands as needed. There are over 30 form containers on the Wall, and room for more as needed. If processes/rules/regulations etc. require that many forms, then why not have a system that puts them all within view?

4. Help is only a few feet away. The door right next to the Wall is the main entrance to the facility's Human Resources department. Can't find something on the Wall? Have a question about something you have found? Take two steps to the right and find someone to ask. Sure, this method of front-line, in person help can't scale really, but for this facility it probably works. Here, like most of the rest of the world, employees really don't want to spend much time at all futzing with HR processes and paperwork. They have better things to do.

In technology, heck even in general life, it can be pretty easy to turn down our noses at our less than enlightened or 'lower-tech' colleagues. It's also common to fall into the trap of thinking that applications and strategies that worked 15 or 20 years ago have no relevance today - after all everything has changed, blah-blah-blah. But I am not so sure about that.

I think we still can learn from organizations and designs of the past and when we work to combine the best ideas from back then with all the amazing capability and potential of our technologies today, then we can really see the greatest impact on our workplaces. 

What do you think? Do you have any 'old-school' practices that still work for you in your organization?

Self-checkouts, Self-service, and Customer Experience

This CNET News article caught my attention last week: Major grocery chain gets rid of self-checkout.

Here is the backstory: Albertsons, a major USA grocery chain has elected to remove the customer self-checkout lanes from its 217 stores.  From the original piece in the Seattle Times that first reported the Albertson's decision:

For Boise-based Albertsons, self-checkout no longer fits with the customer-service experience it wants, spokeswoman Christine Wilcox said.

"Our customers are our highest priority, and we want to provide them with an excellent experience from the time they park their car to when they leave," Wilcox said.

When Albertsons installed self-checkout lanes nearly a decade ago, "it was in response to a growing trend in retail for stores to be even more self-service" than ever before, she said. Albertsons is replacing the self-checkout lanes with regular lanes and opening more staffed lanes during peak shopping hours

A decade ago Albertsons, (and many other retailers, certainly), began to experiment with self-checkout lanes to provide more technically inclined and self-sufficient shoppers with what should have been a more efficient and simple check-out experience compared to the time-tested, (and kind of slow), 'place everything on the conveyor belt, make sure to plop down the little plastic item divider from the guy behind you, and answer a battery of questions from a sometimes too-perky check-out person'. 

'Did you find everything that you were looking for?'

'Do you want paper or plastic?'

'Do you want a bag for your milk?'

And so on.

So to avoid the process, particularly for shoppers with smaller orders, self-checkout lanes started to pop-up in all kinds of retail establishments. They were meant to solve (perceived) customer problems, offer some choices, and certainly shave some costs over time - stores would typically post one service rep to look after several of the self-checkout registers at a time, to assist customers who had issues scanning items, entering payments, and so on.

But as it turns out, most self-checkout experiences in grocery stores kind of stink. The machines are large, more complex than customers want them to be, and the thousands of items that a typical grocery store stocks often present customers and the technology with glitches and issues that eventually do require some assistance from the one service rep assigned to look after the process. Beyond that though, it is quite possible that using the self-checkout machines simply was not a good experience overall for most Albertsons customers, and most were willing to forego the potential time savings and awkward banter with the check-out person to use the traditional check-out process.

Lessons?

Pretty simple I think - implementing systems or imposing technological 'improvements' that exist primarily for the benefit of the service provider and not the customer can't survive indefinitely. Customers, be they the Albertsons shoppers, or the employees of your organization that are the consumers of your HR services and HR Technology solutions, eventually discern the value (or lack thereof), to themselves of whatever fantastic solutions you have developed and deployed.

I know what you're thinking, our Employee and Manager Self-Service solutions are fabulous - everyone just loves using them. We have had them in place for 10 years, and they save a gajillion dollars a year.

But ask yourself this question, if employees and managers had the choice, like Albertsons shoppers have had, to use the supposedly faster, better, modern 'self-service' option, or have their issues and concerns handled the slower, analog, behind-the-times 'old-fashioned' way, what do you think most of them would choose?

Are you really delivering a great solution and customer experience?

Postscript - I hate the self-checkout lane. Except when I get stuck behind someone that decides to pay for thier groceries using an out-of-state check. We really need to do something about those people.

Dumb Contact

This week I listened to an interesting podcast on the customer service experience from the User Experience Podcast site.  The specific interview I am referring to is about half way down the page and is numbered '42' and called-  'The bizarre myth of customer service: an interview with David Jaffe'.  

A link to the full 27 minute long interview is here.

David Jaffe is a consultant and author on customer service topics, most notably the co-author of a title called 'The Best Service is No Service', written with the former chief of customer service at Amazon.com.

I have not read the book, but in the podcast Jaffe makes some salient points about the typical problems in many large organizations  customer service efforts - using the wrong metrics, not extracting competitive intelligence from customer service interactions, not empowering customer service agents to really solve problems.  Many of these problems in the customer service office could also be applied to the service efforts that HR organizations provide as well, but in particular three principles that Jaffe identifies in the podcast really resonated in light of some recent work I have been involved with.

Eliminating dumb contact

'Dumb' contact are those emails, calls, or queries that service agents have to respond to that really should be 'self-solved', from either easy to find content on a intranet, from asking a colleague, or by posting a question to an internal forum or other tool to foster crowd-based customer support.  These 'dumb contact' interactions, while singularly not very time consuming, accumulate over time, and as the organization scales become a drag and draw on overall ability to support more complex and significant issues. HR - how many times do you feel like you are answering the same questions, over and over?

The policy shield

Customer service agents often have official company policies around product returns, refunds, discounts, etc., that can end up becoming a kind of 'shield' they use to hide behind.  Who hasn't heard a customer service agent state, 'I am sorry but I am not allowed to help you, our policy says blah, blah, blah'. Agents can then hide safely behind the shield until the customer gives up or goes away. HR organizations operate under the same policy restraints certainly, and while many policies in HR are truly 'must follows', perhaps involving legal or compliance issues, the larger majority are self-imposed.  Making it too easy to hide behind policy shields in the customer service environment often leads to more frustrated customers, that see you as inflexible, unfeeling, and simply not easy to do business with.  And it also frustrates the front line responders, who are not fully empowered to support customers and solve problems.

Extracting Intelligence

Often in customer service interactions, insight and intelligence into customer behaviors, competitive actions, and overall satisfaction with the products/services and company itself can be gleaned. But the problem is that by focusing almost solely on classic service metrics (call answer time, issue closing, repeat calls), the service organization does not really focus on collecting this intelligence. Since the agents and supervisors are not measured on collecting and sharing this insight, it often goes uncaptured.  I think the same thing is true in HR, we survey the entire employee population annually, and often review and take action on those results (hopefully), but likely don't do anything with the intelligence that can be extracted from the typical volume of calls and emails to the HR service center. What are employees asking about?  What programs or activities are generating confusion, interest, or concern?  What are the Top 10 most informative comments that employees made this month?  

There are many more interesting points in the podcast about improving customer service in organizations, and for me, lots of cross-application to the HR function, at least the component of the function that is essentially in direct customer service. 

Have a listen and better still, let me know where else HR can learn from great customer service organizations.

A User Interface Lesson from the Produce Department

I have always been a huge proponent and implementer of Employee and Manager Self-Service systems for the enterprise.  These systems come with lots of promises, easy access to information, reduced administrative burden on the HR department, and the opportunity to give 'ownership' of HR data to the employees and managers.

It's a win all around, right?

But the problem with many self-service solutions is that they inherit the user interface and design elements from the core enterprise systems that they sit on top of. Boring or ugly design, lots of menus to navigate though to get to what you are looking for, and terminology that is straight out of the programmer's manual.

HR Self-service systems need to be simple, easy to understand with no training (and by people who may not even read English all that well), and extremely efficient.

They need to work more like this:

Wegmans - Pittsford, NY

A simple self-service kiosk for weighing and printing price labels for produce. Bag up your items, place them on the scale, enter your code, and get the price label.

Look at the key elements, large and colorful action buttons, graphics that help users (especially ones with limited English skills) to make the correct choice, and a speedy, simple transaction.

The current most popular items are prominently featured with large, color pictures, giving the shopper one-touch access to complete their transaction. I bougt some Green Peppers, and with one touch, I had my label and was on my way.

Why is this important for HR Systems?

Think about how in your employee self-service system, the online Pay Slip is almost certainly the most frequently accessed function. Is the link displayed prominently, like the Green Pepper? Is a shortcut available to provide one-click access? Or do the employees have to endure something akin to this:

Employee Self-Service - Employee Payroll Data - Payslip Information - Current Payslip

In the grocery store kiosk I kind of expect to have to punch a few choices, even look up a code to buy something exotic like a kiwi. But for tomatoes, peppers, or corn, I expect a quick and painless process.

So how do your employee self-service systems stack up? Do you make it easy for employees and managers to do what they need to, especially for the most common transactions?

Or is every interaction with the system like trying to find the right code for kiwis?

Employee Transfers in 1920 - Look familiar?

Chicago, Milwaukee etc. RR employee form
Originally uploaded by mod as hell

Back in the day, forms like these were the 'technology' and mechanism behind a standard Human Resources process of effecting an employee transfer.

Or as this form indicates, an 'employe' transfer. Thanks to my friend Nicole from RemoteRevolution for finding out that the 'old' spelling variant was largely out of favor by the mid-1920s.

The form, which was from the Chicago & Milwaukee Railroad, provides a nice glimpse back into the old days in HR, when simple employee transactions like transfers were processed on paper forms, and required several individuals to handle and sign the forms.

Wow, hard to remember a time when simple transactions had to be done manually, on paper, over and over again. Easy to mess those up, and HR staffs now have more time for 'strategic' activities.

What's that?

Your organization hasn't automated and streamlined these processes yet? You are still processing employee transfers just like the railroad did in the 1920s?

I hope at least you have updated the spelling on the form to 'employee'.