Knowing a few people who have worked in or had hospitality businesses, I think we are witnessing a few different things.

Higher Expectations Firstly, inflation aside, it’s my belief that people’s expectations have actually increased. I have seen it in family and friends. You might not have witnessed this yourself since 2020, but when going to a hotel or a restaurant, people are expecting higher levels of service than they are actually paying for. The general public is getting very aggravated (at least in the West) at not receiving perfection.

What used to be a pub lunch, people are now thinking they are fine dining. You can see it in TripAdvisor ratings alone in Europe. Expectations have increased, during times that quality is decreasing. I’m really not sure what’s triggered this, but this is compounded by the fact that many in the general public have a short fuse and are more willing to voice this. For reasons we’re all probably very aware, no longer feeling they are staying ahead.

Inflation / shrinkflation Secondly, inflation is clearly exacerbating this. As places try to make dishes smaller or inferior quality. If you’re a regular, you’ve likely seen prices increase 15-20% and if you haven’t, you’ve witnessed shrinkflation. And the general public will quite often believe the businesses are the greedy ones, without considering the increased costs for all businesses of late. One end result is then increased automation, either in place, or for online services like helpdesks. To prevent needing to sacrifice the product quality itself. But it’s shrinkflation in services.

Automation That is a clear trend, removing people from the cost during customer interactions. We have witnessed it with more ‘self-service’ restaurants, where you order at the bar or via QR and go and collect it via a beeper. I also witnessed in some cities, companies sharing the same staff. i.e. you have multiple huts or markets where you can order different cuisines from different establishments and you have general staff to collect (or perhaps deliver) your orders. It’s a different concept (but as inferior it is as a service) it is a pretty decent experience being able to order different foods from different places, and receive it at the same time when dining with friends/family. Something that wasn’t all too common in years prior. In general, this caters to greater personalisation.

Tip Culture In the U.S. I’ve heard plenty of examples of tip culture getting out of hand, in spite of reduced levels of service. But I also witnessed this on card terminals in Europe.

I’d be curious to hear from someone working in that industry there. Is it because the opportunities for receiving tips and building personable experiences is reduced or because there is a greater need to receive tips in order to stay ahead of inflation financially?

Generally I think that any businesses recognising and acknowledging loyalty, and ones that are willing to invest time getting to know their customers are worth sticking with. Especially when it’s all too easy to put all customer interaction behind a queuing system.

Recognising Loyalty I had an experience a few months ago, where on a call with American Express, the lady took a few moments to wish to thank me for having used their services for 9 years. It was such a simple thing to draw my attention to, they will always have account creation dates on customer profiles, but it really did have an impact. Even if I wanted to debank myself as many around these woods would suggest I do, Amex may be one of the last standing for that simple gesture. In spite of their horrific merchant fees.

Showing Empathy One other thing I have witnessed are those businesses that allow customers to talk, share their frustration and being listened to. One thing I heard was during 2020, an older lady ringing a local business and asking some random unrelated questions, but proceeding to tell the person in the business all about her life and family. She was ringing simply for a chat, because of feeling lonely and isolated. And this person recognised that and kept her on the phone for 10 minutes, despite the priorities of the business at that time.

Personalisation When logging-in (especially for the first time), asking people what their interests are. So as to be able to suggest the top rated posts in the last 90 days from those categories. This to me is important, as SN currently only has ephemeral content. If you’re not logging in frequently, or don’t read the newsletter, we all know you’ll miss content. Particularly given search, as I’m sure the team will admit, is still not quite there yet.

New Profiles / Bios One thing I love about the ‘recent’ section is quite often seeing new profiles being created and people welcoming the new users. If we could encourage more people to write a bit more about their area of interest, I feel like it would lead to even more natural conversations, improve the quality of welcomes, stickiness and early ‘aha’ moments, as they receive their first zaps.

It’s great that these new profiles ARE visible, but during the next upcoming wave of new users, it’s going to feel an awful lot like Facebook ‘happy birthday’ messages… too generic and absent of meaning.

More Community Features Currently we’re not really ‘following’ people but quality content. It would be great if the trust graph would show us which are our most trusted contacts on SN, and to indicate to us if someone we are aligned with has upvoted or commented on some content.

Lightning Torch How do we get people to realise that the more you engage & zap on StackerNews, the more you will receive? I’m not sure even more seasoned visitors understand this.

I’m wondering if we could try and participate in some sort of Zap Rodeo (or whatever we want to call it). For that to display a random engaged user to send the sats to. If say 10 users pass-on the sats and get their cowboy hat, the sats get boomeranged back to the original user’s account. If it sounds too gimmicky and forced, that’s not the intention. In general I just think we can do more to get newbies zapping & funding their accounts, rather than just using the account as a glorified rss feed. Which will inevitably lead to periods of disengagement.

i work customer service for a large telecommunications company, and they are actively trying to make it worse. the automated system makes it intentionally difficult to speak with a live agent, and when you do it's going to be an outsourcer. everything is forced self-service, they want you to use their app or digital options, so they remove agent's abilities to assist customers over the phone. metrics are judged primarily by sales numbers and average call time, not resolving customer issues, or customer satisfaction.

i will say i get highly discounted services, good pay and benefits, and work 100% from home. but it is very frustrating working customer service for a company that obviously does not care about providing good customer service. they view customer interactions as an opportunity to upsell or add services, that's about it.

High end electronics. As an electronics installer and electrical technician I have occasion to call the manufacturers of high end electronics to get troubleshooting help. I deal mostly with technical support, but I've had to talk to some customer service reps as well. Apparently, paying $15k for a computer and touch-screen all in one device (MFD) comes with a certain level of lifetime support. One time a customer's brand new 22" Garmin MFDs bricked during the first update. Garmin took a $30k hold on his credit card, send him brand new ones express, and had him send the broken ones to them to get the hold removed. Unfortunately the MFDs bricking sucked, but everything else about the experience involving the company seemed extremely straight forward and convenient. (For someone who can afford a random $30k hold on card.) Luxury goods have the best customer service.

costco by far

they take anything back without questions asked costco is only interested in keeping you as a member costco has motivated employees because they are paid well their margins are the lowest in the industry costco makes most of its profits with membership fees

they take cash if you pay cash, you get everything cheaper the only thing i could wish for is the acceptance of real money

I think it’s getting slightly worse but I’m not certain.

My theory is that two related things might be happening:

The reason that it causes standards to go down is that In the past, none of this could be measured well, but it was obviously important, so good businesses placed a priority on getting good, empowered employees to fill those positions. Now all that matters is keeping average response times and ratings above a certain level, which results in a lower bar being met, mostly sustained by those simple common issues that arise.

one thing that lightning payment splits enable is to allow anyone to earn a fraction of the stacker news fee in perpetuity.

what if instead of hiring a customer service team as SN scales (most social companies outsource this work), SN could allow the best stackers to help newcomers learn how to use the site.

as a reward, and as an incentive to provide great service, the stackers who help new folks get up and running could earn a percentage of the new person’s future earnings (kind of like a referral fee, but for customer service).

one of the best examples of customer service i’ve seen lately was when i went to whole foods for some groceries.

all the other grocery stores near me don’t provide bags unless you pay $0.25-$1/bag, and then ask you to bag your groceries on your own.

the person at whole foods didn’t even ask about bags, and automatically double-bagged everything.

i think this kind of service actually used to be common, but it’s a real breath of fresh air to get this service today.

I no Facebook is not it