The Human Touch

I saw a caption on LinkedIn a few days ago which read 'we no longer operate in a B2B environment, the phrase is now H2H - human 2 human.

This morning at 7am, as I'm walking through a cold Canary Wharf tube station, lost in my own thoughts, I saw a woman asking a tube worker for some help. 

How much longer will that service be available, I thought to myself: personal, one on one, human service is soon to be a thing of the past on our beloved London transport network. Here we are, raving about the importance of talking to each other, reversing some of the machine to machine progress we've made over the last 50 years and conducting business in a human way, and there's one of the biggest and most iconic transport networks in the world shouting from the rooftops about reducing staff numbers to increase efficiency through machines. 

The 'tickets' accessibility is being
replaced, who's giving the 'assistance'? 

What happened to the human touch?

Forget money, profits, efficiency and speed, don't we all rush through our lives enough as it is?! 

We like people - it's human nature. We need each other - if sometimes only to argue the toss over who is right or wrong! People need people. Studies have shown that accents influence our moods when we talk to people in call centres; a particular type of voice can affect how we respond to others and how successfully we ultimately rate the interactions. Doesn't this show the major impact that people have on our mental health; just think how important that human voice is when the tube network breaks down or the next person is taken ill on a train. The tube, despite all of the millions of people that pass through as customers everyday, needs more people - it needs those friendly, helpful faces; the people make us feel safe and protected, those who provide that calming influence and who know what to do if/when something goes wrong. 

Why does money so often win out in our world? Sometimes I think we need to go back to basics: humans need humans.