Trengo reposted this
Scenes from an elevator....... Our offices are on several floors in a tall building next to Utrecht central station and some days I challenge myself to enter our section floor through numerous flights of stairs. However today I used the elevator. I struck me again how we are all becoming so much less social. Most people who get in together immediately flee to their phone screen and avoid eye contact, let alone say good morning. It feels like we are losing the ability to casually interact and I wonder how that influences our professional and personal lives in the long run. Maybe it's easy for an extravert to speak, but I think there is value in such casual human interaction. Finding out what company they work for, complimenting them on their clothes, or worst case even complain about the weather together. At Trengo this human interaction also remains an important part of how we look at the changing world of customer engagement. We are in the business of helping our customers delight their customers. And sometimes that is best done through a fast and accurate automated or AI generated reply. But in other cases the human element does the trick and delivers just what the customer needs. In the coming years we will all have to find out what the right balance between the two is and where the one complements the other. Meanwhile, I feel there is no harm in striking a conversation on your way to work with the people you encounter in the hallway, train or on the street. Will you be doing so this week?
It's pretty bad how #AI image generation tools by default generate office images without #people of color. Not even mentioning the hands, creepy faces, feet.
Absolutely! It's easy to overlook how valuable small interactions can be, even in an elevator. Balancing tech with the human touch, as Trengo does, is crucial in today’s world. Thanks for the reminder—I'll definitely be making more of an effort to connect with those around me this week!
Helemaal mee eens! Net een leuk, kort gesprekje gehad met een dame in de tram (waar de rest als zombies naar de telefoon staarde, muziek luisterde of luidkeels aan het bellen was), dat had ik anders gemist. De foto bij jouw verhaal spreekt boekdelen en stemt verdrietig. Ik ben niet anti-digitaal, maar merk zelf de aanzuigende werking van het mobieltje (net Duolingo verwijderd omdat ik alweer verslaafd was, dus ben geen haar beter 🤪)
So agree.. we may need new societal norms where getting out yr phone is seen as rude, bad manners just like eg when you are having dinner together, or are together on outing, in a meeting (?) this might be another one.
This is so well put, it really does feel like were drifting apart in order to be closer to the phone.
Good point Marili! Let me try this and let's see how many replies I'll get back! 🙂
absolutely!
Transform your people into skilled customer-facing professionals
2moTotally agree, a double edged sword it is. This triggered me… Funny thing is, we are working on the otherside of the spectrum: training the customer-facing employees to improve its customer experience. Also using mobile apps, automations and personalization by AI to achieve this. But where does it stop? Our philosophy now is therefore to attract users first to our mobile learning experience, but then quickly nudge them towards ‘real world’ learning & interactions. That is our duty, because it makes people happier. And yeah, it positively influences the business results as well. What do you see working for Trengo currently? Where do you see companies currently choosing “human over machine”?