You’re pretty friendly for a robot

https://www.storenvy.com/products/72737-sad-robot-print

In the VC-backed startup world you’ll hear two things over and over:

1. We are built to scale. We’ve invested hugely in automation and are ready to scale to 100x with one extra customer service agent and an extra $50 in our Amazon Web Services account.
2. We put the customer first above all else. We listen, we iterate, we listen, we iterate…

Now, it’s possible I’m mis-understanding what people mean when they say these things, but to my ears these two claims sound antagonistic.

Nobody thinks building a highly automated machine that spins off millions in profit is a bad idea. Equally, nobody thinks it’s smart to ignore customers. But look around and it becomes quickly clear the former tends to win out over the latter — try giving Apple or Google a call. So we’re left with a question, particularly in a financial business where we operate at the most intimate level of a customer’s data and future: how do we reach across the digital divide to connect without just rebuilding the manual monoliths of our forebears? Is hiding your phone number better or worse than bored customer service agents disappointing customers?

I don’t have the answer, but there are three principles worth bearing in mind when designing the technology behind the brands of the future;

1. Communication isn’t connection — A branded email isn’t connection, a bored call centre agent isn’t connection, a net promoter score isn’t connection. Connection occurs when a customer feels heard, not necessarily in the literal sense, but that their thoughts, feelings and designs on the universe have been heard and comprehended. We’ve all experienced stirring rhetoric and felt connection — to the speaker, to others we perceive to share our perspective. The point is to inhabit our customer’s position rather than demand they explain it to us, and so anticipate their needs rather than try to dictate them. It’s important so I think it bears repetition — connection doesn’t require contact, it requires thought and attention, care and clarity and the capability to inhabit another’s emotional context.
2. Robots are great at dumb shit, humans are pretty bad at it — Your smartphone can hold about 900,000 pages of text in its short-term memory, while you’d probably struggle to memorise a ten digit number in a noisy environment. Humans are bored by repetitive tasks. So while automation can be a beautiful thing when it frees our minds to create and connect, aim to lighten the load on your people and your customers, but don’t expect your robot to be able to fake a smile or fool a customer into thinking they are cared for, no matter how much fun your tone of voice is. Let robots be robots.
3. People are as sophisticated as they are complex — by now we all know Pavlov and have read Kahneman and Tversky, so we know humans are susceptible to suggestion, but also know attempts to use that suggestibility in marketing can provoke a cynical response. The truth is the feeling engendered when one is being truly cared for is very difficult to simulate, because to do so requires being actively responsive, not just making blanket assumptions about the customer. I would do almost anything to avoid talking to a customer service agent, but I know my sister wouldn’t hand over her details online till she’d heard a human voice answer her questions. Our systems have to be responsive, to allow the customer to unconsciously present their needs to us and have us respond appropriately. Measuring dwell time on the FAQ page is a start, but in the future we’ll need to be a hell of a lot more subtle in our interpretations of our customer’s needs than a 3 second timer and a pushed live chat.

TL;DR — Humans hate repetition and love being loved.