My phone stopped working on Friday morning. It is only three months old – I had no warning and no prior issues. There I was on a busy work day, with back to back meetings, staring at a black screen with an Apple symbol.
In the midst of a pandemic and all that is going on around us this is an extremely minor thing. In the world of a self- employed person, working remotely this was far from ideal. After more than an hour on ‘chat’ to Apple I was no further on and my meetings were backing up. I couldn’t even phone anyone for help because I had no numbers. I have been so used to using my fingerprint to access everything from my bank accounts to my family chat that I felt pretty helpless.
It led me to think when being without my phone, just how reliant we are on technology. After a wasted trip to the Vodafone shop and still no resolution I have no choice but to send it away for ‘repair’.
I often see people saying about getting rid of your phone and engaging more with the real world makes you feel liberated. After spending a full weekend without my phone, I couldn’t disagree more. It impacted every area of my life.
I love the fact that I can keep up to date with my big family on what’s app; organise runs with club mates on messenger and chat to my clients and contacts on Linked In and instant emailing. Everything became a hassle. I ended up waiting at the car for my husband because we had arranged to meet back there at a certain time, and he got held up. Thank goodness it wasn’t raining, or he would not have had a pleasant journey home.
I didn’t know what the weather was going to do because I couldn’t check it on my phone; I didn’t know what was happening in the news and I didn’t have access to my business and personal financials at my fingertips. All of this is easily rectified of course by getting a different device until my own is repaired. It was however, the inconvenience that really got to me.
We are so used to having immediate access to almost everything we need in terms of news and information. The days of looking up the encyclopaedia in my childhood for vastly out of date information for school assignments is a distant memory. We live in a world where we expect information at our fingertips.
As businesspeople we cannot afford to sit still, we need to be constantly learning and evolving. We need to make sure that our information is accessible via mobile; for a positive customer experience we need to have instant access to literally everything.
However we still need to make it real. I could absolutely live without my phone if it was merely for convenience or mindless scrolling but for me it is so much more than that.
I call my mum and dad at least twice a day, I get to see pics of what my nieces and nephews, in laws etc. have been up to. I get to pass on snippets of valuable information I have spotted for my clients and get to create real interactions I just would not have time to do on a daily basis if we did not have technology.
Businesses need to think about these human connections; real interactions that people are looking for online. Chat bots just do not cut it. It needs to be smarter than that. It needs to be artificial intelligence with a human touch. I always say, you should not try to sell to your clients, you should tell them enough about you, your products and how you can help them, that they really want to buy from you. In the age of instant, digital technology we need to see businesses being real, talking about the people behind them, building trust in the brand and showing what you can do.
In this world of instant communications, it means that everyone is an armchair critic and self-appointed judge and jury. This leads us, as businesses, to have to work harder to do better to provide a positive customer experience. It also means if the time comes, we need to stand up for ourselves when faced with unjustified criticism.
The future for business online is unlimited but for me the companies that can retain the human touch, with good customer service on and offline are going to be the real winners. For me without a proper functioning phone for the foreseeable future I think tech is wonderful….when it actually works.
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