They expected some short-term losses, but they were a powerful company that could absorb short-term hits on the way to long-term success. However, after many months and millions of dollars of conversion, I followedthey were losing clients and their most trusted advisers.You’re talented. wantthey would know whyand, and they hoped that their director of marketing, Federico, would have the answers. But he didn’t have them.
There are many stories like this: stories of companies with an identity crisis.
The most famous story is that of Apple. When Steve Jobs returned to his “old company” it was foundor to the same on the verge of bankruptcy and with a clear identity crisis aimlessly, or with a “hybrid” course that had taken them there. Steve, one of the first wise decisions you made was to define “Apple’s new identity and then the story of its success is widely known by most of the people.
High Contact or High Touch Companies
high-touch companies prioritize communication and human connection. They are companies conversational who want to impress their customers and strive to make them feel unique. One example is Cucinelli, a multibillion-dollar company based on what its founder, Brunello Cucinelli, calls “humanistic capitalism.” Cucinelli aims to cultivate high-quality human relationships throughout the value chain: with employees, with management, with customers and with business partners. He sees technology simply as a means to foster and enhance those relationships. Another example is Charles Branson where the purpose of his business already includes “ build valuable human connections”
High Technology CompaniesYoao High Tech
High-tech companies, on the other hand, they prioritize interactions to be moreMraask, feasy and cheap with their customers and intend to take advantage of technology to achieve scale. The high-end company prototype
technology is Amazon, using technology to offer customers the best selection available, with maximum convenience and the lowest prices possible.
incompatible paths. The current business identity crisis
A business has an identity crisis when it can’t decide if it’s high-touch or high-tech.. It is a crisis because the “high-touch” and the “high-tech” embody different and incompatible goals.
The essence of high touch is communication and human connection.
The essence of high technology is speed, scalability and leverage.
High contact is meant to go slower and deeper.
High technology aims to go faster and wider.
The high contact wants better clients and seeks to take care of the ones they have. High technology wants more customers and is always looking for new markets.
A company starts with a high-touch or high-tech model. If you stay true to that model, you may be fine, but if you decide to experiment with the other model, you may cause an identity crisis.
Invariably, experiments with hybrids of touch and technology fail and, in many cases, the company does not survive.
whyand high technologyia and high contact are not compatible. Please don’t try to create a Frankenstein model
“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” —Warren Buffett
There is a reason why touch & tech experiments fail: high touch goals are incompatible with high tech goals: they pull a business in directions that cannot be reconciled – like wanting to travel to a destination in the East and also simultaneously to a destination in the West.
It is impossible for a company to achieve incompatible objectives simultaneously. So if a company tries to be both high-tech and high-sensitivity, then it has to fail in at least one direction. A successful company must choose a single direction and focus exclusively on it.
Entrepreneurs and SMEs are at higher risk of an identity crisis leaving them “offside”. This point is even more evident in the case of small businesses. 90% of companies around the world are too small to experiment with a Frankenstein model of touch and technology. They simply do not have the necessary personnel to deploy in both directions.
There are limits to the number of high-quality social relationships that humans can cultivate and maintain: that number is around 150, the so-called Dunbar number. Dunbar’s number represents a limitation of human cognitive ability. Human brains can only handle so many high-quality relationships. Additionally, there are limits to the amount of time a company’s employees can spend cultivating those relationships. Small businesses don’t have the time or the staff to cultivate high-quality human relationships at scale.
Furthermore, the very use of technology is in tension with a high-touch model. Contrast the experience of working with a human trainer versus using an app. The difference is palpable because it requires customers to interact with a tool rather than a person. Technology, in general, contributes more to improving speed and efficiency than to building human relationships.
But what about the big companies? Surely a giant can afford to experiment with touch and technology?
In fact, they can’t. The size of the company makes no difference. Two examples illustrate this. The company I described earlier experimented with high tech and ended up losing its best people without replacing them with a loyal high-tech customer base. A national bank had a similar problem. It was a high-touch company that got into high technology. The result was that they did not do well, losing both direct contact and high-tech customers.
A company facing an identity crisis finds itself at a crossroads. You have a choice to make: say no to direct contact or say no to high technology.
I’m not saying that a high-touch company can’t adopt high-tech solutions to common business problems. What I am saying is that a high-touch company cannot act in a way that undermines its own identity. A case will help to illustrate the difference.
UX-Health (real name withheld for confidentiality reasons) is a high-touch healthcare company committed to providing excellent patient care. Like any business, UX-Health needs to perform common business activities to function: handling taxes, scheduling, payroll, etc. But these operations are common. They are not what make UX-Health unique; They do not define your identity. When it comes to common business functions like these, UX-Health is free to adopt high-tech solutions. What it is not free to do – what it cannot do without threatening its own survival – is to take a high-tech approach to the high-touch activities that define it. For example, you can’t water down the patient experience by, for example, adopting high-tech interfaces for your patients to use, or ditching a client-centric model in favor of an application-centric one.
If UX-Health is seduced by the lure of high-tech substitutes for patient interactions with real people, it will find itself at a crossroads. It will have to choose between maintaining an approach that fosters high-quality doctor-patient relationships on the one hand, and becoming a new health technology business with virtual services, health applications, new markets and a new business model on the other. other.
Companies have to make a difficult decision about who they are. They have to decide how they want to add value to their customers, whether that is by making a high-quality impact or by making their activities more efficient.Mrquick and easy. It doesn’t matter if the company is big or small, the problems of trying to live in two different types of identities at the same time remain the same.
Does your company have an identity crisis in the age of perception?
Source: Ambito
