I love technology as much as the next person, at least when it works as expected.  

What I see increasingly, however, is technology being used to replace the essential rules of human interaction that knit our society together.  Your grandmother knew these rules (and told you so all the time).   “Answer me when I call you!”  she would say, and you didn’t dare ignore her.  “Pay attention when someone is speaking to you!” she’d advise, and you would dutifully sit up a little straighter and focus on what’s being said. 

Those weren’t just rules for polite behavior; they were rules for relationships.

And because business is still done by people, those same rules still apply. People don’t like to be ignored, marginalized, automated past, or treated as a name in a database. They want to know that someone sees them, hears them, and values them. That has always been true in business, no matter how much technology changes the way we communicate.

The problem is that, in our never-ending quest for efficiency, we have started to confuse the appearance of relationship with the real thing. We imitate the external signs of connection through birthday cards, social media posts, automated check-ins, and drip campaigns while convincing ourselves we are maintaining relationships at scale.

But fake relationships never measure up to real ones.

Let me share a case in point.  I used to get a birthday card from my insurance agent every year.  This amused me as I had never even met my insurance agent and I am certain that my birthday was not considered a special day by him.  He had the ability to run a report, however, so he sent me a card to fake a relationship. Now I’m all for sending birthday cards to clients, but if there is no relationship with the client, the gesture falls flat.

Technology = 1, relationship = 0. 

Another example is the never-ending stream of business noise that streams through social media these days, ostensibly to retain a connection to the consumer and thereby maintain some sort of relationship.  I’m all for using social media, but I wouldn’t dare call it a channel for developing a true relationship (at least as your grandmother defined it).  It can certainly inform, engage, and maintain connection, but it cannot create a relationship.

So, what do we do?  Should we just accept that relationships are a thing of the past and move on? I don’t think so.  

Technology has provided invaluable opportunities to better our world and provide valuable service and information to our customers and can help maintain a connection.  The danger comes in trying to use it to imitate a relationship.  In my opinion, either you have a relationship, or you don’t. Technology can support a relationship, but it cannot manufacture one. 

In my agency, we were determined to do everything possible to retain an actual relationship, whatever the cost.  This sometimes meant not being as efficient as we could be, and perhaps not being able to reach as wide an audience as we could otherwise.   Those weaknesses, however, were more than overcome by the referrals we got from those clients who viewed our relationship as a rare human moment in an increasingly automated world.

Here are some simple old-school rules we used for maintaining a relationship in an age of technology:

• When a client called, they got a human unless all lines were full, and the person who answered the phone did so with a tone that suggested that they were actually happy the client called. 
• When a client called, we made it a point to know their name and use it. A simple “Hi Joe, how are you?” does wonders for building a relationship.  If we didn’t know their name, we made it a point to know it the next time.
• Before we talked business with a client, we’d ask about them, their family, kids, etc.  Just a minute or two – nothing strenuous.  The truth is that we enjoyed the interaction – these were our friends.  The funny part about this is that we got to know a lot about our clients and were able to serve them better.
• When we got a referral, we would write a handwritten thank you note and mail it.  Today, it’s the one thing that will ALWAYS get opened and it feels like a special moment.  Yes, it does take more time.  Relationships always do.
• When the client was new to us, we would try to meet them.  There’s nothing like sitting across a table from someone to help start a relationship.  Yes, it does take more time.  Relationships are funny that way.

Now I’m not suggesting that these work everywhere – I wouldn’t expect to have this sort of interaction with everyone within a Fortune 100 company, but I would appreciate it from my sales rep for that company and anyone in a service business that I interact with.  And once that relationship’s established, it becomes very hard to get me to leave.

Price still matters, but relationship changes the equation.