Sunday, September 20, 2015

MANAGEMENT SPECIAL.................. Guru Speak - Steven Van Belleghem - Human Touch

Guru Speak - Steven Van Belleghem - Human Touch


Smart companies automate the operational part of the business -to create time for their people to connect with customers

“Everything is becoming digital and because of that the value of the human touch is increasing every day,“ says Steven Van Belleghem, a professor at Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, Ghent, Belgium and an expert on the future of customer focused marketing and author of When Digital Becomes Human: The transformation of customer relationships. “This statement is based on the law of scarcity -when something becomes scarce, it increases in value. The one thing that will become scarce in the customer relationship of tomorrow is the pure human touch and because of that its value increases,“ he says. As a result, companies are dealing with a double transformation ­ digital and human.
He explains: on one hand, every company has to speed up their investments in digital, but because of this, the role of humans in a company will change as well. So the consequence of the digital transformation is the human transformation of customer relations. For instance people might be happier carrying out their bank transactions remotely, whether on a computer or mobile, but when it comes to dealing with customer service, almost everyone would rather talk to an actual person over an automated voice response system. By being smart about how they manage their digital and human capital, companies can manage to cater to both these customer needs. At an Apple store, for instance, the role of the operatives is very clearly to show customers how the device works and not actively push a product. However, the whole store is geared in such a way that the human element ultimately ends up being the deciding factor that often leads to the purchase.
Van Belleghem has spent the last several years researching how customer relationships are evolving and how they can be transformed. In 2013, he coined the term, Heartketing, or achieving a positive impact on customers, employees and society as a whole. Heartketing is a philosophy for ambitious companies, says Van Belleghem, as it's about having a major impact on society. The core idea being that a personal emotional attachment to the company is valued much more highly by customers than loyalty programmes. It involves adding a human touch to the relationship by appealing to the consumer's heart rather than his wallet. One way of doing this and bringing in the human touch is by having an emotional layer built into your digital strategy.“There are three elements of this human touch that cannot be created through digital interactions: empathy, passion and creativity.Companies that are good in those three will be tomorrow's winners,“ he says. With everything moving towards automation, as humans, it will be crucial to find ways to differentiate ourselves from technology, and it is these three elements that are the key to this differentiation.
He uses Disneyworld as an example of a company that has completely automated the customer interaction process but at the same time, continues to invest in keeping the human element strong. Every customer gets a `magic band' when they visit Disneyworld which basically does everything for them --it opens the hotel room, gives you access to the park, allows you to make ride reservations through the connected app and so on. “Because of the automation, their staff has to spend less time on the pure operational part of the customer relation.This creates additional time and this time can then be invested in the more human part of the relationship. Smart companies automate the operational part of the business to create time amongst their teams to really connect with their customers,“ says Van Belleghem. Other companies who have done a good job of straddling both sides are Apple, Starbucks and newer companies like Uber and Airbnb.
Admittedly, doing this requires a shift in how leaders approach digital. “We sometimes take the human part for granted. Some companies think: okay, we already have the humans, so we only need to focus on the digital part,“ he says. The focus shifts completely to the digital and the human element isn't used to its maximum potential. To get this right, positive leadership is crucial. He sees three major chal lenges for leaders today: ensuring their companies are ambitious enough, keeping the focus on the customer and ensuring that people in the organisation get the support and trust to outperform on the pure human strengths, namely empathy, passion and creativity.
“Companies like SpaceX want to colonize Mars. Google wants to extend people's life and tackle the problem of aging. New style companies have more ambitious goals. These goals are not just financial goals, they are ambitions to change the world. As a leader, ask yourself: is your company still ambitious enough or do you just want to make some more money?“ he says. He clarifies that contrary to popular belief, this is the age of the customer -not technology. As the customer becomes more and more demanding, the only way companies can deal with this is extreme customer centricity. While some, like those in the travel and music business have already undergone this transition, others like finance, retail and healthcare are in the eye of the storm, while still others can see it coming, “At the end of the day, 90% of the companies will go through these changes,“ he says. How they manage balance the human and digital side will dictate who will be successful in the long run.
By Priyanka Sangani

CDET11SEP15

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