In a world where ‘digital’ and ‘remote’ are the new normal, how do you create authentic human connection with your customers? Having your contact details hidden away in a corner of your website is no longer good enough.
People want to be able to make contact over multiple channels, and receive a personal, efficient service at all times. It’s become more important than ever to humanize a brand- and today we look at how.
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Why the Human Touch Matters More Than Ever
Standing out from the crowd has always been hard, but in a saturated digital landscape with no global borders, it can seem near-impossible. While it has evened the business landscape a little for smaller businesses to compete on a level playing field with giant entities, it has also made getting your voice heard in the crowd a lot harder.
Hundreds of factors go into creating a customer experience good enough to speak for itself, of course. But without a spark of ‘connection’ fostered by a human touch, it rings hollow. Humans are hard-wired to build relationships and meaningful interactions, and more consumers than ever before are staying loyal to brands that build rapport with them and share their values.
Many businesses become hyper-focused on what competitors are doing, not listening to what their customers want. And yet, that’s the exact opposite of smart!
Keeping the Human Touch in the Digital World
So how do we add back that critical human touch to every customer experience?
Create Memorable Experiences
Customers seek interactions that are rewarding, memorable, and deliver results. You want your clients to think of you before the competition when they’re in the sales cycle. There’s a ton of ways to ensure you achieve this practically, of course, but what’s most important is that you achieve it at all.
From creating a unique brand voice on social platforms to remembering to honor your existing customers and their needs, keeping the human in interactions is critical.
And make sure you aren’t just ‘yelling into the void’ with your social posts and messages. It doesn’t take much to provide an authentic, human experience through customer engagement online. Interact with your customers, respond to their thoughts and feedback, and help foster a sense of community around your product.
People want to feel that their voices matter to you, so invite those voices to the table and engage with them. This helps develop a true community around your product, instead of seeing social platforms as nothing but a hard-sell marketing opportunity.
Social Voices
Customers are well aware that more and more digital communication is being handled by AI and bots. However, they don’t want to feel like they’re talking to a machine! Clinical communication isn’t efficient if it doesn’t resonate with the human on one side of the interaction.
Social media has done a lot to let brands create a voice that feels human for the end users. Whether it’s using the skills of a video marketing agency to help you create compelling, humanized content in a vehicle that speaks to them, writing compelling blogs that speak to their needs and curiosity, or simply making sure your chatbots are efficient, light-hearted and engaging, keeping the human in the center of your goals is critical.
Personalization
Personalization is as important in your customer service efforts as in your marketing. People want to consume products that align with their values and serve needs they have, not face generic product pushes irrelevant to their needs.
Brands that don’t embrace personalization through smart data handling are brands doomed to lose out to the competition which does.
Personalization has become a little more difficult in a world where growing concerns over online privacy, tracking cookies, and other aspects are rising. These are, of course, very valid concerns for your customers!
As such, it pays to look towards more ethical and engaged ways of procuring this data- customer surveys, opt-in mailing lists, and other formats, instead of relying on intrusive online tracking. Sometimes, it’s smart to ask for data than assume you can take it!
When you ‘let customers in’, and allow them to discover the humanity behind a brand, with communication that suits them and excellent support when they dedicate resources to you, you add back the human touch that’s been absent from many areas of business of late.
While data, stats, and trends matter, so does creating a ‘real’ human experience that sticks out from the crowd. Without your customers, you have no business at all, so making the ‘human touch’ a priority in your efforts to connect with them just makes sense.
