This is a story of two modest sized SME clients.
One has spent a lot of time, effort and money building a marketing technology ‘stack’, to use the vernacular. The expectation was that it would deliver significant marketing productivity, which they defined pretty well with a range of measures.
The other uses a basic system to record customer contacts and follow ups, as well as a semi manual system to create, collect and collate information, or ‘content’, combined with social platforms and their website for lead generation.
The first client, with the sophisticated system has a tiger by the tail. The technology is ruling them, is unrelenting, unforgiving, and prone to drive them down dead ends because their data input is patchy and sometimes flawed. Their recognition is that after all the effort, they are little better off than before the technology, just lighter in the pocket, and wearing people out.
The second client is struggling with the processes, particularly the manual interventions required, and the personal level of engagement necessary. There is frustration as they are continually told, ‘all this should be automated’ , but when you look at the total cost of conversion, share of wallet, lifetime value and referrals, they are much better off.
The question then is the extent to which the software is serving the purpose to which it has been directed, vs. serving itself. The intervention of people has been removed, automated, and the automation does not give a fig about the human interactions that make relationships, it just needs to be fed data.
Greek philosopher Sophocles is quoted to have said, ‘nothing vast enters out world without a curse’ , and never has that reported quote been truer than when we consider the automatic responses we all have to the digital triggers now prevalent in our lives.
Give me back some of the humanity, with all its ambiguity and nuances any day.
So, as you are considering automation of your revenue generation processes, never forget to account for the fact that people do business with people, in strong preference to algorithms, which are just tools.
Header cartoon, Courtesy XKCD
