I recently rented from Alamo at O'Hare airport. Upon my arrival at the rental office with my confirmed reservation in hand, I noticed that there were self-serve kiosks for turning a reservation into a rental contract.
Two kiosks, NO WAITING. After collecting my reservation number, and then scanning the bar code on my driver's license, I had a contract in hand—it was the best rental-car contract-filling out experience I'd had, ever.* "Not Fail"
The machine's last instructions were to go to the rental lot, and choose whichever car I liked in the 'full-size' car section. Stepping outside, the glow from my excellent experience was completely wiped out by the frustration of finding zero cars in the lot. None in my car category, none in ANY category. "FAIL"
Returning inside, the single rental agent behind the counter, involved with collecting information from a counter customer and typing it into the computer, was ignoring or oblivious to this situation. After waiting eight minutes in line, I gave up. "Poor exception handling, poor IPC (Inter Person Communication)"
I lucked out as another Alamo person brought a car into the parking lot telling me to "Just take this one", and then started to radio for more cars.
I relate the story because it's about customer service, and involves technology.
The service experience started when I made the reservation: I typed in 90% of the information needed for the car rental weeks before I appeared to complete the contract.
Upon arrival at the rental location, a self-service kiosk was available with no waiting. I was glad that I didn't have to re-enter, or recite to a counter person to type in, all of the rental information again for it to get into Alamo's system (I realize that Alamo did collect it again from my Driver's License, but I'm willing to overlook that since it wasn't an inconvenience to me).
With the kiosk, Alamo enabled me to help them to provide me with better service. I thought I had completely avoided the soul-sucking counter experience. I was thinking "gee, Alamo gets it." Then, the experience failed.
From a system design viewpoint:
Don't ask your customers for the same information that they gave you before
Help your customers to help themselves to a good experience
Make sure you handle exceptions in your code (system)
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