The Human Touch: Is Less Really More?

By Jon Midmer, Managing Partner, JMA

In a world in which drone delivery, driver-less vehicles, V.R. and A.I. are already upon us, and in which cost pressures facing operators have never been higher, it’s clear that for customers of retail, hospitality and leisure brands the future will inevitably involve less human interaction. As a headhunter specialising in these sectors, I’ve been giving a good amount of thought to the pros and cons of this, and whether less really is more.

The benefits of reducing human interaction

On the one hand, from a customer’s perspective, there are significant cons involved in needless human interactions – particularly those that can be replaced by technology – and clear reasons to reduce, if not eliminate, them to enhance the customer experience. Long queues and wait times, the inability of un-empowered front-line staff to solve queries and complaints, and poor training and advice all demand quicker, human-free solutions.

The speed, ease and convenience of online shopping is often unsurpassable, hence its rapid uptake. If we consider store retailing, far-sighted chains in the US, China and the UK have embraced not only cashier-free, but also, in the past year, till-free stores, which can save you time, particularly if you’re on a grab and go mission.

If you’re booking an Airbnb, the ability to take virtual tours of apartments the world over, scroll through guest feedback and book efficiently online is fantastic. And, particularly when on business travel, virtual hotel check-in and check-out are a boon, as is the growing trend for car rental companies to allow you to bypass the desk and head straight to the vehicle.

The likes of Just Eat and Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Grub Hub inexpensively deliver to your door a wide selection of restaurant-cooked meals, removing the need for a trip out when you don’t want to cook. Uber and Lyft, meanwhile, see to it that you never again need to head into the pouring rain to hail a taxi (hurrah!) or be strung along by a dodgy local private hire company. And Ticketmaster, Trainline and most airlines have made the idea of queuing or calling up for tickets for shows, rail journeys and flights a welcome thing of the past. Given the above, less really can be more: decreased human interaction = improved customer experience.

… and the downsides

At the same time, there are some major downsides when certain other aspects of human interaction are reduced and/or eliminated. While online retail is great when it works, what about when the delivery process breaks down? How to communicate with a vendor on Amazon when they claim a package has successfully been delivered, but you don’t have what you ordered and, worse, there’s no tracking number? And what about the van driver who’s unable to find your (to you, at least) obvious delivery address, or claims you were out even when someone was in all day? And don’t even get me started on the interactive voice response menus used by many telecoms, energy and financial services providers…

When it comes to self-check-out, proliferating across all sub-sectors of retail, I increasingly feel like an unpaid, untrained member of store staff. Finding out where the bar code is on every item, being chided for leaving an ‘unidentified item in the bagging area’, needing to seek permission (from who knows who) to buy a bottle of wine, or requiring an often non-existent staff member to come and remove a tag from my prospective clothes purchases is definitely not my idea of a great shopping experience. Is it yours?

As far as till-less stores go, scanning and paying for your groceries via an app linked to Google or Apple Pay sounds good in principle – even if it discriminates against those without a smart phone or the right app, who don’t want to freely surrender their data or who just want to pay cash – but until shoppers fully get the hang of the new technology, the process is clunky and demands extra work on the part of shopper, when it should require less.

Levelling with customers

Above all, dressing up reductions of welcome and value-added human interaction as improvements in the customer experience is simply disingenuous. It’s so obvious that this sort of disruptive innovation (that’s disruptive in a bad way) is just done to save cost. Just say it how it is, it’s fine! If they don’t already, shoppers will soon cotton on to the fact that in a world where online operators have lower costs, physical operators will need to cut staff and deploy new technology just to stay in business.

Cost pressures notwithstanding, I would argue that there are benefits not just of keeping, but increasing human interaction along the customer journey of many retail, hospitality and leisure brands. When shopping for indulgence, gifting or inspiration, for example, surely a retailer is likely to sell more and engender greater loyalty through friendly, attentive, knowledgeable staff who listen to shoppers in order to delight them? You never know, a perceptive, well-trained, front-line team member may even sell more or boost your brand perception in a way that an algorithm never could.

When it comes to hotels, restaurants, gyms and cinemas, their ‘product’ has never just been rooms, food, fitness equipment or films. At its best, woven into the product has been human warmth and hospitality, reinforced by ambience and brand standards. It would also seem that the success of Airbnb and Uber isn’t just down to the innovation and efficiency of the tech. It has to do with the trust-based, value-adding human interactions between guest and host, driver and passenger. I believe these are the glue that hold these ecosystems together.

Factoring humans in and out of the equation

I believe that what consumers of retail, hospitality and leisure brands want is a well-thought-through customer journey involving both touchscreens and the human touch. A journey that harnesses the speed and ease that only comes when you factor humans out of the equation, and the empathy and understanding that comes from adding them back in.

The only plea I have to operators – particularly traditional brick-and-mortar operators who need to cut down on front-line staff to protect profits – is that they’re honest enough with themselves (and us) to only remove human interaction when it really does enhance the customer experience. If not, they risk damaging their brands and alienating the very people who have kept them in business.