Help, Not Take Over

The wave of smart technologies is upon us, from smart meters and devices that help use better manage our energy use to a trash can that takes pictures of what we throw away to determine well our households are aligning with "green living." From a customer performance standpoint, these technologies fall into the Access component of the coproduction experience model, but deliver most of their benefits through the Vision component, namely through the principles of goals and feedback. The other elements of the model are represented as well. Take the trash camera. The goal is green living. The analysis of the trash is the feedback. Points are awarded if you are doing good (Incentive), and remedial instruction is offered if you are not (Expertise). And there we have it, a complete coproduction experience.

The debate, however, is whether the devices are "good smart" or "bad smart". Good smart devices let the customer stay in control. An example is the HAPIfork, which assesses your eating speed. Lights indicate when you are eating too fast, but it is up to you to make the decision to slow down (no, the fork does not retract its tongs, but it would be really cool if it did, to make you take smaller bites).

Bad smart devices don't give you complete control. An example of bad is a breathalyzer in a car. Blow a blood alcohol level of 0.8, and the car won't start. Socially, this is good, at least we think so. But the question is how far this idea can be taken. Several years ago, in the electric utility industry (where I do a lot of work), California regulators considered making programmable, controllable thermostats for commercial businesses mandatory, as well as the mandatory participation in electric demand response events which require customers to reduce their energy usage for a few hours on hot summer days. Needless to say, this didn't go over very well and the proposal was shelved.

In our own research, it is clear that for customer performance to emerge, customers feel that they are in control of the situations and performances in which they engage. We need to help them in most cases, and only take over in the fewest of cases. It will be interesting to see how this facet of customer performance balances out. See WSJ 2/23/13, C1 for more insights on this. 

Customer Performance and Credit Cards

Many monthly bills, such as from your utility, credit card provider, phone service, and so on, have for a long time been complex and confusing. New regulations and laws have started to address this problem, with the aim of enhancing customer performance - specifically in terms of having the information to make good decisions (Access:Information). Read more about what's being done to enhance credit card bills here.