The Piggly Wiggly Way

“小猪扭扭超市”模式

 

Businesses should think carefully about continuing to heap work on their customers

顾客自助有风险，商家企业须留心

 

In 1916 Clarence Saunders changed the face of retailing when he opened his first Piggly Wiggly supermarket in Memphis, Tennessee. Hitherto, shops had kept all their goods behind the counter: customers told the staff what they wanted, waited while their purchases were bagged up, then handed over their money. Saunders came up with the idea of self-service. Customers selected their own groceries from the shelves, and took their baskets to a cashier on the way out. Saunders proclaimed that by cutting labour costs his idea would “slay the demon of high prices”.

 

1916年，克拉伦斯·桑德斯（Clarence Saunders）在田纳西州孟菲斯市创立了第一家“小猪扭扭超市”（Piggly Wiggly supermarket），从此改变了零售业的面貌。此前，商店一直把商品放在柜台后面，顾客告诉售货员想买什么，等他们把货品包装好，自己再递上货款。桑德斯构思出自助服务的理念。顾客从货架上挑选商品，装在篮子里拿到门口收银处结账。桑德斯宣称该理念能减低劳动力成本，从而“斩除高价恶魔”。

 

At its height, in 1932, the Piggly Wiggly empire had 2,660 stores. Saunders had lost control of the company in the 1920s but he kept innovating, seeking to perfect the fully automated shop. This included working on a “shopping brain”, which shoppers would use to keep a tally of their bills. As a business Piggly Wiggly is now a shadow of its former self: it has only about 600 stores in 17 American states. But as an idea it has conquered the world.

 

1932年，处于鼎盛时期的“小猪扭扭超市”帝国拥有2660家门店。上世纪20年代，桑德斯已失去对该公司的控制权，但他继续创新求变，希望完善全自助超市的经营方式，包括构思方便顾客用以计算货品总价的“购物大脑”。 作为一家企业，如今的“小猪扭扭超市”已大不如前：仅在美国17个州拥有600家门店。但它所开创的理念已经征服了全世界。

 

The self-service revolution rolls on to this day. CVS, an American pharmacy chain, has replaced cashiers with self-service pay-points. Waitrose, a British grocery chain, offers customers a modern-day version of Saunders’s shopping brain, to scan and tot up their purchases. Banks are making it ever easier to do transactions online, while cutting their branches. Following a model pioneered in America by such firms as Avon and Tupperware, Unilever and other consumer-goods giants are seeking to convert some of their emerging-market customers into freelance salesfolk, who peddle their products to friends and neighbours.

 

自助服务的革命延续至今。美国连锁药房CVS已采用自助付款台取代收银员。英国连锁超市维特罗斯（Waitrose）向顾客提供当年桑德斯构想的“购物大脑”之现代版，方便大家扫描购入的货品来计算总价。银行正在把在线交易变得日益方便，同时削减实体网点。联合利华及其他消费品巨头追随雅芳、特百惠（Tupperware）等美国公司当年率先采用的销售模式，正努力将其在新兴市场的部分顾客转化为兼职销售人员，向亲朋友邻推销公司产品。

 

The travel industry has been particularly ruthless in engineering its own staff out of its business. You book your trip using a price-comparison app on your smartphone. You print your boarding passes before setting out. At the airport you scan them, and your passport, at a machine. Some airlines now expect you to weigh and tag your own luggage, and haul it on to the conveyor. At your hotel, there may be no check-in staff, let alone porters: Omena hotels, a Scandinavian hotel chain, sends its customers PIN codes which they can use to open their doors. Soon, a wave of the Apple Watch on your wrist will be all it takes.

 

说到谋划裁员节流，旅游行业一直尤为心狠手辣。通过智能手机上的比价应用，你可以预订旅程，并在出发前打印好登机牌。到了机场，通过一台机器可扫描登机牌和护照。有些航空公司现在会要求乘客自己给行李称重、贴标签，并放到传送带上。到了酒店，也许没有工作人员给你办理登记入住，更别说行李搬运工了。北欧一家连锁酒店欧美纳（Omena）给住客提供识别码来直接开门入住。在不久的将来，只需挥一挥腕上的苹果手表，一切就已办妥。

 

The variety of businesses touched by the self-service revolution is ever greater. Threadless, a group of clothes designers, invites customers to submit their own patterns and to vote on which ones should go into production. Tech companies turn their most knowledgeable customers into unpaid troubleshooters by encouraging them to participate in “user forums”, where they solve others’ technical problems. The Huffington Post, an online newspaper, gets its readers to write as unpaid columnists. GE is working towards a world in which it no longer has to keep a stock of spare parts for its jet engines: customers will download digital designs of the parts, and make them on their own 3D printers.

 

自助服务革命触及的行业种类在不断扩大。一群服装设计师组建的公司Threadless会邀请顾客提交设计样式，然后投票选出投产的款式。科技公司鼓励富有经验的顾客参与“用户论坛”，给别人解决技术疑难，化身为公司的义务检修员。网络报纸《赫芬顿邮报》（Huffington Post）让读者成为无偿的专栏作者。通用电气正朝这样一个方向发展，希望不再需要为其喷气机引擎配备零件库存：顾客将可下载零件的数码设计图，然后在自己的3D打印机上自制零件。

 

This is all wonderful for businesses. But what about their customers? In a new book, “Shadow Work”, Craig Lambert presents a dystopian vision of the self-service revolution. The reason why so many people feel overworked these days is that they are constantly being asked to do “unseen” jobs by everybody from Amazon to the Internal Revenue Service to the local school board. And the reason why they feel so alienated is that they spend so much time pressing buttons and speaking to machines rather than interacting with other people.

 

对企业而言，这一切自是美妙。但顾客呢？在新书《影子工作》（Shadow Work）中，克雷格·兰伯特（Craig Lambert）呈现了自助服务革命的反乌托邦一面。为什么现在那么多人感到工作过于劳累，原因是他们总被要求去做许多“看不见”的工作。亚马逊、美国国税局、本地学校董事会等等都能给你下达任务。人们之所以变得疏远，是因为他们花了大量时间在按按钮，与机器说话，而不是跟其他人互动。

 

Mr Lambert is perhaps too gloomy. The self-service revolution is partly driven by customers’ own preferences: it is quicker to choose your own groceries than to wait for someone to do it for you; it is easier to print your boarding passes at home than queue at the check-in counter. And customers can fight back: complaints about automated telephone services have forced some companies to revert to having people answer the phone. Many people are now refusing to drive to out-of-town, self-service supermarkets, choosing instead to have their shopping delivered.

 

兰伯特也许太过悲观了。自助服务革命一定程度上是由顾客的心愿驱动的：自选货物比等别人替你选取要快捷；比起在柜台前排队等待办理登机手续，在家里打印登机牌更为方便。而且，顾客也可以还击：对自动电话服务的投诉已经令部分公司恢复采用人工回复。许多人现在不愿开车到郊外的自助超市购物，而是选择让人送货上门。

 

But he is right about the enervating cumulative effect of all the instances where personal service has been replaced with self-service. Being able to do one or two things for yourself can feel liberating; having to do everything can make you feel like a slave to the machine. And the trend is far from over. Some bars are trying out a technology called iPourIt, in which drinkers have to wear a wireless wristband that monitors how much booze they are serving themselves from the taps. Before long, no doubt, self-service barbershops will invite customers to pop their heads into a clipping machine and turn a dial to select the severity of the cut.

 

但兰伯特提到的一点是对的——自助服务取代人员服务的累积效应会让人身心俱疲。能自己完成一两件事情让人感觉自由放松，一切都得自己做则令人感到沦为了机器的奴隶。而且这种趋势远未结束。一些酒吧正在尝试一项名为iPourIt的技术，酒客得佩戴一款无线腕带以监测自己从啤酒龙头自斟的酒量。不要怀疑，用不了多久，自助理发店将请顾客把头探到剪发机里，然后旋动转盘选择头发修剪的长短。

 

The pampered and the paupers

娇惯富者与劳苦贫民

 

The rise and rise of the self-service business raises two worries in particular. The first is for society as a whole. Even as they eliminate the personal touch from their mass-market offerings, service industries keep chasing the well-heeled with extravagant, premium-priced offerings. Consumers are being ever more clearly divided into a “cattle class”, herded into the back of the cabin and offered precious little service, and a pampered “business class”, for whom no amount of fawning is too much. (Fly Virgin Atlantic in its ironically titled Upper Class and you get a private car to take you to and from the airports, and flunkeys waiting in the lounge to polish your shoes and cut your hair.) Not only might this intensify resentment of the haves by the have-nots; it also robs the have-nots of entry-level jobs.

 

自助服务的节节进逼尤其催生了两大忧虑。第一个忧虑是对整个社会的影响。即使服务业在大众市场中消除人工服务，他们还是会提供奢华的高价服务博取富人的青睐。越来越明显，顾客被分为两批人，有的给赶到机舱后部的“放牛舱”，服务少得可怜；有的则被领进呵护备至的“商务舱”，享受百般奉承。（搭乘维珍航空，选择那名字极具讽刺意味的“上等舱”，你会享受到专车接送往返机场，还有仆人在候机室待命给你擦鞋剪发。）这不但加剧了穷人的仇富心理，同时也剥夺了穷人所就业的初级职位。

 

The second worry is for businesses themselves. If they never meet their customers, they will lose touch with them. And although self-service is great for saving costs, its effect over time is to train customers to shop on price, and thus to switch as soon as a slightly cheaper rival comes along. If firms abandon trying to differentiate themselves with good service, they are making themselves vulnerable to the sort of attack Britain’s mainstream supermarkets are now suffering from an invasion of German discounters. That’s where the Piggly Wiggly way leads.

 

第二个忧虑是对企业自身而言，如果从不直面顾客，企业将与其脱节。虽然自助服务大大有利于节约成本，但长此以往，会令顾客养成只看价钱的习惯，只要对手稍作减价，顾客就会转向。假如公司放弃以优质服务突显自我，很容易陷入英国主流超市遇到的那种麻烦——它们正遭受德国折扣店的打击。那就是“小猪扭扭超市”模式带我们走入的世界。

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