We all understand that customers and colleagues should be treated with respect — and we all know, too, that digital technologies can get in the way of that happening. Whatever the “job to be done,” key communications tend to become less direct and more impersonal when the job’s digitized. That’s just the nature of the beast: Apps and other technologies are doing a lot of the work that people used to do — and you can’t train an app to have empathy. It doesn’t help that engineers tend to optimize efficiency, rather than user experience, when they redesign work flows.
Don’t Let Digital Transformation Make You Less Human
Efficiency and empathy aren’t mutually exclusive.
May 20, 2020
Summary.
Organizations often forget to think about empathy when they redesign — or digitize — processes. Unwittingly, they leave both customers and employees feeling unvalued and unheard. If you pay close attention to rewarding the behavior you seek when designing incentives, finding the right tool for the job, and holding onto face-to-face communication when it counts, you can both optimize processes and maintain a human-centered, empathetic organization.