The IKEAization of Everything
By: Stephanie Gruner Buckley
Tags: Airlines, Parenting, DIY, Stress, Customer Service

Photo by Tanenhaus on Flickr

It’s day two at the Philadelphia Airport after a canceled flight the night before. My daughter and I approach the check-in desk. A crabby American Airlines agent sends us to a kiosk to check in, print our boarding passes and luggage tags, tag the bags, and bring them back.

We do the work and return to the counter. I heave the first bag onto the scale. The agent frowns.

I’ve faced the bag the wrong way, making it awkward for her to reach over and scan the tag. I apologize and muscle it around the other way. She waves her scanning wand. I lift the second bag onto the scale. She waves her wand again. I hoist both bags onto the conveyer belt.

“Lay them flat,” she instructs.

On our way to security, I tell my daughter it’s like being at IKEA. She laughs politely, but not too encouragingly. She’s heard this rant before.

WE’RE ALL EMPLOYEES

Customers shouldn’t have to work so hard for the companies they pay. DIY shopping with kids in tow is particularly painful. After a difficult shopping trip to IKEA with my daughter, I wrote a story called At IKEA You’re More Than A Valued Customer. You’re Like One of the Team. But now I see, here at the airport —and I should explain this took place pre-Covid 19, so no excuse for distant staff —most companies have become like IKEA.

Customer call centers are a perfect example. They’ve become less like helplines and more like data collection agencies where customers do the data entry. You call for help with your laptop but spend most of the time inputting personal data — so the company can more effectively pitch you in the future — only to get a recorded message at the end saying to go to the website and solve your own problem.

Companies promote DIY services as designed for customer convenience. For example, click-and-collect services are touted as a great benefit when the reality is that it’s companies that profit the most from not having to deliver (and sometimes redeliver) packages to our door.

You can’t go to a restaurant or hotel or buy a computer, or actually get help from a call center, without being asked to rate that service to help the company improve — as if we’re all part of the customer services team.

Not only do customers no longer come first; we’re not like customers at all. We’re more like unpaid staff. The change has happened so subtly over time that we accept the aggravation with surprisingly little protest.

Sometimes customers don’t mind. Some appreciate the savings or the convenience of skipping the queue and checking themselves out of a shop. But increasingly, companies are pushing tasks onto customers without offering savings or convenience in return. Often it feels like they’re taking advantage.

Airlines and airports are among the worst. Customers do just about everything now, save fly the planes.

The Philadelphia Airport has gone almost totally DIY. If you want a bottle of water, you grab it from a cooler, scan it and pay for it. Most restaurants feature computer screens where you place and pay for your own orders. A waiter brings the food and, if you ask, will remove dirty dishes, but most customers wipe clean the tables.

Following our meal at the airport, the computer helpfully suggested an 18% service gratuity. It seems we should at least split the tip, given I did most of the work.

EVERYONE IS STRESSED

So much work is stressing people out. Research in the US suggests that chronic stress has become a national epidemic. Nearly a third of people surveyed said they had visited a doctor about something stress-related, and 57% said they felt paralyzed by stress. (This research was carried out pre-Covid-19.)

So much of our lives, including parenting, cooking, and even traveling and buying new furniture, feel like chores.

The DIY trend is ultimately worse for employees. Every time I see staff standing around chatting while we customers do their work, I can’t help but wonder whether they see the writing on the wall. As customers do more tasks — and more tasks are automated — the fewer jobs there will be.

PEOPLE ARE RESILIENT

Our 8:40 p.m. flight the night before is canceled at 1 a.m. After providing no information for hours, an employee announces that the airline is out of hotel vouchers and can’t help rebook flights. He says an automated system will reschedule our trips.

“Please don’t call the airline,” he says. “It won’t help.”

Meanwhile, a small group of passengers gets to work. A woman finds a phone number to call to rebook flights, resulting in many of us getting better routes than those assigned by the computer. Someone produces jugs of water. A woman watches my daughter as I go off to find blankets and pillows for the group. Shortly after tucking my daughter in on the floor, a man tells us he’s managed to arrange a hotel to accommodate us all and a shuttle to take us there.

It’s exactly this kind of resilience and ingenuity that companies are counting on as they push more work on customers.

WE’RE ALL CRANKY

On night two, our flight is delayed again. For some passengers, it’s all too much. Some of them have been camped out in the airport for three nights. Occasionally arguments break out between staff and customers. Every once in a while, an agent takes to the loudspeaker to remind customers to be nice and to appreciate the difficult situation and the stress staff are under.

At some point, a young man behind the counter can’t take it anymore. As we’re boarding the flight, late that night, he grabs the microphone. “When you give the agent your boarding pass, don’t snatch it back out of his hand,” he cries. “That is so rude! We are just trying to do our jobs.”