Beyond Automation: Embracing AI as a Partner to Build Stronger Customer Relationships

Rethinking AI as a partner rather than a replacement can deepen connections and create more meaningful customer relationships.

Several months ago, I experienced the death of a family member. It was quite a shock, and knowing I might skip a beat in my work, I reached out to clients to let them know that I might be distracted for a little while. The email responses contained words of kindness that let me know they understood, but one particular client ended their response with a crucial word … hugs. With that simple touch, I was moved.

A few days later, I was listening to a podcast where one of the topics was AI. It got me thinking about how AI might react to someone experiencing a loss, so, out of curiosity, I went online, pulled up an AI app, and in keeping with the emails I sent to my clients, I typed in that I’d recently experienced a death in the family. The AI response went something like this:

Losing a loved one can be difficult. Here are some things that may help you cope.

What followed were several suggestions for actions to take, like exercise, meditation, and going to a support group, as well as a long list of resources. It was well-meaning and useful, but it lacked one thing … a human touch. It lacked those hugs in my client’s response.

These two examples, the human response and the AI response, illustrate what each does well and what each does not. And not coming to terms with this reality is where there is often an obstacle.

There are typically two camps when it comes to AI. One enthusiastically supports it and sees it as a panacea to cure all ills, while the other cowers in fear of AI taking jobs, producing mediocre work, and taking over the world in some apocalyptic dystopia. But these two camps miss the opportunity that exists in the middle ground between humanity and technology, where the two complement each other’s capabilities. But what are those capabilities? What exactly do our actors do well?

Let’s consider AI.

• It can analyse massive datasets far more quickly and accurately than humans.
• It can translate text and speech between languages more efficiently and often with better accuracy than humans.
• It can work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• It can predict equipment failures, preventing downtime and saving costs.
• It excels at repetitive tasks, improving efficiency and reducing human errors that happen due to monotony.
• It is also useful in dangerous situations like bomb disposal, space exploration, and deep-sea exploration, protecting human lives.

And humans, what about them?

• Humans are great at creative thinking, generating original ideas, and inventing new things. While AI can create variations on existing ideas, true originality is elusive.
• Humans excel at analysing complex situations, evaluating multiple perspectives, and making nuanced judgments, while technology struggles with reasoning and adapting to truly novel situations.
• Humans can understand and respond to emotions, build relationships, and demonstrate empathy. And while AI might be able to recognise emotions, it cannot truly feel or experience them.
• Humans can quickly adapt to new environments and learn from limited experience, while AI struggles in unpredictable situations and requires vast amounts of data and specific training to learn.
• Humans can make ethical judgments based on values and principles, but for AI that requires extremely complicated programming. Moreover, without the ability to feel, AI cannot truly understand the nuances of ethical dilemmas.
• Humans are capable of abstract thought and long-term planning, envisioning the future, and setting goals based on that. While AI can analyse data and make predictions, it doesn’t possess the same capacity for creative, strategic visioning.
• Humans possess a vast amount of implicit knowledge about the world, often referred to as “common sense,” which allows them to understand and navigate everyday situations intuitively. AI struggles with this as it lacks the “gut” sense humans often use to make decisions.

Essentially, when it comes to speed, research, and black-and-white deduction, AI excels, while humans win hands-down in the much more emotionally tinged world of feelings, risky adaptation, and vision.

Now, what would happen if, instead of seeing these two, technology and humans, as competitors, we began to see them as partners or teammates? How would that impact the experience of your customers? Greater speed, more efficiency, and better decision-making due to better access to immediate relevant information are just a few of the possibilities, all, however, used to make the human connection better, more effective, and add to the human touch, not replace it.

With that in mind, let’s revisit my story above. Let’s put it through the lens of AI augmenting what is already a very good human experience.

The email could have gone something like this:

I am so sorry for your loss; you have our support. Also, as I know from personal experience how difficult this can be, I enlisted AI and found a few links to some articles with ideas for making this stressful time a little easier as well as a list of support groups that could be helpful. Whatever you do, take your time …hugs.

With a little creativity and judicious humanity, we can use AI as a partner rather than an enemy or replacement, and by doing so, make inroads into creating augmented relationships rather than artificial ones. And augmenting relationships lies at the crux of good business, not to mention successful business.

These are remarkable times that afford us unbelievable possibilities. If we can leave our fear and exaggerated visions behind and think and act carefully, we can use the intersection where these actors complement each other to create new and transformational value that opens the door to new worlds for our customers and ourselves.
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