“Automation” is one of those buzzwords that’s almost as overused as “AI” (and sometimes people put those buzzwords together). Automation promises massive scalability, and getting us out of a lot of the stuff we don’t want to do (like talk to people).
Automation is great for a lot things– appointment reminders, email newsletters, moving data from one place to another, etc.
But that doesn’t mean we should automate things, just because we can.
If you’re in a relationship business, you’re in a conversation business. And if you’re in a conversation business, you need to have actual conversations, not try to automate your way of them.
Here are some rules of thumb for using automations (or not):
- Does it save me from non-conversational work — adding Fathom notes to my CRM, for example — (good).
- Does this help me get into conversations– an appointment reminder, for example– (good), or out of them (bad)?
- Is it obvious that this is an automated message — “we hope you enjoyed your stay– how would you rate it?” — (good), or does it try to pass itself off as a non-automated message –“hi, it was great meeting with you today”– (bad, and particularly bad if you missed the meeting).
When in doubt, consider how you would feel about being on the other end of the automation. I appreciate getting a reminder about an upcoming appointment (but not 3 reminders). I hate getting an automated message that pretends to be from the other person. That destroys trust and ruins the relationship, all because the person responsible for sending it thought that it would be great to have some number of “touches” that they didn’t have to actually handle themselves.
In a relationship business, quality beats quantity. You want organization to help you make the most of your conversations. So make it easy to see who you need to talk to. Make it easy to import contact data and organize contacts. Make it easy to see flip through groups of people for conversations, to schedule meetings, send personalized emails, make introductions, comment on LinkedIn posts, etc.
This is the difference between having scheduling software and a nurse to help the doctor focus on you as a patient, and having an automation take the place of the conversation with the doctor.