Connection. Relationships.
What does this even mean these days?
Perhaps it’s my years of marketing that have jaded me, but I’m starting to lose my soul seeing all the new automated tools that CRM platforms and AI companies are pumping out.
A few years ago HubSpot was speaking about connection with customers – but what does connection really mean?
Is it about personal relationships – you know, like you used to have with your suppliers – or is it just about scaling pretend relationship activities?
The joke when ChatGPT first came out was: people using it to flesh out emails to send, and then the recipients using ChatGPT to summarise it back into a few bullet points (before using ChatGPT to create a bloated reply back again).
Now the joke has moved to voice agents. Using AI to scale your outbound sales calls, only to have receivers use AI tools to divert them (like Daisy, which harks back to the days of ItsLenny). It’s AI tools talking to each other, all the while chewing up energy in data centres.
So much activity, so much automation, so little connection.
Where are the real relationships?
Fake relationships aren’t new of course – just think back to a few years ago when ‘handwritten cards at scale’ was a thing. Companies automating sending out ‘personal, handwritten messages’ to your contacts. You can’t make this shit up.
Amidst all this, we want real connection more than ever before.
Locally I’ve seen the craving for real connection in the most interesting of places.
There’s a pottery crafts place on my walk home. In the window recently I saw them promoting Thursday Tinder Nights. The idea is that singles can meet, and do some pottery together. ‘Good luck with that…’ I thought. And yet as I walk past, I see it is packed.
The local pub has run a few Tinder Trivia night events lately. It’s always bustling as I walk past.
In the most personal of relationships, people are tired of online, automated, non-real, activities.
They crave the real connection.
Why would our business relationships be any different?
Sure, we all love the efficiency of self service websites for a ton of things (eg I don’t want to talk to anyone when I’m ordering my socks), but for many other parts of our lives – large and small – we value the advice and connection with a real person.
We don’t want the automated IVR phone system, we don’t want the dumb chatbot that apologies for not understanding us half the time, and we don’t want the AI driven cold call for fuck’s sake.
We want exceptional customer experiences. (Maybe we need to call it ‘artisanal customer service’…)
Customer Experience matters
Think Amazon, WP Engine, HubSpot – all beautiful support experiences.
Why wouldn’t we also want that beautiful experience on the sales side too?
The opposite of banks, telcos and insurance companies – who daily contribute to the anxiety and stress of society with their cost reduction focussed ‘support’.
Big corporates, reporting to shareholders, will continue to slash costs (ie people) and replace with AI and automation.
In some areas it’s an improvement (Klarna is the poster child). While in others, not such much.
So what does this mean for us smaller businesses?
Opportunities
There’s a window of opportunity here for smaller businesses who carefully embrace AI where appropriate, and avoid it where not.
The simple rule can be: if automation and AI enhance the customer experience, then embrace it.
Otherwise avoid.
Consider the simplest of examples:
- Preparing for a call – embrace AI (summarise, ideate, review, brainstorm, pre-fill, etc).
- But making the call – avoid AI. Keep it personal. Keep it real.
Seems obvious, yet not the norm.
If it were the norm, you wouldn’t be getting the annoying cold calls, the spam emails, the ChatGPT replies, or the Apple Intelligence ads that help you lie or be that lazy clown in the office that should have been fired years ago.
If you can spot an AI bloated email, you can bet your prospects and customers can as well.
Which brings us to the opportunities ahead. Especially for small business.
Whilst big business is off ‘streamlining’ costs, you can be creating real connections.
This Year
We’re going to double down on the customer experience.
We’re going to continue to embrace AI for the areas of business where generative models make sense.
But focus on avoiding the AI driven ‘connection’ stuff.
Real connection matters.
