SST (Self-service technology) in Service Sector and India —

                                SST (Self-service technology) in Service Sector and
India —  

                                                                                                     Dr. Shampa
Nandi, Faculty ISME

Introduction

According to a survey carried out at 2009, by Buzz Back
Market research company at NCR, Indian consumers rank highest in the world in
terms of their demand for self-service technologies like ATM, Kiosk, M-commerce
or E-commerce etc. 97% of the respondents said in favour of using SST as
compared to 79% consumers in the US and 77% in the UK. Though the above figures
make us delighted but this snapshot is true only for a very small segment of
the entire Indian population, may be for urban Indians. For more than a decade Indian
service sector has acted as a major force for the growth of Indian economy. As
per 2014-15 FY, the contribution of service sector in Indian GDP is 52% (783
billion US $). It is expected to grow at a rate of 7.4% in FY as compared to
7.3% last year. Both domestic and global factors have an impact on this growth.

Services all over the world have been effectively deploying
technology as an innovative resource to achieve speed, efficiency, cost
reduction, customer convenience and competitive advantage. Self Service
Technology is the ultimate form of consumer involvement in service production using
facilities or systems provided by the service provider.

What is SST (Self Service
Technology)?

SSTs are technological support or interfaces through which
customers can access the services without the help of the service providers or
service employees. One of the most familiar examples of SST is using ATM
(automated teller machine) for various bank transactions.

Types of SSTs on base of interface (Meuter,
Ostrom, Roundtree, Bitner, 2000)

In rural India the penetration of SST in service
sector is limited to internet banking, railway ticket reservation and accessing
some Government’s services through mobile phones.

Technology readiness
& digital divide in India

Technology readiness has an impact on adopting
technologies. Adoption of SST needs consumer’s involvement, therefore the
perceived benefit for using SST as well as the attitude of consumers towards it
plays a major role in its adoption. Consumers face several psychological barriers
that paralyze their desire for adoption of new innovation. These may be
perceived risk, changes in current practices and cultural barriers. Many of the
Indian consumers like to interact with people while getting services, whether
it is withdrawing money from bank, shopping in a store or checking in airport
physically. Apart from personal factors, technology adoption is also affected
by the technological infrastructure of the country in terms of electricity,
IT penetration, teledensity and internet industry. Tremendous growth of information technology and
telecommunication has fuelled the gap between the privileged and
underprivileged section of the society in India. According to S.S. Rao (2005)
in India, some states like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra
Pradesh in India are in advantageous position in terms of digitalisation than Bihar
and Uttar Pradesh. Within a state also the disparity is much wider between
urban and rural population, within urban between educated and uneducated populace
and even within educated between rich and poor section of the society. India has a
population of over one billion, 69% living in villages. with adult literacy
rate is about 62.8% and female literacy rate is about 50.8% as on 2014. Some
recent study has revealed that internet penetration in India is less than 10%,
it lies somewhere around 6.5%. Only 2% of the Indian population prefers reading
in English (Sujata P. Deshmukh, Prashant Deshmukh and G.TThampi, 2013) whereas
most of the websites or service applications are based on English.  

Some successful
technology enabled projects which have reached to masses in India

Computerized railway
reservation system–
This is one of the most frequently used internet based services which has benefited
the common men in India.

ATM & Phone banking– The
penetration as well as the growth of ATM banking is very high in India. Even in
a very remote village a man in a dhoti withdrawing money from ATM has become a
common scenario. As per RBI report 2014, the compound average growth rate of
ATM in India is 25%. Most of the banks are offering mobile banking technology
enabled services which include mobile payment like transfer of funds, payment
of bills and other payment services.

E-choupal- ITC
has introduced this program in 2000 which helps to connect farmers via internet
for providing various services like procuring quality seeds, agricultural
products, pesticides etc. as well as aqua cultural products. It gave a common
platform to the farmers to get various updates on current market rate, weather
forecasting. More than 4 million farmers got benefited by e-choupals with 6500
access points.

Internet Saathis–
A program launched in July, 2015 by Tata and Google to reduce the digital gap
in India. A group of women, equipped with smart phone, tablets and trained in
internet usage aim to help other rural women to take the advantage of ICT in India’s interior. This program is trying to link with Centre’s
digital initiatives and schemes. Also to reach the facilities of e commerce a
proposal with the major player like Amazon, PayTm and Snap deal is going on. Already
2 lakhs women have joined as tech saathis and nearly 500 women are joining the
network every week. Along with that Google has set up 16 Wi-Fi enabled railway
station with a plan to expand 100 with 2016.

Akashganga– This is dairy information service
kiosk used by the milkmen in Anand, Gujrat. It helps to generate id to each
milkman and help them to get payslip, weigh the fat content of milk and provide
information on many other animal husbandry related issues. This IT enabled
service has been implemented at around 600 locations for the members of milk
cooperative being connected. This system is used 365 day a year. (Parghi, 2003)

Akshaya
e-centres–
This is technology enabled service in Kerala which give ICT access to all
section of society even in a remote area. It provides information on job
opportunities, training in IT literacy and help to generate overall economic
growth.

Bhoomi -As a part of Government of
India initiative, Karnataka Government has set up a it enabled National
Information Centre called Bhoomi, in 1991.Over the years this software has helped
thousands of farmers to generate the records of land ownership.

Mobile Apps-
A recent survey
of Eriksson consumer lab has given a report saying that Indian spend on an
average three hours a day with their smart phones. They spend time with this
gadget for messaging, shopping, watching cricket or news, or listening music. Usage
of m-wallet, booking cab or movie tickets, ordering food from restaurants are
some other categories where the mobile apps are used frequently. Though some of
the mobile-app services are limited to either cities or towns.

Conclusions

Self-service technologies have
revolutionised the way of delivering services to provide maximum benefits at
marginal cost. Across globe the involvement of customers in the service process
and adoption of SST in services is showing a continuous upward trend. Automated
teller machine, self-service vending machines, e-commerce or m-commerce,
interactive kiosks and many other technology driven services provide more
fulfilling, easy and convenient services at an optimum cost. With the
continuous improvement in IT infrastructure and Government’s supports, the digital
divide in India can be bridged and eventually the usage of SST in service
sector will be adopted by masses of India. “Indians lead global consumers in
demand for self-service technology” the survey report once done in urban India,
would be true even for villagers living in a corner of India.

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