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Technology is driving business, but it is not enough on its own to drive success. Creating a personal touch remains one of the most powerful and effective ways for a brand to stand out from the crowd.
The problem is that companies tend to move away from the “human touch” over time. Without a deliberate effort to stay in touch, they quickly sink into a state of cold-hearted activity and calculation of results.
With the recent popularity of AI and automation technology, it begs the question: How can you integrate all these new technological tools into your business plans without losing your human touch?
Let’s dive into some of the best ways I’ve found that businesses can get the most out of cutting-edge technology without losing sight of the human experience along the way.
Related: The Human Touch: What It Takes to Maintain Meaningful Customer Relationships in an AI-Driven World
1. Embrace a humans first approach
In SEO (Search Engine Optimization), marketers use things like keywords, links, and background activity on a website to ensure that their content drives organic traffic to their company’s site. This optimizes online content to ensure it ranks well in search engines.
While everything is technically focused, it’s critical that SEO experts remember to put the reader first while crafting their content. Making high search engine rankings a top priority can result in confusing text that doesn’t meet the reader’s needs. In other words, SEO experts must prioritize readers (i.e. users/customers) first and the search engines that point those readers to their content second.
The same principle applies to any application of technology to business. You should never prioritize technology tools as an end in themselves. Instead, they should have a clear benefit that helps you better serve your target audience.
In marketing, this is called human-to-human marketing. In customer service, a consumer-centric approach is essential. And when I say essential, I’m not exaggerating.
During the pandemic, when companies used technological tools, hand over fist to maintain their connection with customers, CGS surveyed thousands of consumers. The goal was to see how they were doing in online customer service interactions.
The results were revealing. More than a third of respondents (37.8% in the US and 39.1% in the UK) not only said that having a human element in the interaction was important. They said the opportunity to connect with a human agent was one of the top three requirements for a happy interaction.
If you want to embrace technology without losing the human touch, start by prioritizing the customer over the technology in every situation.
Related: In an age of artificial intelligence, there’s always room for human intelligence
2. Don’t let technology hide your humanity
Technology can have an infinite number of applications for a brand. You can use it to speed up invoicing, track customer profiles, forecast sales cycles, the list goes on.
One thing technology should never be, however, is a way out of the police. You should never use technology to avoid a problem, such as dealing with an unhappy customer.
In fact, in the CGS survey listed above, nearly half of the people asked wanted brands to be more transparent about how to get help from a human. They didn’t want to have to do extra work to find a way to bypass an automated customer service system.
When technology is implemented solely to save money or make an internal problem go away at the customer’s expense, it can quickly become a misuse of its value. Remember that technology should always improve the customer experience. This can be a direct or indirect influence, but it should always be a factor.
It’s one thing to use technology to make things easier or reduce overhead; however, if this hides the humanity of your brand, you should look for a better option.
3. Use technology to facilitate human-centered activities
One of the simplest ways to approach technology effectively is to use it to optimize (and by extension, easier to invest in and maintain) “human touch” business activities.
For example, a brand podcast is a great way to show the humanity of a brand. It requires real-life recordings of the experts and people behind your products and services.
That said, a podcast is a lot of work. This can make it difficult for companies to pull the trigger on a recurring program. This is a perfect opportunity for technology to help, and in more ways than one.
One example is the many AI and automation tools available to streamline the podcast production process. Simon Hodgkins points this out AI is already using NLP (natural language processing) to automate transcription services.
The CMO adds that AI can also help with post-production. It can remove background noise and correct irregularities in sound levels. AI can even generate helpers like sample notes and social posts.
You can go even further by having an extended marketing tool develop a longer blog post based on an episode that goes deeper into a topic. You’ll still want a human editor to give your content another go, but the overall process is faster, more affordable, and expands your reach.
Related: The rise (and rise) of branded podcasts
Technology and our humanity should not be mutually exclusive aspects of business. With a little forethought, it’s easy to get the two to overlap.
Adopt a human-first mindset and evaluate technology to make sure it’s helping you instead of hiding the human touch of your brand. If you can maintain this mindset, you can find endless ways to use technology to give you a competitive edge in your industry.
