My consulting clients often ask, “What should be my focus for sustained success?” The question evokes a provocative response: What if success transcends profits, cost-cutting and operational efficiencies, leveraging instead engagement and nurturing profound customer relationships to catalyze growth? Despite technology tools like Generative AI suggesting that human touch is outdated, the true artistry of a dynamic leader lies in adeptly harnessing these tools to personalize business. Below are some ways to elevate the human touch in this age of AI.
Unleashing team talents
Energized leaders curate an extraordinary employee experience. Today’s strategy is to become a human-centric organization, accelerating engagement and transforming your team into the heartbeat of the organization. However, only 1 in 10 people possesses the skills needed to manage, making ongoing leadership training essential.
- Provide regular employee feedback. Consistent feedback increases retention, boosts morale, and positively impacts overall company performance.
- Upskill your talent. With 90 percent of companies still forecasting a significant skills gap, proactive upskilling initiatives are required to future-proof your organization. (McKinsey)
- Engage employee passion. Create cross-functional employee teams to impact culture and performance, and encourage passionate debate to enhance organizational effectiveness.
Pivot your perspective
Customers are the lifeblood of any enterprise, and investing in their experience can profoundly increase revenue and retention. Making this the year of the customer involves digging deeper to understand the customer experience at every interaction.
- Listen to your customers. Establish a customer satisfaction/engagement process and use those analytics to understand customer sentiments.
- Build loyalty through relationships. Senior leadership team should contact or visit valuable customers, constantly learning and challenging your team to improve the client experience.
- Calculate customer retention. By increasing customer retention by 5 percent, a company can increase revenue 15 percent or more. (HubSpot)
- Personalize all customer communications. Personalization often results in a 10 to 15 percent increase in revenue, enhancing the marketing return on investment by 10 to 30 percent. (McKinsey)
Enter the AI catalyst
Generative AI can be a driver of organizational success, focused on augmenting the human touch rather than eliminating it. Human creativity and understanding are what unlock AI’s true potential. (MIT Sloan)
- Improve customer service. Using AI can improve the customer experience by efficiently handling routine transactions.
- Streamline business communications. AI can aid in brainstorming ideas and improving clarity for marketing and communications.
- Enhance recruitment and talent acquisition. AI can save HR time and effort.
Challenge yourself and your team to focus on ways to maximize the human touch. Cultivate an organization with empowered employees, loyal customer ambassadors and the right technology. Harnessing these powers will allow you to concentrate on strategies that accelerate growth. ●
Judy Bodenhamer is founder and managing director of Client Experience Group
