As the world of business becomes increasingly automated and technology continues to advance, now more than ever, it’s important for companies to maintain a human touch. Unlike automated solutions, a human touch can help your business demonstrate empathy and help you understand your customers’ problems more efficiently.
There are a variety of ways that businesses can maintain a human touch, from keeping social media communications personal and human to utilizing their customer service function to understand their customers better. Here are a few other reasons why successful products and businesses have a human touch.
Increases trust and improves credibility
By maintaining a human touch across your business, products and services, you’re immediately opening yourself up to increased levels of trust and credibility. People buy from people; therefore, you need to ensure that your business is authentic and stays true to your customers. For example, whilst many businesses use chatbots to help implement their customer service strategy, they simply do not offer the nuances of human touch, which is why it’s important to use a fully-fledged customer service team where possible.
If your customers have a good experience, they’ll naturally associate your business with a positive emotion which in turn, promotes trust. However, on the other hand, if they have a poor experience, it will evoke the complete opposite. Trust helps businesses cultivate customer loyalty so that your customers return again and again.
Makes use of creativity and creates authenticity
When your business or product has a human touch, you instantly make room for increased levels of creativity. This creativity can take form in a variety of ways, from your social media and email strategy all the way to your brand identity. For example, businesses can tap into a variety of trends across their communications to show that they’re relatable, agile and receptive to human events. This is a great way to show personality and connect with your customers, especially if you have a demographic who are in tune with social trends.
Human touch is also important for generating new ideas. It is important to remember that machines can’t formulate new ideas without human assistance. An example of this would be the Microgaming slots available at Platin casino; they have many different slot themes taken from movies, books, animals, and video games; this all involves the human touch because a machine would not be able to generate these ideas. Another example would be art, although AI can create images, they require a detailed the prompt which would be the human touch. Some people would argue that creativity is the only advantage humanity has against AI.
More reach-ability
Many customers want brands to be reachable and trustworthy. They want the brand they’re investing in to be able to solve their pain points and help identify actionable solutions in a humane, accessible way. By incorporating a human touch across your business strategy, your customers will instantly build more trust in your company. For example, implementing a live agent in your customer service team can add a human touch to your business and let your customers know that you are there for them 24/7 should they need anything. Customers want to be treated like real people, not sales, so it’s important that they are treated with empathy.
Enhances customer relationships
Implementing human interaction across your business will enable you to enhance your customer relationships. This is especially important across a customer service function where customers may come to you with specific queries or concerns. Customers will not feel naturally fulfilled by a chatbot as they would do with a real-life customer service agent, so it’s important that needs are met so you can understand your customers better and in turn, serve them better.
Creates an emotional connection
There are a variety of measures you can take to create an emotional connection with your customers – this is known as brand intimacy. Brand intimacy can manifest itself in multiple ways, however, it usually involves being authentic with your customers, telling stories that matter, connecting with your community and identifying what drives your customers to invest in your business. An emotional connection will ultimately scale your business to success as it will instill positive emotions and prompt your customers to recommend your products and/or service(s) to other people in the future.
Increases brand loyalty
Brand loyalty can help you catapult your business to ultimate success. In addition to driving growth, new customers who buy your products and then become ‘brand loyal’ will turn into repeat customers in the future. Not only that, but they’ll also recommend your products and services to their friends so that they too become ambassadors for your brand.
When managed correctly, brand loyalty can become a self-sustaining system. You can build brand loyalty by staying consistent, improving your customer service, understanding your customers’ journeys and rewarding loyalty. Once you implement these practices, you’ll have customers buying from you more and more, and they will become more loyal each time they do so.
Collects genuine feedback
A brand that is receptive to feedback is a brand that thrives. If you’re a start-up, you’ll find that there are structural and organizational issues to begin with, but that’s a natural steppingstone. If you’ve released a new product or service, you may even find that you’re receiving more feedback (or complaints) than one of your bestselling products for example, but again, this is all part of exploring new territories.
By being receptive to feedback and taking your customers’ points on board, you can ensure that you’re improving your products and services for the next time around.
Conclusion
Overall, human touch is an invaluable marketing tool both in B2B and B2C. Whilst automation allows room for more capacity and more streamlined ways of working, people want to do business with people, not machines. Therefore, it’s important we focus on building new contacts and reaching new audiences humanely and authentically; the correct way to do this is by infusing a human touch throughout your business strategy.
