Technology continues to play a huge role in streamlining operations management. For example, Kodak has a freestanding kiosk where technology and customer labor join to create an output. In this example, you put in your digital camera memory card, choose the finish, quantity, and size of your hard copy pictures, and then print.

Airline check-in kiosks, automatic teller machines, online banking, and firms like eBay, Facebook, Twitter, Zillow, and Zappos are also excellent examples where self-service and technology merge to deliver a product, and they are good use cases for this discussion.

Describe a situation where self-service and technology help create and deliver a customer benefit package to the customer. Provide examples of how such a system can cause a defect, mistake, or service upset. When possible, select a different example than your peers.

Your initial response should be a minimum of 200 words. Graduate school students learn to assess the perspectives of several scholars. Support your response with at least one scholarly or credible source in addition to the text.

Guided Response: Respond to at least two of your fellow students’ or instructor posts in a substantive manner, and provide information or concepts that they may not have considered. Each response should have a minimum of 100 words and be respectful of others’ opinions and beliefs that differ from your own. Please write 200 word response to question

Post One Needing a Response:

(Daniel)

Management Knowledge

It is important that management knowledge keeps pace with technological change. For instance, the Soviets were able to develop and deploy weapons in half the time of the U.S.; thus, the management must have played a role in this dichotomy, showing that management is a critical factor. Project management strengthens the communication links between project leaders and members. It effectively shortens the communication line so actions are taken quicker and tasks are completed more efficiently. “The primary reason for project management organization is to achieve some measure of managerial unity, in the say way that physical unity is achieved with the project.” (Johnson, 1997)

Real-World Examples

The example of self-service technology that immediately comes to mind is the adaptation of self-check-out within grocery stores. This is something that 20 years ago, I never would have thought was remotely possible or plausible. It’s a similar conversation to the conversation about self-service gas pumping in Washington (our neighboring state) vs. serviced gas stations here in Oregon (it is actually illegal to try to pump your own gas here). You must wait for a representative to come take your card, enter it into the kiosk and place the pump in your gas tank. Then you wait for them to return and remove it. It’s a very silly system, but it supplies millions of jobs across the nation in the states that require it by law. If all of these states were to suddenly rule that customers can pump their own gas, there would be a huge upset in the economy with millions of jobs lost. I always thought that self service check-out at grocery stores would have the same effect, and millions of people would be out of jobs, however it seems to have only stimulated the economy, with more opportunities for buyers to complete transactions quickly, and open up even more working positions for people to fill. These machines effectively eliminate parts of the traditional value chain structure and help streamline operations (Collier, & Evans, 2019).

Pros

Systems like this have a huge opportunity to gather critical data that can ultimately help the store further understand their clientele better. It can store data regarding the average number of items someone purchases at the self-check-out line, the time in which it takes the average person to complete a transaction themselves (setting benchmarks for actual employees), developing product understanding, marketing through advertisements, and much more. This greatly benefits the customer because this

data can be utilized to further tailor both the experience and the items in which are most popular. These machines can also provide opportunities for actionable performance measures. For instance, they can gather data that shows how quickly a customer service representative can come to their aid if the machine has an error or requires their authorization. Self-service stations at grocery stores also have great scalability, as their overhead is incredibly low and very sustainable, while also being predictable with fixed costs.

Cons

However, there are many cons to this system, aside from the initial drop in job opportunities. The stimulation within the economy will come at a later time, and the immediate effect will be jobs that could normally be filled by tellers, but are instead filled by automated machines. Another potential detriment to the company can be found with the measurement of the average speed of a customer when the are checking their items out. If the average customer is quicker than a human teller, this could quickly prove that an automated machine is more sufficient, further incentivizing the store to reduce tellers and add more self-checkout lines. These systems can also leak sensitive customer data, just like any other CRM, if not handled with care. These kiosks are handling millions of data files every year; and sensitive data at that.

Post Two Needing a Response:

(Washington)

An example where self-service and technology help create and deliver a customer benefit package to the customer is the hotel check-in and out via a mobile app. It provides a contactless method for hotel guests to get into their rooms and leave without going to the front desk. The automated service eliminates waiting times which increases customer satisfaction. At the same time, it promotes brand loyalty since customers have to download the hotel’s app to use the service, increasing the chances they participate in the rewards program (LamasaTech, n.d.).

The mobile app is dependent on servers to communicate information to the hotel’s operating system. Server outages can happen for several reasons, resulting in the mobile app not working. This issue would interrupt service as hotel guests can no longer use the streamlined process of checking in and out, leading to a decrease in customer satisfaction.

A mistake the automated system can cause is allowing fraud. Since there is no face-to- face check-in process, there is no way to check identification against the credit card used to book a room. Someone can use a stolen credit card to reserve a room without verifying their identity. Like most services that involve the internet, there is a security vulnerability.

Please write 100 word response to Daniel and Washingtons posts