As a Top 10 Global Thought Leader and Influencer on Customer Loyalty, I was recently interviewed regarding my thoughts on AI and how it might affect customer loyalty for small businesses. Today, we are certainly living in the “digital era.” Technological innovations are exploding with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).
As a professional speaker, business team trainer and coach, I have become curious of what AI can do. And, while many businesses are rushing to capitalize on this new innovation and benefits, they need to pay attention and not lose their focus on the most critical aspect of any customer experience, which is still the human connection and personal touch.
Technology will certainly change how we communicate, behave, think and dramatically decrease our people skills. In many businesses, they have focused so much on technology that they are now at a relationship disadvantage which has led to record lows in overall customer satisfaction across all businesses and industries.
“In this digital revolution, human interaction skills have become a premium advantage for small businesses.”
I like to help my clients understand that is okay to recognize the competitive opportunity of using technology to perform basic jobs, especially if it will enable your employees to focus on what is most important: building relationships that result in higher customer loyalty, retention, lifetime value, and job satisfaction.
Unfortunately, the obsession of technology by many businesses has dramatically decreased the focus and emphasis on training their customer-facing employees to build rapport, show empathy and compassion, and treat the customer like a real person.
We are certainly leaning more to building a world of high tech and low touch. However, many customers still long for a sense of community, belonging, and purpose. A world in which people know our name, what we do, what is important to us, and trust one another. Trust has become an endangered value. Those who understand that human touch is essential to any experience—especially a great customer experience—will flourish.
Personally and professionally, success is increasingly about creating and building human connections.
“Human interaction, compassion, empathy, and communication skills will become your business advantage in the digital world.”
The most memorable customer experiences are the ones where an emotional connection was made by an employee with a customer through feeling something special. Get to know your customers. Humanize them. Humanize yourself. Customer relationships are critical in a world of digital disruption as small businesses and organizations try to figure out the new reality of human and AI interactions in designing their customer experience.
Human Connections Have Become Increasingly Rare:
We all want and need relationships. I believe, that if your business and employees work at getting to know your customers as a person with family, concerns, and dreams, you will dominate your competition. Your customers do not want their customer experience to be filled with endless robotic encounters. Yes, some automated transactions have become faster, easier, and more reliable, helping you to provide a good customer experience. Just don’t make the human connection increasingly rare in your business, instead make it more valuable. If you can continue to deliver personalized service you will create and sustain relationships that will positively impact customer loyalty, increase in customers and an increase in your bottom-line revenues and profitability.
“Training employees to develop the people skills necessary to build relationships is essential to the success of your customer experience and business.”
Customers desire recognition and a personalized experience while technology can never be empathetic. It cannot express empathy, make people feel cared for, express emotions in a relatable way, or make people smile and laugh. Technology will never understand the values of kindness, much less come close to adding the human touch to a customer’s experience. In short, technology cannot provide genuine Disney-like hospitality.
Studies have shown that strong soft skills boost employee productivity and retention by 12% and deliver a 250% return on investment.
Many businesses spend 98-100% of training on the technical part of the job and breeze over their customer experience service philosophy because they think it is common sense. Boy are they wrong. If you want your business to thrive in the future, train your people on soft skills to master the art of relationship building. I promise you the results will be “MAGICAL”!
Need help? Contact John today for a FREE Discovery Call to learn more about his customer experience training programs and presentations.
John Formica is America’s Customer Experience Coach, team culture expert, keynote speaker, and Top 10 Global Thought Leader and Influencer on Customer Loyalty. For information on customer experience programs, leadership training, team culture, business growth, how to find and hire great people and tailored training programs just for you or to book John, contact 704-965-4090 or visit our website at JohnFormica.com.