A few weeks ago, I flew from the London Luton airport and was surprised to see this low-cost airport equipped with a few automated customer service assistants. The airport is trying to reduce costs everywhere and so replacing real humans with automated assistants that work nearly for free comes as no surprise.

Upon reaching the departures hall, a male assistant (picture below) reminded me that certain items are not allowed on board aircraft. Later in the security check hall, another female assistant informed me that liquids should have been placed in transparent plastic bags and laptops were to be taken out of bags.

I was queuing for the security check for just a few minutes but the messages became very repetitive. What had been a useful reminder, quickly became rather annoying noise. I noticed there was a human operator standing not far from one of the automated assistants, telling passengers which queue to join. After observing this guy for a while, I asked him whether he found the automated assistants a little bit irritating. (A leading question, I know!) Almost instantly, as if he had uttered it for a hundredth time that day, he replied, "You tune it out mate. You just tune it out!" He also told he had been working there with the new ‘colleagues’ for two weeks then.

The way he replied instantly made me realise that work shifts with the non-human colleagues are probably not very popular with the airport staff. No wonder, imagine a colleague of yours repeating the same line for the whole day. For the whole week.

Automated Virtual Assistants are an interesting invention. They surely get much more attention than a boring notice board on the wall. However when designing a customer journey within a service, it is essential that all stakeholders are taken into account. In this case, while virtual assistants might be fulfilling the short-term business needs by reducing costs and speeding up the queue, their implementation means that neither the customer’s nor the staff’s experience is improved. On contrary, they might be potentially causing friction. In the long term this may damage the brand, affect traveller’s choice of airport, and would make staff more likely to quit their jobs.

Service design needs to address the customer experience holistically, and any potential knock-on effects need to be considered. Subtle changes could make all the difference. All airport customers follow the same route which makes careful positioning and Directional Sound a possible solution. This would ensure the message gets heard in context without becoming just annoying noise.