technology "yes", customer needs "NO"

We had gone to the neighbour konica colour lab on MG road, adyar yesterday. I wanted to print a picture taken when we had gone to Singapore. I had copied the picture from the camera to a cd and I prided myself on my technology savviness.

The showroom is quite jazzy and modern. We were shooed away from the order booking counter towards the far end of the showroom. It was then we spotted a counter which said 'media to print'; Q please. Prashant positioned himself near the counter, as there was no queue. I spotted three people there, animatedly looking at something on the screen in front of them and discussing among themselves.After sometime they quietly got up and came out. It was then that Prashant showed them his cd and asked for a print. They feigned surprise and said they were themselves customers and were not getting their job done!

So back to order booking counter and the sales clerk now took Prashant to yet another counter which said, "Self service".One is supposed to do everything oneself and hand over the printed order form to the booking clerk, and he would then once again key in something and give us yet another order print out. I wanted a large print, but the sales clerk kept saying parrot like that we have to choose from the options on the self service kiosk.I could not make any headway.
I was looking around in frustration and spotted a tiny pulley going up and down, taking prints and copies from ground floor showroom to the lab in the basement and the booking clerk was busy with that.This is a new labour saving device which i have not seen earlier in this shop.This and other technology interfaces were meant to make the customer touchpoints painless and if possible pleasurable.
But without any investment in people who man the customer touchpoints, I left the shop with a feeling of frustration.
I am seeing this new trend in several shops in our area. Every now and then the shop will have a board which says, shop under renovation. And after renovation the intereiors look very inviting; but the sales people have absolutely no clue about the merchandise available nor are they trained in the simple operations on the terminal which is newly installed with expensive software.
Wait for more stories!