Do you feel abandoned when you’re expected to handle everything on your own in a store? You’re not alone. Amie Gustafsson, a newly minted PhD in Business Administration at Karlstad Business School and researcher at CTF, has studied the state we find ourselves in when technology fails and we are left with a rigid digital source code as our only companion.
– Self-service strips away the human relationship, and without human touchpoints that can repair trust after a machine failure, customer loyalty to the brand becomes very short-lived.
How do unmanned stores and self-service affect customers’ sense of service and trust?
– It makes trust extremely fragile due to what research calls the anthropomorphism paradox: the more human-like or accessible a digital service tries to appear, the less forgiving we are of its technical errors, says Amie Gustafsson, university lecturer in Business Administration at Karlstad Business School and researcher at the Service Research Center (CTF). When an unmanned store or chatbot fails to live up to our high expectations, we experience algorithm aversion and immediately turn our backs on the technology.
Why do many companies still organize technology and people as separate tracks even though they are interconnected in practice?
– It stems from deeply rooted silo thinking. The marketing department procures technology to maximize efficiency, while HR handles staff as a separate issue. This completely overlooks the fact that when the machine fails, the customer automatically shifts responsibility to the creator – that is, the company and its employees. My dissertation shows that you cannot upgrade the technical system without simultaneously calibrating the social system. Organizing them separately creates “phygital gaps” that ultimately undermine the entire service system.
So, what happens to us as people when stores, banks, and customer service become increasingly automated?
– We sometimes experience a competence shock. When we enter an automated environment, we are suddenly expected to do the job ourselves – we become “partially employed” without training. Moreover, research shows a paradoxical truth: we are far less forgiving of machines than of humans. We subconsciously expect technology to be flawless. So, when a self-checkout or chatbot makes even the smallest mistake, we experience enormous cognitive friction and a feeling of being abandoned in the physical space (social abandonment). That is the core of the phygital gaps I map in my dissertation.
What does “phygital” mean – and how do we notice it in everyday life?
– Phygitality is the complete fusion of the physical space and digital code. It’s not just an app in a store, but an intertwined reality. We notice it in everyday life when a digital bug has immediate physical and social consequences in the space we are in. You stand in a physical store but are guided by a digital algorithm. Because we carry a subconscious expectation that technology in this environment should function perfectly, the clash between rigid digital source code and our physical everyday life becomes very apparent as soon as the system breaks down.
Why do some digital services feel “empty” or impersonal – even when they work perfectly from a technical standpoint?
– It’s about a psychological vacuum of trust. We humans assess machines solely based on outcomes – never on intent. When a person messes up, we can accept that they “had a bad day” or were unlucky – but a machine has no emotions, and its mistakes are always seen as completely unforgivable system failures. Research shows that trust in a robot drops dramatically after just a single mistake. That’s why a technically perfect service can feel empty; it has the ability to act (efficiency) but lacks the human capacity to care (social presence).
Can a good customer experience really be created if the staff behind the scenes are not doing well at work?
– No, or it depends. My dissertation shows that there is a direct technical-to-social spillover. Because customers have very low tolerance for machine errors, their frustration doesn’t disappear when the technology fails – it lands directly on human staff. Employees become the system’s “human shock absorbers.” If staff do not have the right organizational resources, mandate, and a supportive backstage climate, their well-being quickly deteriorates. The customer experience can never be better than the structural reality in which employees operate.
So, what is required to make technology and people truly work together in the services of the future?
– It requires companies to strive for phygital congruence, which is the core concept of my dissertation. It means a deliberate, touchpoint-close balance between the digital front line (frontstage) and employees’ resources backstage. Because machines are rigid and customers demand perfection from them, every digital touchpoint must be matched with the right organizational tools for staff. Employees must be given greater autonomy, proper field training, and a supportive climate so they have the resources to step in as a human safety link at the exact moment when technology fails and customer tolerance runs out.
Could digitalization become more human—and what would it take to achieve that?
– Yes, if we understand human psychological triggers in interactions with machines. Research shows, for example, that if a machine makes a mistake, trust can be restored if it offers a sincere and personalized apology combined with strong socio-relational capability. Companies could use tools like the one I developed in my dissertation: Phygital Gap Analysis (PGA). It is a diagnostic tool that helps managers conduct an internal audit to identify invisible gaps where technology creates human friction and shows how these can be designed away.
Is technical efficiency always good – or do we risk losing something important along the way?
– If we maximize technical efficiency at the expense of social interaction, we suffer from a dangerous sub-optimization (according to socio-technical theory). We design away the system’s resilience. Because people find it so hard to forgive machine errors, a fully automated and “efficient” service often leads customers to abandon the brand after a bad experience. By rationalizing away the human element, we lose the unique ability to improvise, show empathy, and repair broken relationships when digital code is not enough.
How can the services of the future be designed to both function smoothly and make us feel good?
– By adopting a Human Experience (HX) perspective as a normative compass. We must accept how human psychology works: we demand perfection from technology but need empathy from people. Future services must be designed for interruption – that is, the seamless transition from digital efficiency to human support. Well-being among both customers and staff should not be seen as a “soft” HR issue, but as the fundamental structural fuel required for a phygital service system to function, remain congruent, and survive.
