Cover Stories: Pul-eeze! Will Somebody Help Me?

By Stephen Koepp

For Harry Hapless, it was a rough day in the service economy. His car, a Fiasco 400, started sputtering on the highway, so Harry pulled into a gas station for help. "Sorry, no mechanics, only gas!" shouted the attendant. "How can you call this a service station?" yelled Harry. He went to the bank to get some emergency cash for a tow truck, only to find the automatic teller machine out of order, again. "Real nice service!" he muttered. Then Harry decided to use a credit card to buy a tool kit at the Cheapo discount store, but he couldn't find anyone to wait on him. "Service! Anyone, please! Help me!" was his cry.

It had been a trying day indeed, Harry thought as he rode a bus home, but at least he could look forward to a trip to Florida the following week with his wife Harriet. That is, until Flyway Air called: "Sorry, Mr. Hapless. Due to our merger with Byway Air, your Florida flight has been canceled." Harry got so angry he was going to call the Federal Aviation Administration / immediately. But just then his phone went dead -- no doubt because the Bell System had been split up, he imagined. Well, that was the last straw. A few minutes later a wild-eyed Harry burst into the newsroom of his local newspaper. "I've got a story for you!" he cried. "There is no more service in America!"

More and more consumers are beginning to feel almost as frustrated as Harry Hapless. Personal service has become a maddeningly rare commodity in the American marketplace. Flight attendants, salesclerks and bank tellers all seem to have become too scarce and too busy to give consumers much attention. Many other service workers are underpaid, untrained and unmotivated for their jobs, to the chagrin of customers who look to them for help. The concept of personal service is a difficult quantity to measure precisely, to be sure; the U.S. Government keeps no Courtesy Index or Helpfulness Indicator among its economic statistics. But customers know service when they miss it, and now they want it back. Says Thomas Peters, a management consultant and co-author of In Search of Excellence: "In general, service in America stinks."

Economic upheaval is to blame. First came the great inflation of the 1970s, which forced businesses to slash service to keep prices from skyrocketing. Then came deregulation, which fostered more price wars and further cutbacks. Meanwhile, service workers became increasingly difficult to hire because of labor shortages in many areas. At the same time, managers found that they could cut costs by replacing human workers with computers and self-service schemes. It all makes perfect bookkeeping sense for businesses, but the trend has left consumers without enough human faces to turn to for guidance in spending their billions of dollars on services. Americans tolerated, and even welcomed, self-service during an era of rising prices, but now a backlash is beginning. Result: some companies are scrambling to make amends, and "quality of service" is on its way to becoming the next business buzz phrase.

Ominously, the rising clamor suggests that something fundamental may be wrong in the vaunted U.S. service economy, in which the country has put so much hope for future prosperity. If service industries are beginning to dominate the economy, one might ask, why is there so little good service to be found? Is America in danger of becoming the no-can-do society? The question is becoming increasingly urgent. As manufacturing has declined in relative | importance, the service sector has become the engine of U.S. economic growth. Of 12.6 million new jobs created since the end of the last recession, in 1982, almost 85% have been in service industries as opposed to goods-producing fields.

Sloppy service could become more than just a domestic annoyance. Economists have begun to warn that slipping standards could cost the U.S. its international competitive standing in services and thus worsen the country's trade problems. Japanese banks, for example, have already made inroads into the U.S. market. In the November-December issue of the Harvard Business Review, Professor James Quinn and Researcher Christopher Gagnon of Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Business contend that many U.S. service businesses have developed the same shortsighted habits and inattention to quality that American manufacturers have been guilty of -- with disastrous results. "While there is still time," they write, "it is essential to take a hard look at how we think about services, how we manage them, and how much they contribute to the nation's economic health."

The potential of service businesses losing touch is chilling because it was the U.S. that practically invented the concept of good service on a mass- market scale. The country's huge appetite for reliable service gave rise to such pioneers as AT&T, IBM, American Express, McDonald's and Federal Express. But many U.S. companies today are failing to achieve the right balance of high-tech expedience vs. personal attention. "The state of service is pretty bad," admits Kenneth Hamlet, president of the Holiday Inn Hotel Group.

Among consumers, swapping horror stories about their confrontations with poor service has become a cathartic exercise. Many have never obtained satisfaction for their gripes, despite exhausting efforts. Kevin Kinnear, a Chicago software engineer, became increasingly angry with each of four trips to his car dealer to get the cruise control repaired on his 1985 Buick Century. Finally, he gave up when the mechanics made it clear that they no longer wanted to deal with his problem. Jane Ullman, a Santa Monica, Calif., sculptor, thought her refrigerator problems were over when deliverymen installed a new deluxe model in her kitchen. But her woes were just beginning; the workmen broke the refrigerator's copper pipes, which took several visits from repairmen to fix. "People have learned to take shoddy service in stride," she says wearily. Even when they speak up and get their money back, consumers often come away with a feeling of being abused. Earlier this month, when a Los Angeles homemaker took back a foul-smelling piece of fish to a supermarket on the city's west side, she got a refund only after answering brusque questions and signing papers. At no time did anybody apologize or give the slightest sign that they regretted spoiling her dinner.

Some of the longest, most tortured consumer stories involve home delivery. When Tony and Sandra Cantafio of Redondo Beach, Calif., bought a bed last October, they had to wait four weeks for it to arrive because of lost paperwork and other snafus. The result for Cantafio was an aching back from sleeping on the sofa. But there was another pain: to get the bed finally, Cantafio had to take an entire day off from his job as an aerospace executive because the deliverymen refused to predict what time they would arrive at his home.

In other cases, workers spoil an otherwise fine job with an almost creatively bad gesture. A Manhattan woman who bought carpet from a tony department store was pleased that the two installers were so friendly and efficient, but puzzled about why they left "like two robbers in a getaway car." Later she discovered the reason: they had used her bathroom as a Dumpster for a three-foot pile of carpet clippings and packing material.

Sometimes consumers encounter sales clerks who cannot find the "on" button on electronic equipment they are selling. A clerk handling vacuum cleaners in a department store confesses to a customer, "I don't know a damn thing about these." Over in the shoe department, clerks nowadays may simply dump boxes at customers' feet rather than helping them with the merchandise.

Consumer grief is even becoming part of the pop culture. Comedian Jay Leno says that when he chided a supermarket clerk for failing to say thank you, she snapped, "It's printed on your receipt!" The film Back to the Future cracked up its audiences with a scene in which Michael J. Fox's character, who has traveled back in time, walks past a 1950s-era filling station and is flabbergasted to see four cheery attendants in neatly pressed coveralls. Like a pit crew at the Indianapolis 500, they dash up to a car and proceed to fill the gas tank, check the oil, clean the windows and polish the chrome.

Current U.S. levels of service sometimes appear lax to Americans when they return home from trips to Japan and Western Europe. While no country boasts the highest standards in every field, other cultures are more demanding of some services than America is. Most European countries insist on timely and efficient service on their railroads and airlines, which receive state subsidies to assure that performance. Americans who visit London typically come away with fond memories of the city's excellent taxicabs and subway system. The shortage of personal attention comes just when U.S. consumers are enjoying a cornucopia of novel products and services. Thus the deterioration of basic, personal service is taking the fun out of the new offerings. Shoppers can now find ten kinds of mustard and a dozen varieties of vinegar in a supermarket, but where is a clerk who can give a guiding word about these products? Airlines offer a bonanza of cheap fares, but many travel agents no longer want to be bothered handling such unprofitable business. That leaves consumers on their own, so they have to grab brochures and do their homework if they hope to make a correct decision. To take advantage of consumer advances today requires a tougher and smarter buyer.

Yet a growing number of shoppers have no time to get smart. Two-income householders have become hooked on convenience. Their expectations of quick, personal service have risen at a time when they are less likely to find it. Result: growing friction between harried workers and hurried customers. Says Irma Reyes, a New York City bank teller: "We try to service customers within three minutes after they walk into the bank, but they expect you to work miracles for them. Some customers get annoyed simply because you ask for identification."

The widespread perception of poor service has reached most corners of the U.S. because some of the worst offenders are national chains. Yet big-city consumers more frequently encounter poor service because some businesses feel they have an abundant supply of customers and thus are not dependent on long- term relationships with the shopper. Says Paul Schervish, a sociology professor at Boston College: "The situation is adversarial in a peculiar way. The seller acts as though the customer's gain is his or her loss and not mutually beneficial." In small towns with a more limited pool of shoppers, by comparison, buyer and seller have a long-term expectation of encountering each other again.

The simple reason that service workers have so little attention to give is that businesses often overwork them to save labor costs and keep prices low. Flight attendants, for example, once had time to chat with their passengers, but now their work is so speeded up that they can barely make sure all seat backs and tray tables are in their upright positions. If today's jumbo jets were staffed at the levels of a decade ago, an airline-union official says, the planes would carry 20 flight attendants instead of twelve to 14.

Service workers who handle customers over the telephone have been speeded up most of all. Any consumer who regularly talks to rental-car reservations clerks or mail-order takers probably feels the rush. Reason: computers monitor the workers' calls to measure performance. If a phone operator spends too much time with one customer, it spoils his or her average and standing on the job. Operators have been known to fake a disconnection when customers ask questions that are too complicated. Observes Harley Shaiken, professor of work and technology at the University of California at San Diego: "These assembly-line methods increase profits by boosting productivity, but there is a long-term hidden cost -- the decline in service."

The heyday of personal service probably came early in the postwar era, when labor was relatively cheap and prices were fairly stable. Businesses could afford to lavish attention on customers, who in turn shopped for the most personable service. Music stores, for example, provided record players so that customers could give disks a spin before buying them, and drugstores offered free delivery. But during the decade of rampant inflation in the 1970s, when prices rose 87%, consumers became willing to give up service in return for the lowest possible price tag. They began buying in bulk, bagging their own groceries and shopping in warehouse-like mega-stores.

As discount chains like K mart and Wal-Mart flourished in the retail industry, rivals were forced to cut their payrolls to stay competitive. In that environment, in which shoppers began to think of brand-name products as commodities, businesses that still offered knowledgeable sales help were taken for a ride by consumers and competitors. Shoppers quickly learned to visit a service-minded store for a free lesson about a particular product, then go down the street to a discount house to buy the item for 25% less. The headaches often come later, because discounters tend to offer very little follow-up service. Says Butch Weaver, a second-generation appliance repairman and president of a Maytag store in Gaithersburg, Md.: "A lot of this the ! public has done to themselves. If they're going to go for these cut-rate prices, something's got to give, so it's usually service."

Businessmen point out, of course, that self-service has spawned great conveniences, ranging from simpler telephone-connecting jacks to coin-operated car washes and even videocassette vending machines. Many storekeepers say that self-service often enables customers to meet their needs faster than would be possible if they relied on clerks. At Child World, a chain with 134 stores, the company last fall arranged toys in "learning centers," where customers can examine and play with the products. Says President Gilbert Wachsman: "The shoppers are out more quickly. It reduces our expenses, and we pass the saving on to the customers." Fayva, a discount shoe chain where consumers select their choices from the rack, has grown to 650 stores in 15 years.

A Kroger grocery store in Morrow, Ga., has taken the self-service concept to an extreme. Customers check out their own merchandise by scanning the price codes with electronic readers. Human clerks collect the payment, and computerized sensors monitor the flow of merchandise to check for any fraudulent item switching.

But while consumers will embrace self-service if they think they are getting a bargain, they usually demand attention if they believe it is included in the price tag. Shoppers generally put up with the scarcity of sales help in low-end stores but quickly grow impatient when the trouble arises at mid-price and prestige retailers. Says John D.C. Little, a professor at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management: "Stores will have problems if they pretend to be up-market but aren't." He chides pricey department stores like Bloomingdale's for sometimes providing less service than their upscale image leads customers to expect.

While inflation taught consumers to be more price conscious, it was deregulation that forced banks, airlines and other industries to streamline their services so they could survive the new competition. Many banks, locked in an expensive battle to offer the highest interest rates for savers, found they could no longer afford to provide cheap or free services to small-account holders. By raising service charges dramatically, some banks actively discourage small accounts, because the profits in serving them are slim or nonexistent. Most depositors must wait in line to see a banker, while big- account holders are whisked into private offices.

Yet just like retail stores, banks are offering a trade-off that they believe most customers will accept: more products in exchange for less personal service. Today's depositors with as little as $500 to invest will find that banks give them more possibilities than ever before. Banks now offer an array of money-management accounts and even discount stock-brokerage service. Banks have vastly improved upon old-time bankers' hours of 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. New York's Citibank boasts that 80% of its depositors use its 24-hour automatic-teller machines and that more than half of all customers say they no longer need to venture inside the bank.

Deregulation has prompted airlines to make daring experiments with service, sometimes to harrowing ends. People Express provided an example of just how far consumers can be pushed in a trade-off for low fares. Its aggressively no-frills service, featuring such hassles as on-board ticketing and extra fees for checked baggage, gave the airline a negative image among business flyers and probably hastened its demise. Its rival, Texas Air, which officially bought People Express last month, prevailed partly by making a point of offering low fares without reducing service below generally accepted levels. The airline-merger boom, too, has disrupted service in the airline industry, as huge airlines combine their schedules and crews. The Department of Transportation announced earlier this month that complaints about poor airline service, especially delays, increased 30% during 1986.

A prime indignity for airline customers is to be bumped, or denied a reserved seat, because the carrier has booked too many passengers on a flight. Overbooking is a product of fare wars; because airlines are collecting less per seat, they want to ensure a full load to make a profit. The practice of overbooking crops up in other businesses when managers want to make the most of a prime-time rush of customers. At peak times popular hotels and restaurants sometimes bump customers who show up even modestly late for their reservations.

For many consumers the breakup of the Bell System in 1983 contributed to the decline of Western civilization. The split of old reliable Ma Bell into seven regional operating companies left many customers convinced that they were worse off, even though long-distance competition has brought better rates. Indeed, according to a scorecard published in November by Communications Week, local service and repair are now fairly inconsistent across the U.S. The trade publication gave the top grade of A-minus to Ameritech, which serves Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan. The lowest grade of C-plus went to Southwestern Bell (Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas) and NYNEX (New York and New England).

Consumers miss the personal touch in health care especially. Technology has brought great improvements in curative powers, but patients wish they could get more attention from their doctors rather than being seen mostly by nurses and technicians. Says Victoria Leonard, executive director of the National Women's Health Network: "We see doctors not answering questions, giving curt answers, not spending enough time with patients. Years ago a doctor was more of a family adviser. Now medicine tends to attract the person who enjoys the high-tech procedures. Almost by definition, that's not a people person."

Sensitive to the mounting criticism, the business world is starting to make amends. Says Alan Raedels, professor of business administration at Oregon's Portland State University: "If stores are competing with the same products at basically the same price, then the next major battlefield is going to be service." Claims Steve Shelton, who represents an association of Southern California gas-station operators: "The market is begging for attention today. Motorists seem tickled when someone is actually giving old- fashioned service and cares about the condition of their car." Quality- service gurus like John Tschohl of Bloomington, Minn., are now in heavy demand to give speeches to top managers. Says he: "We teach them the financial impact of good customer service. They're interested only in hard dollars and cents."

One company that seems to have come to this conclusion the hard way is Sears, the largest U.S. retailer. Sears managed to smudge its image in recent years by grouping its salesclerks around cash registers for fast check-out, which reduced the number of employees who were in the aisles to answer questions. Sears still helped customers in its custom-drapery departments, for example, but left buyers of prepackaged drapes to struggle for themselves. Now the company apparently believes it went too far. "We've been looking at service in the past 18 months with heightened intensity," says Everett Buckardt, a Sears vice president. "We have put more people on the sales floor."

Other examples are multiplying. In Miami all 5,000 of the city's cab drivers are required to take a three-hour course in courtesy called Miami Nice, which has reduced the rate of customer complaints by 80%. To do better in the highly competitive health-care industry, California's Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center put its 1,500 employees through a two-day seminar on customer service. One result: the hospital changed its emergency-room admission procedure to one in which staffers "greet and comfort" patients before bothering them with the paperwork.

Nearly all the experts agree that the way to improve America's service industry is to understand the lot of the front-line worker. At this point, too few businesses recognize that many service workers are doing a relatively new, difficult kind of work that could be called emotional labor, a term coined by Arlie Russell Hochschild, a Berkeley sociology professor, in her 1983 book, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Just as factory workers can become estranged from the products they manufacture, says Hochschild, service workers can feel distanced from their put-on emotions. Flight attendants, for example, often feel that their smile belongs to the company. One solution Hochschild recommends is for businesses to give employees a chance to rest and recharge their smiles by temporarily rotating to less stressful jobs.

Cosmetic approaches will not do. K mart, for one, tried to cue its employees to be more personable by putting TYFSOK on their cash registers, which was supposed to remind them to thank customers for shopping K mart. But some harried clerks reportedly mocked the procedure by blurting "Tyfsok!" at puzzled customers. Other companies have tried to get across an impression of personal service with tired slogans to the effect that "people are our most important asset."

But American business had better deliver the real thing, because shoppers like Arlene Cantlon of Riverdale, Ill., are starting to make a scene. Cantlon lost her temper recently in a Venture Stores discount outlet because the chain was making a habit, in her opinion, of failing to have advertised goods in stock. "I asked to speak to the salesgirl in the shoe department, but nobody knew where she was. I waited 35 minutes while they looked for her. Nobody could find her, so I asked to see the store manager. At this point, I had a crowd of customers cheering me on. One woman told me, 'It won't do any good, but good for you!' " Cantlon finally got her audience with the manager, and got some of the merchandise she wanted as well. It was a notable victory, but it need not be all that rare. American consumers would be well advised to follow Arlene Cantlon's example and make noise if they really want their satisfaction guaranteed.

With reporting by Jay Branegan/Washington, Lawrence Malkin/Boston and Edwin M. Reingold/Los Angeles