How can companies successfully combine the efficiency of technology with the personal touch humans provide to serve customers?
A. I think that is a great question. Let me offer a couple of observations first. One is that there is no such thing as, in effect, a hard and fast rule that says machines or automation can’t be personal. Nor is there a hard and fast rule that says that people are, by definition, very personal and human or otherwise. By that I mean that a bad implementation of a service interaction by a person can be impersonal and awkward to customers; and a bad implementation by a machine can be off-putting to customers. Of course we know that, in fact, humans have for hundreds of years delivered outstanding service where there are well-trained and capable people. But finding and retaining those well-trained and capable employees is becoming increasingly difficult in many industries, both because these employees are in short supply and because they are increasingly expensive. Increasingly – and this was stimulus for writing the book – we are in a situation where machines can perform service functions
