There’s something to be said when we begin taking people out of the equation. Oh, of course, your day begins and ends with interactions between your clients, but we are replacing the face to face, “I know you are here when I need you” with quick, on the spot, no thought given emails and texts. I want to ask you…do you think you can have customer service without customer relationships?

Columbia University saw the problem when they saw students walking aimlessly around the campus glued to the screens of their portable devices. Sadly, they had to come out with a scavenger hunt game which paid the students and forced them into daily connections. Is this what we want our customers to see? Our lives with our gadgets are more important? Maybe this is the problem and the point. We want people to see. We want them to see a screen, see the words on the page and see we just no longer have the time to build and establish the most important building block—direct, on site communication. We are asking them to see. What we are not asking them for is to feel.

I want you to think about the last time you received a text and were frustrated by the message. Perhaps it was short, they were hurried and the thought was lost in translation. Even worse, the message seemed almost cryptic, made up of some language that seemed so foreign to you. It made you feel like you needed a translator, like you needed an explanation. I am certain you wanted to pick up the phone and ask what was the meaning, but then you remembered: “Oh, she never answers her phone, she prefers to text.”

This is the everyday with your customers. They spend each day interfacing with the public and when they are trying to reach out to you for insight and your help with their business they are not getting what they need. They are getting what you give and quite frankly it is not enough. It is not enough to not have the energy to pick up the phone. It is not enough to send a quick email when they are reaching out. It is not enough when we place the value on our own time and forget they are the reason we are here.

We don’t need to be enough.

We need to be there.

We need to be more.

Be more to someone today.