How can we keep the “person” in “salesperson?”
We've entered the Sales Automation Age, an era that has increasingly put the most tedious and inefficient aspects of the sales pipeline on autopilot. Humans will always be the drivers behind the sales process, but machine conveniences sometimes feel like they could take the all-important human touch out of the customer experience.
All business interactivity is trending towards streamlined solutions that make our jobs easier by taking over the repetitive parts. For example, IBM predicts that 85% of all customer service interactions by 2020 will use automation. Automated checkouts mean the cashier supervises the machine rather than manually checking you out at many grocery stores (or even some restaurants). While efficient for the employees, we risk making things feel less human to customers when they only need to interact with one side of a computer screen, and the employees stick to the other side.
AI and computer learning are at the heart of this revolution. Sales automation tools have transformed the e-commerce experience so that a website can chat with you when you enter, show you what you want with a direct verbal query, and drop the price when you're about to walk away. With automation like this, a stranger can become a visitor, a lead, a customer, an advocate—all without talking to a single human.