I love do-it-yourself technology. I gave up tellers long before my bank started charging $3 per conversation with a live person. Even this summer, when there were virtually no lines at our cinema multiplex, I still bought my movie tickets from the self-service machine. I even enjoy the self check-out at the grocery store, even as a disembodied voice virtually accuses me of theft ("Unexpected item in bagging area") on a frequent basis.

Maybe that makes me a control freak, I don't know. But I do know that many Americans aren't nearly as excited to see machines replace human beings, especially when it comes to customer service.

But that is where we are all headed, though not without some trepidation. So I thought I'd highlight some good news from the "do-it-yourself" front.

First up, BellSouth last week announced improvements to its online customer service intended to help customers find information more easily and act on their own behalf. The centerpiece of the improvements is a newly designed natural language search engine that makes it easier for customers to find the information for which they are looking.

"Previously we had three different types of search options--a product catalog, an FAQ and a Yellow Pages option," said Ed Dauginas, senior manager, E-service, for BellSouth. "Our customers found it confusing--they didn't know where to ask their questions."

The one-box search is very "Google-like," he admits, but that's because customers want it that way. And BellSouth knows that because it offers customers 15 different surveys on its site to gauge their opinion.

Duane Reade, a New York-based drug store chain, didn't have to survey its customers to find out that a group of them frequenting a 24-hour store in Manhattan wanted the same access to a 24-hour pharmacy that patrons of a Duane Reade outlet only three blocks away already had. Rather than spread its pharmacists thinner, the company experimented with a kiosk that was connected to a private broadband network connection from New Edge Networks and came equipped with document scanning and video-conferencing.

Now customers could scan in their prescription orders, talk to the pharmacist, travel the three blocks to pick up their prescription or have the medicine delivered to them.

It worked so well that when David Siegel took over as director of business development for Duane Reade, he expanded the project to 15 other stores and 45 non-store sites including medical office buildings, hospital emergency rooms and senior citizen living facilities.

"The focus of this is to improve customer service," Siegel commented.

Duane Reade is now hoping to cash in on its innovation by licensing the system to other pharmacies.

Not surprisingly, Siegel compares the kiosks to ATMs -- the predominant form of banking now, more than 30 years after they were introduced to consumers.

Given the cost of labor and the desire to do more with less, while not compromising customer service, announcements such as these two are the tip of a growing iceberg. Where such efforts will succeed, however, is in their ability to put customer service first, and to continually improve with customer feedback.

At my grocery store, the four self-service checkout lines are now monitored by a lone human being, whose job it is to automatically turn off the annoying threats and help confused consumers navigate the technology. That's one fourth the manpower of four checkout lines, but 100% less frustrating than the unmanned system initially was.

If DIY is going to succeed, it will take such efforts to reduce frustration and convince more people to be like me--at least in this one respect.

E-mail me at cwilson3@primediabusiness.com.