Trend Number 5 The Human Touch

Hi, everyone, and welcome to this live edition of Talking Points. I'm Jason S. Bradshaw and it's so great that you're taking time to catch up with me as I take you through one of the trends in the annual trend report that I put out. This year's trend report is available for free download at Jason S. Bradshaw.com trends, where I explore the 15 trends that in 2024 will help you to stand out, to help you to earn more, that will help you to break through in your business and have success throughout the year. Now, the secret here is that not all 15 trends will necessarily need to be focused on by your business. But if you focus on two to three of these trends throughout the year and really deliver on them in a strong sense, that will be a significant differentiator in the marketplace and, and it will help you and your business achieve that breakthrough success that I know that so many of us are hungry to achieve this year. So today's trend that we're going to talk about is trend number five, the human touch. Now, Covid is responsible for many things, but if there was a positive that came out of the COVID pandemic, where people were shut down, isolated, where our worlds were literally turned, turned upside down in a matter of days, is that it highlighted to the world just how much as individuals, as humans, we crave other interactions with humans. Now, it doesn't matter whether you're an introvert or extrovert or wherever you lay on that spectrum, we all have a degree of which we crave human touch, a crave that human, a personal interaction. Now, what I see many businesses doing, especially since the pandemic, is focusing on cost reduction. And the first thing that that usually means is less customer service, more automation. How can we take people out of the experience so that we can do it seamlessly, scale it cheaply, automate it, all those wonderful buzzwords. However, what we've found is that this in and of itself can lead to your business having a downturn in total value from a customer, total lifetime value of a customer, because they're not having that human connection, they're not creating an emotional connection with your brand. They are more likely to consider other brands based on the promises that they're making or purely just on the price point that they're promoting. And no one wants to get into a price war. So I get it. You can't just always put more people on. It's not necessarily a commercially viable model to put more people on. But how can you create a human touch regardless well, there's a couple of ways. First of all, I think you should always make your customer service, your sales teams available to an extent in a personal way, whether that be a web chat or a call center or an email. That would be the minimum. Doesn't mean you can't automate a whole pile of things. But you should have an avenue for customers who perhaps want a little bit more higher touch. But more importantly, beyond that sales transaction. And you'll remember we talked about going beyond the transaction in a previous trend. Beyond that sales transaction, how can you create communities where people come together to learn more about your products and services, where people come together to enjoy and share their experiences with your products and services. What can you do to create those environments that are human but scalable? So for example, you could hold once a quarter an event, if you're a local business, you could hold once a quarter a local event where people come. And it's a bit of an open house, if you will. Now, not everyone's going to do it, but if you tell everyone about it, that in itself starts to trigger those reminders that you are a business that delivers on that human touch, that you're a business beyond the marketing message, beyond the sale. So that is absolutely essential that you find ways in 2024 to deliver that human touch for customers. But don't forget the employee experience here. I would argue it is more important than the customer experience when it comes to human touch. We have more and more teams working remotely. We have more and more teams collaborating virtually. The casual conversations in the office that spark innovation, spark ideas, spark curiosity, they aren't happening to the same extent that they used to when everyone worked from the office. Now, I'm not advocating that everyone has to go back to the office. What, what I'm advocating is that leaders in the business need to take an intentional focus on creating points of connection. Human touch, where people come together, share stories, celebrate success, learn new things and be a team, be a community. So I get it. Your business is probably busy if you only can focus on 1. Focus on the employee experience when it comes to human touch. Because creating that sense of community will help your team be more successful. It will also help them to be more loyal and engaged with your workforce. So trend number 15. Sorry, trend number five of the 15 is human touch. It's all about helping your business have breakthrough success in 2024. Now, if you're looking for help you in driving growth rapidly in your business, compressing years of trial and error into a 12 week program to help you accelerate your business's breakthroughs in 2024, then the business Breakthrough Coaching program is most likely for you. If you head over to business breakthroughcoaching.net you'll be able to apply for a position, strictly limited in my 12 week business growth accelerator course. And through that application process, we'll just do a couple of checks to make sure that you and I are a great fit and that I'm confident that I'm going to help your business have that breakthrough success that you're looking for. I'm Jason Espertra. As always, feel free to reach out if there's anything I can do to help you and your communities. But in the meantime, I wish you every success.