The ability to connect sets you apart

- This is an audio course. Thank you for listening. - You are talking a lot these days about, building stronger customer connections in the digital age. Could you lay it on us, what are some of the benefits associated with face to face connections and this old school stuff when tech technology is run of the show it seems in most of our communications. - Well, yeah, it's back to the future today. It's ironic that the disruptor today in business is good old fashioned relationships, and there's a seismic shift happening in the world today with all the benefits technology's bringing us, it's coming at a significant cost and that cost is human relationships. Which is vital to customer, loyalty, employee satisfaction and just overall happiness, personally and professionally and today is illiterate are those who have an inability to make a meaningful connection. And so the best companies are competing in the relationship economy where the primary currency is the emotional connections made with customers, employees and vendors that make your brand, the brand that people can't live without, and ultimately help you make price irrelevant. - Okay, well that sounds great. So could you share with us some of the most, I guess hard hitting research data studies associated with observations of this phenomenon? - Yeah, well, first five, year 2025 there'll be more machines in the workforce than robots, and Artificial Intelligence will be capable of doing every job that we're currently doing from lawyers to judges, to driving, to construction. So it literally is doing everything and you'll never have to see another human being, I guess if you choose as long as you live. - So the prediction is, by 2025 machines will be doing every job that humans are doing, although I imagine they'll be doing many of them poorly, based on what I'm seeing these days. - Yeah, and not every job, but capable of doing every job and that more machines will be in the workforce than human beings. - All right, how about that? So tell us, how does the human connection help in that context? - Well, as a result of living in a touch screen age and the touch screen age is not generational specific, we have grandparents using devices, and we have five year olds on iPads. But as a result, our social skills, our people skills are at an all time low, and this is causing many negative side effects. There's a term called digital dementia where doctors have done brain scans of heavy users of digital devices. And they look similar to patients who've sustained brain injuries. So we're a relationship disadvantaged today and the leaders out there of businesses need to understand that it's our problem to fix. We can't skip this generation, and so the companies that the pendulum has swung so far over to high tech, low touch or no touch, people, consumers, you, me, we're starving to be recognized as a person with a name and technology's not the enemy, using it to eliminate the human experience is. So companies, the best companies are finding ways to marry the digital with the human interaction that allows technology use do the most basic necessities, allowing freeing up your employees to do what's most important that's building the customer loyalty that is long term sustainability for the business.