Generating positive emotion can have numerous positive effects for a company. It not only improves the financial results, but also creates better perception and increases both staff and consumer loyalty.
The strength of computers lies in the automation of the customer relationship and the added value of the human component is its ability to touch the emotional chord in people. To understand how this human added value is created, it is first necessary to understand what computers cannot do. There is no question that computers are getting smarter. At the moment, they are as smart as a group of bees but within years they will be as smart as all the people in the world put together. Until now, computers have excelled at purely rational tasks. In other words, they are already better than the left half of our human brain. But they are hopeless when it comes to the tasks carried out by the right half of our brains. Emotion, creativity and empathy are all things that you won't find in a computer. In 20 years' time?. Who known? but certainly not before then. Even the spectacular new IBM superchip, True North, only deals with
left-half functions.
To date, computers have not been capable of creating something new. There are some qualities that are uniquely human:
- Creativity. Consider that 100 per cent of the world's innovation has been created by people versus 0 per cent by machines.
- Empathy. Computer able to display emotions. My computer is not sad when I am sad - but my family is. My computer is not happy for me when something good happens in my life - but my friends are.
- Passion. People love other passionate people. Passion is infectious and inspirational.
In the following section, I will discuss these three unique human qualities and show how they can best be fitted into the customer relationship.
[1] Creativity. Society attaches great importance to creativity. For example, People are willing to pay huge amounts of money for celebrated work of art. The expensive tickets for Cirque du Soleil show that people are prepared to give a little extra to see something different.