I am reading Jacinda Ardern’s recently published book, A Different Kind of Power. At the start of her term as New Zealand’s 40th Prime Minister, she was asked what she’d do differently. In essence, she said she was going to lead from a place of kindness which in fact she did. I wish we had more of this in business these days.

Asynchronous Interviews versus Human Interviews

I’ve been speaking to colleagues and reading articles about the increased use of asynchronous interviews. Asynchronous interviews are conducted by a robot to a human. Among my circle, it’s being used by recruiters for that initial culling out interview. It’s being used in market research, and I’m told people do respond. Lately, it’s become more common in one of my favorite fields, Win/Loss interviews.

The plus of asynchronous interviews is lower cost, since you don’t have to pay a skilled interviewer. The technology isn’t free though. Those being interviewed can pick any time they’d like since the robot has a wide-open schedule 24/7. That’s handy too, as the interview can be spontaneously scheduled. You can program the robot to speak in multiple languages, another advantage, although many people speak English these days.

One person says that you get about 50% of what you’d get from a human-to-human interview. That’s an improvement over a survey, but is it good enough to replace human to human interviews? Not yet, they’re saying.

Another says now you can interview everyone or survey them and get better data. More data gives you better data. Kind of like AI that skirts everything out there to give you answers and sometimes hallucinations. Connecting with all your customers and prospects like this seems wasteful to me since you can get great results with far less than ALL. And spend your time and budget on other initiatives.

But the point is we’re at another crossroads in business with the increasing use of AI.

Do we still value human-to-human connection? I do and I know my clients do.

When I started in competitive intelligence, Win/Loss interviews were perceived as a marketing touchpoint. They still are a warm experience for the customer who feels he is important since you are taking the time to have a conversation about his experience with your company. True, you have to schedule these conversations, but with scheduling technology this can be quick.

But the way things are going, we have become more transactional in business. We don’t invest the time to build relationships in the ways we did previously.

How do you feel about being interviewed by a robot? It is not the warm interview that a human will give although it comes closer.

The media theorist Marshall McLuhan once said of technology that every augmentation is also an amputation. We chose our digitally enhanced world. We did not realize the significance of what was being amputated.

I fear that human-to-human conversations are being curtailed, although not amputated. If we’re having fewer conversations, it’s all the more important that we take advantage of what we can learn from each conversation. Call me a Conversation Crusader. My book, Loosen Their Lips: How to Find What You Seek During a Conversation will help, and is due out later this month. Stay tuned!