This article was written by Customer First, and on November 12, 2021 on the website of Customer First published.
On November 11, the CustomerFirst – and Social Service Congress took place at Mereveld in Utrecht. Cynthia Mak, Director Customer Care at Talpa Network, was the closing keynote of the day.
In her presentation, entitled, “Inseparable: customer contact and emotions,” Cynthia Mak talked about technical developments and outlined a future vision of a virtual reality world – the metaverse. No travel times for customer appointments, no hours wandering through the city looking for the right garment, a world full of human contact, but no physical contact. And that, according to Mak, is precisely where the crux lies.
‘In an increasingly digital world, human contact is still important,’ Mak said. ‘The need for the emotional connections, even for a group that grew up completely digital, is still there. The customer contact world, a world about people, is on a diamond mine, as an industry. They can, and actually should, prepare for and respond to these digital advances.
The message may be clear at the end of the conference. Many cases discussed, spread throughout the day, were about that digital revolution, about chatbots, about the use of AI. Yet questions kept being asked about the emotional bonds with the customer and how robots can accommodate them. Mak made it clear that, in her opinion, there is plenty of room for digitization (“I love it”), but don’t forget that the customer is a human being, with feelings, with emotions. She not only wants to be heard or helped, but also to be treated well emotionally.
