How to Scale the Human Touch in Customer Experience

I love the W Hotel Barcelona. For the last 3 years, I’ve been hosting my event there, and through that program, have been responsible for renting literally hundreds of nights of hotel time at the W. I thought this made me a pretty good customer. But still, every time I enter the lobby, I’m asked “Is this your first time with us?” It’s not a great customer experience. Of course I understand the staff member can’t remember everyone, and there’s no way he should have to. The point is that now there is a technological way to augment his ability, and help him recognize every face that walks through that door. Guest history, preferences, everything. With these kinds of technologies properly deployed, every guest can receive special, personalized treatment, and it won’t require some kind of superhuman training for the staff to remember ten thousand faces.

The other way to scale the Human Touch for the customer experience is through Social Media, which is still the most reliable, inexpensive, and powerful way to reach your target audience. This is where and how you can tell your own personal story to your audience. Say you’re a small business in your local town; you can be making your business’ identity about stories and connection, rather than just your product or service. This is a way for people to connect with something that has emotional resonance with them, not just a thing they buy. You may be interacting with customers every day in person, but those are only the ones who walk in your door. By using video and image to bring your story to the rest of the world, you can seize opportunities to bring that Human factor to a much wider audience.

Deploying technological capabilities to take the human touch to bigger scale. This is what I mean.