Automation and the human touch
There are robots all around us, and a whole lot of them want us to buy something.
Every day, you and your customers interact with automated sales or customer service menus, send or receive automated emails, are greeted by online chat bots, and receive automated notifications. The robots choose the ads you see, and the next video or song in your queue.
In many ways, this sort of automation makes our lives much easier. No doubt you have had many positive interactions with sales, service, and marketing automation, both as a salesperson and as a consumer. But the bad interactions tend to be far more memorable…and far more damaging to the user experience.
We’ve all had those interactions. The automated menu that offers no clear path to the option we need or to a human who can help. The off-target or too-frequent automated emails clogging up our inboxes. The chat bot that can’t chat or the answer bot that can’t answer.
There might even be a robot laughing randomly in the corner of your kitchen right now…
The point is, bad automated interactions can be really bad. It’s not surprising, then, that many salespeople are skeptical of attempts to automate any part of the sales process.
After all, salespeople understand the importance of every touchpoint with their customers and prospects. They understand the importance of the human touch to the sales process.
But when CRM automation is done right, the robots can actually help you give sales a human touch.
To care is human
So what is the human touch? Put simply, your customers want to feel cared for.
Any CRM automation strategy that doesn’t keep customer care at its core is unlikely to improve the customer experience. Worse, your company runs the risk of building automations that frustrate or alienate customers.
This is why it’s so important for salespeople to get involved with CRM adoptions and implementations early. You know how to keep customers happy. When you take an active role in CRM automation planning, you can advocate for automations that will help you build and maintain strong customer relationships.
For example, I recently got another excellent automated email from my vet. It was a quick follow-up after an appointment the previous day, and it began like this: “We just want to check in and see how the very adorable Finley is doing today.”
It may not seem like much, but “very adorable” is exactly the phrase my vet tech used to describe my little buddy the day before. As a result, I didn’t realize at first that this was an automated email.
Let me emphasize that: I didn’t realize I was reading an automated email, and I do this for a living.
On closer inspection, the automation was obvious, especially since the email subject was super impersonal (“__________ has sent a query/reply”—yikes). But whoever set this system up left a field for each pet’s name, and the staff were smart enough to add some personalized adjectives.
Those tiny steps gave what could otherwise have been an impersonal follow-up a nice, human touch. I felt good reading this automated email, and all it took was someone typing three words into a form field.
Automating too many of your interactions is incredibly impersonal, and will be very obvious very quickly. But automating some of the more basic communications, especially easily-triggered follow-up emails, can make a lot of sense. It saves you time, while also ensuring you don’t miss a valuable touch point.
And if you do it right, you can make your customers feel special just like I felt!
Technology cannot replace humanity
But it can enable and enhance it!
The key is to strike a balance: Which tasks are better suited to machines, and which are better suited to humans?
To answer this question, you need to first answer a few other questions: How much time do you have to spend on each contact? How valuable is your time? Does your business model require specific types of interactions? Do any customers or prospects require specific types of interactions?
For most salespeople, their time is best spent prospecting and selling. That means any time saved can be extremely valuable, both to you as a salesperson and to your company.
Good automation helps you keep in touch while you keep selling. How much time would you save using automated follow-up or confirmation emails? Even if you don’t automate any of your actual communications, how many headaches would you save by setting automated follow-up reminders?
Finding a balance
Automating too many of your interactions is incredibly impersonal, and will be very obvious very quickly. But automating some of the more basic communications, especially easily-triggered follow-up emails, can make a lot of sense. It saves you time, while also ensuring you don’t miss a valuable touch point.
And if you do it right, you can make your customers feel special just like I felt!
The trick is to save automated interactions for the really basic stuff, and step in yourself for more complicated or important interactions.
All the while, anything you can do to make automated interactions feel personal is usually a good idea. If possible, make sure your system allows you to pre-set some personalized info for emails. Also, make sure your system reminds you of important dates, from calls to meetings to follow-ups to birthdays.
Remember: Don’t save time at your customers’ expense. It’s a whole lot easier to keep selling to existing customers than to find new ones! And it’s a whole lot easier to keep selling to happy, engaged customers than to customers who only see you when you want to sell them something.
Automation cannot and should not replace good salespeople. But good salespeople cannot and should not reject good automation.
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