The Human Touch in a Digital World

I wholly subscribe to any kind of personal authenticity...

Unsubscribe! GDPR! Automated Email Response! Dear "Valued" Customer..."

These are the typical things that we see each day, and whilst technology is better at mimicking real humans, in most cases there is still a long way to go to make it truly authentic. Although my email is guessing what I am about to write via smart predictive text more and more accurately... maybe I am becoming digitalised too?!

Just last week, I met with an industry veteran, our meeting was to discuss potential business collaborations. To make notes, instead of whipping out his iPad or tablet to poke the screen he procured a magnificent ink nib fountain pen to make notes by hand during the meeting. Regardless of what he was writing, he MEANT business by the seriousness of his writing implement! In fact, we scanned the notes and shared them for the next round of discussions.

On the other hand I work with another company that operates virtual online services. Their sole customer contact point is by email and video conferencing. I know the CEO personally but often receive emails with awkward and inappropriate salutations, Dear Mr. Gordon Dudley, Dear Dudley, especially because this is coupled with a very casual email tone in order to seem personal and friendly. Definitely not a good first impression.

In my former company A.P. Moller - Maersk I was starting my career and was quite inspired by the founder's son M?rsk Mc-Kinney M?ller, who was already in his 90s (and one of the richest men in the world) when I joined the world's largest shipping company. I wrote to him asking for advice about my career, I received a personalised letterhead and hand-signed letter from him telling me:

"Experience is the best advice that you can get, so I will let you go out and get yours..." 

I still remember this perfectly, I keep the letter, despite being over ten years ago already. That's quite a butterfly effect from one letter as I share this story now.

Email thank you notes are good, but handwritten letters make a real impression, this article is a good story of a young company making a difference and now doing very well for themselves. This article from the BBC is a great story of how 'doing things differently' can pay off, especially in the long run:

It's something we can all work on, which is the best communication method for each purpose. Since there are so many to choose from these days. Perhaps the "best" is not always the quickest / most instant. Personally I need to use the phone more, I divert to email on occasions where with hindsight I can see that a brief phone conversation would have actually been more efficient instead of going back and forth on email over several days.

Here's to leaving a positive lasting impression with everyone, every day that you can!!