This is maybe a bit off-topic, although its serves as an allegory for crap automation of processes everywhere.
Yesterday, went to the bank to do some company banking - simple stuff, but of the high value / high importance variety, where I like to see it being done in front of my eyes, just in case... (the auto pay-in can glitch, its happened to me once before, and the risk/reward is very skewed - although it was not my fault it was my problem, very fast).
Anyway, I was not in my usual area so went to the local main branch in the area I was in (City of London) as this one had (human) teller service. The bank was like Chartres Cathedral - a huge, high ceilinged glass building, full of light and air, with auto pay-ins etc everywhere like a sort of financial fruit bandit hall - but it was nearly empty, and this was lunch hour in London, banks are usually heaving. And there were no tellers up there in the light and airy part - where were they - downstairs in the basement, where two harried tellers - and a long queue of people - were.
I trotted back upstairs to fill in my stuff at a table, and started to look around the empty atrium...it soon became clear that nearly all the people up there were bank employees "meeting and greeting" the few actual customers, and the number of customers actually using all the auto tellers was tiny.
No, the queue was all for those two harassed tellers in the basement. Anyway, standing in the queue I also had a look around downstairs, and there were more "meeters and greeters" down there. They couldn't do anything, mind - just point you at machines or the (very slow) queue for the tellers.
I became curious...I asked the person behind me to hold my place, trotted upstairs, and counted about 5 "meeters and greeter" roaming the empty floor, downstairs another 3, and another 6 or so while waiting in the slowly moving queue.
So, I hear you ask....why don't all the "meeters and greeters" actually do some work helping customers rather than than just point them at machines they clearly don't want to use, or at a lengthening and ill served queue they don't want to join.
One could only come to the conclusion that The Bank has decided that The Customer is best served by Automating The Service (OK, OK...I'm not that naive - they have clearly calculated that The Punter is most cheaply served by The Automation) and anyone so wilfully malign as to want teller service was being pointed at a tiny, overused service, with long queues, in the basement, to teach them the error of their ways.
Except that it wasn't working out for them either - I suspect that running a Cathedral in the City is not cheap, and to have all that prime floor space totally empty at peak time would break a retailers heart. And its not as of they have actually saved any labour - if it takes c 15 (say 7 FTEs) to mill around as "meeters and greeters" its hardly effective compared to say 2 more tellers.
And thats just by their yardstick of Cost...needless to say the people in the queue were pretty pissed off about it too...it was very clear what was going on - ie automating the process - and that it wasn't working, people didn't like it, and that they were throwing lots of staff at the "PR" bit rather than throwing a few staff at the "help the customer" bit. .
Quite simply it looks like the classic top down automation project - The Apparatchiks have no doubt decided that This Is The Way It Will Be Done, and regardless of real life experience, customer response, staff feedbeck - and probably financial numbers or anything like that, it Will Be Implemented.
In theory one can pack up one's account and go elsewhere, but (I suspect) that all the retail banks have got the same disease right now, these things memes tend to go in waves....no doubt in a while we will se a "return to personal customer service" being trumpeted as the Next Thing.
(Oh, one last thing...when filling out the counterfoil you used to get a stub to take home...that has gone in the New Religion, apparently it won't fit in the New Automation - so the tellers have to now fill in stubs for you - wastes their time and no doubt ittitates them)
