4 Brands That Hired Humans to Deliver Human-Centric CS

In pursuit of the frictionless experience, companies are scrambling to ramp up web- and mobile-based self-service tools to help their customers avoid the purgatory of interacting with another human. In fact, one AI solutions company called HelpShift is advocating for businesses to eliminate phone support in favor of fully AI-powered customer service.

But some brands are going the opposite, back-to-basics route and hiring humans to do human-centric tasks like smile and say hello or simply approach someone and offer to help before they ask for it.

British Airways

In late October, luxury airliner British Airways announced a multimillion-pound investment to re-train its customer service hosts at London’s Heathrow Airport, the airline’s flagship home. As part of the airline’s plan to have the most skilled, responsive and flexible customer service team of any major airport, the training encourages staff to prowl the terminal floors and reach out to customers rather than wait behind a desk to be approached.

“We’re encouraging our hosts to treat customers as they would their own family, and to own and resolve issues on the spot,” Klaus Goersch, chief operating officer at British Airways, said in a statement. “It’s this exceptional customer service that will set us apart from other airlines.”

Equipped with an iPad pre-loaded with specialty apps to provide real-time updates on flight schedules and other information, the hosts will be required to help customers with ticketing, re-booking, changing reservations, finding delayed luggage and more.

New York’s MTA

New York City’s notoriously inept transit authority took a similar tack of rejiggering service from behind a desk when late last year the MTA transitioned its booth clerks into new roles as “customer service ambassadors” charged with roaming the subway station to answer customer questions and provide up-to-date information about the subway system.

As part of an $876 million Subway Action Plan by MTA chairman Joe Lhota to fix the ailing mass transit system, the new “ambassadors” will don special uniforms and carry iPhones to communicate with each other and relay real-time information to customers.

“We’re fundamentally changing our approach to customer serivce in order to give real-time and better information across the system, and that includes significant face to face customer service enhancements,” MTA spokesman John Weinstein told the New York Daily News.

WalMart

After removing greeters from store lobbies in 2012, WalMart announced in 2016 that it would revive its door greeter program at the majority of its nearly 5,000 US stores. The store greeter was an initiative of founder Sam Walton, who felt that a friendly welcome upon arrival would make big-box stores seem more human.

While hiring greeters might seem like a purely customer service-oriented investment, it’s a convenient subterfuge for deterring rampant shoplifting at major retailers. At the remaining WalMart stores not staffed by a greeter, the entrance is manned by a euphemistically named “customer host” whose job is to greet shoppers as they enter and check receipts when they leave to minimize the chance of stolen wares leaving the premises.

When JC Penney reinstated door greeters at its stores that same year, the objective, according to staff, was to increase sales, but commentators and employees alike were skeptical that friendly salutations alone would incentivize customers to buy more clothes.

Sterling Bank & Trust

Human-centric customer service doesn’t always have to be delivered by humans - sometimes, technology can substitute. Inspired by the success of one major Japanese bank’s attempt at piloting robot greeters, the San Francisco-based Sterling Bank & Trust “hired” two robots as greeters at the bank’s new locations in the Los Angeles area.

No taller than two feet, the saucer-eyed robots can dance to Psy’s “Gangnam Style” and demonstrate Kung Fu prowess, in addition to greeting customers and distributing bankers’ business cards. Reportedly a hit with customers’ children and grandchildren, the robots can recognize a customer’s face and greet them by name, although errors were known to occur about 20 percent of the time when they were first introduced.