Why You Need to Keep it Real For Your Customers
A voice mail.
An honest-to-goodness real voice
mail from an actual human being.
I don't get many of those these days, do you?
🦒 In New York last week, I stayed at the Hotel Giraffe for the first time.
Nice, boutique property near Madison Square Park. Reasonable price (which is not a given, because NYC hotels are as pricey as a lock of Taylor Swift's hair these days).
Three days before check-in, Amber from the hotel called. (I sent it to voice mail, obviously. I'm not a sociopath who actually ANSWERS their phone when it's an unknown
caller!)
Amber just wanted to confirm the reservation, and see if there was anything I needed before
arrival.
WOW!
Not a text. Not an email. (although she did send one afterwards). Not a robot using its computer brain to send an automated message on a triggered schedule.
As we enter this AI era, perhaps kicking and screaming along the way, something important is happening. And it's an opportunity for you. And for me.
The opportunity is to KEEP IT REAL
The more AI, efficiency, and automation are embraced (and they will be, the financial benefits are too enormous to ignore), the rare instances of human touch will stand OUT like never before.
Imagine you're in an aviary. Nothing but birds all around. And then you see a rabbit hop by. Instantly you'll think "Hey, that's weird. What's that rabbit doing around
here?"
This is the way genuine, human contact will work in the near future. AI and automation are the birds. Human kindness and empathy - keeping it
real, not robotic - is the rabbit.
Not long ago I was delivering a presentation to a large, Canadian bank. Until recently, when customers finished
paying off a home loan, the bank would send an email and then deduct $250 for a loan disposition fee.
That's a real kick in the nuts,
eh?
Now, to Keep it Real, the chief loan officer calls the customer personally to congratulate her on paying off the note, and then gives her a
$250 Visa gift card.
Does the bank "lose" $500 because they made that switch? Mathematically, yes. But the goodwill and word of mouth gained is worth
a LOT more than $500, I'd wager.
Of course, this approach would work two years ago. Or 10 years ago. Or a generation ago.
But it works BETTER today and will work EVEN BETTER next year, because all of us are going to be enveloped by AI and automation to the degree that actual human
contact can become a meaningful business differentiator.
In a flock of birds, how can you be the
rabbit?
