EMEA BUSINESS
A human touch will be key post pandemic
Although COVID-induced lockdowns have accelerated digitization in many sectors, customers still want to interact with other human beings.
Lloyds Bank, roughly 9 million people in the UK are unable to use the internet without help from someone else.
this, users have to simplify their commands, hyper-articulate them, or repeat themselves, creating a new layer of inconvenience.
Could technology lend a helping hand? Oscar Wilde once said, “When most people agree on something, they are usually wrong”. That sentiment struck me as I walked past a bank branch recently on a rainy winter morning. There was a long line of customers outside the bank, and it was at a standstill. How wrong they were, I thought, for wasting their time in a queue. We have mobile-only banks, so why don’t they just bank online? Then it struck me that these people may not have had a choice. Yes, tech-savvy consumers use banking apps, but not everyone is willing, or able, to do that. In fact, according to a recent study by
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A human touch will help No doubt, technology can help some of those people. For example, USbased D3 Banking Technology has built a voice-based banking interface on Amazon’s Alexa. With their voice, customers can check account balances, move money, and review their financial goals. This spares them the hassle of using a screen-based interface, which may be particularly welcome to less tech-savvy consumers, such as the elderly. However, digital innovations are rarely without problems. In the case of voice assistants, they sometimes mishear user inputs. To address
Providing a human touch during these interactions makes good business sense. According to some research, user journeys that involve contact with other human beings exhibit higher rates of customer retention than those that do not. That said, such contact does not always have to involve a human being: images of people influence user behaviour too. This is why politicians put pictures of themselves in their electoral propaganda. Adding a face to a name builds trust.
