Sheldon Anthony IO

As businesses are trading in their physical products and services for their digital twins and employees of companies are enabled to work from anywhere the traditional way in which we interact with each other is also changing all the time. As things are made more straightforward for us each day to access things from the comfort of our couches at home whereas we used to go into a store to get them, business boundaries are shifting. Will a customer or employee feel comfortable sharing their personal space with your business? It’s something to give a lot of thought to but inevitably we have to improve the way we engage as people in our business activities.

The simple modes of engagement e.g. SMSes, emails, newsletters, and phone calls are not good enough in the digital world anymore. They do have value but more is needed in the disengaged digital world. Your business should aim to interact more and give people a sense of your presence and personality, not just a product or service in their pockets or homes. Imagine that you are a small local hairdresser and a customer has just booked an appointment to do their hair on an app that you just launched. As a small local hairdresser, you are excited, you would want to follow through with your customer until they are in your store. With technology this is possible and so much more. The ordinary modes that we are used to can eventually cost us if we are not digging deeper to improve our human engagement with technology.

Vibrant Emotional Health, previously known as Mental Health Association of New York City (MHA-NYC), promotes emotional wellbeing across the city for over 50 years. Having raised awareness and offering support for people struggling with mental health, we have been leaders, advocates, educators, and innovators.Executives needed to be physically present in the office to approve purchases or fund requests. When they were away on business trips, the approvals were delayed. Inside the forms, they couldn’t do automatic calculations, manipulate data, or search for reports with keywords. It was really only suited for getting signatures on a form. The cost to implement DocuSign was driving up, and they could only afford a few licenses even though they needed to expand the usage. Vibrant needed a way to scale its automation without having to pay a lot more. Their biggest needs were to get a solution to automate approvals faster and a way to access them remotely. Vibrant implemented Kissflow for permission approvals and to submit requests. The time for filling out the form has been cut by more than half. Their users find it faster and easier to fill out the Kissflow forms and don’t have to jump back and forth between spreadsheets to enter the information correctly. The time taken to complete the form has been cut in half. Vibrant Emotional Health was able to achieve the following significant results such as Reduction in manual errors, The time for filling out the form has been cut by more than half, and reduction in process cycle time.^[2] 

There is only so much a robot or system can do to engage with a human but there is so much more a human with a robot or system can do to engage with another human. As we interact with automated technologies we realize that human problems can get pretty unique and sadly very often. Automated systems do their job well when paths are followed that the system is programmed to handle but when it fails the human fallback is important. The experience we give people on the human fallback is crucial in automated technology. The most essential element here is to be trusted. It takes time to build that relationship and it is the hardest thing to maintain and keep at a comfort level. Whether it be trying to hire people, tracking an employee's productivity time, or a customer satisfaction video call, getting people comfortable is the essential part of being a part of their digital space.

Whether it be a customer who can now access our products or services from anywhere or an employee trying to work from anywhere we need to realize that the boundaries of business have shifted. It is no longer our premise to dictate engagement. Many external factors make us inclined to go back to the traditional way of running our business. Before establishing any rules of engagement, we need to know very well the people who run and use our businesses, products, and services from anywhere. There are many benefits of moving elements of our business into the digital space. Human interaction will always be a crucial aspect of it. We need to understand the fallback from systems to humans and when it occurs to be ready and aware of the social dynamics it comes with.