Convergence Conversation: Building Human-centric Business with Elizabeth Ross

Driving Human-centric Business Connections with Technology

Deb: There is a lot of focus on executing digital strategies within business, but what you are talking about is human connection.

Liz: For any business that connects with people at any vulnerable moment, technology will never be enough. For the national hair-care brand, it was the intimacy of cutting someone’s hair. For customers, getting on the phone to talk to another human being who will hear them and help solve their issue is immensely important. There certainly are functional things that businesses need to provide in an online environment, like factual information, but if we’re talking about being aligned and focused on consumers, it is about people first. We can power the connection with technology, but technology is an accelerant, not a replacement.

Deb: How has decision-making in the c-suite changed because of technology?

Liz: How we’re investing in technology is changing. There are heavy discussions around the human components of technology implementation. For example, within a call center, there are a million functional technology components like the lines, routers, and even the hold music. But the truth is, how someone answers the phone matters the most. Technology can help us understand the person on the other end of the call when we go to answer it. Technology can help us get an understanding of a person’s emotional state before we answer the phone based on their vocal inputs. If someone is agitated or upset, the technology can interpret it. This is really smart technology, but it has a human basis.

Technologies that make our interactions with humans more powerful and more positive will command the premium; not the ones that make us more efficient.

In terms of standing up a data capability internally, the question for any company becomes build or buy. How much should we have and how much do we want to have? The way to evaluate the component parts to implement is around relative velocity. How much of an accelerant is it going to be or is checking the box in some digital plan? Leaders are working to make decisions about what is needed to function as a business in any environment. Those decisions inform what kind of things would be good to have for the future, but we might not really need them yet.

Data and Emotion

Deb: A few years ago, we presented a session titled Algorithms Can’t Understand Love at Ad Week, do you still believe this?

Liz: I do. You can't love something that doesn't meet the basics. For example, in my company, the basics around technology include things customers being able to access their member information and having the ability to change their address. We want to manage our relationships with these customers through a preference center. We need this as a business. Just to be in the consideration set for our customers, we have to check these boxes. We look side-to-side to determine capabilities that are making what we do ultimately easier for consumers, providers, and our team.

A great example is call center software that can connect emotionally. If you're working in a call center and you're on with a gentleman who is in a panic because he cannot pick up his insulin or the formula is wrong, you’re speaking with someone who is beside himself. Before you get on the call with him, it is good to know the situation so you can prepare yourself for the specific situation. It helps to know that this person is really upset and why so you can prepare to connect and help. Having a solid foundation of people-first is so important.

Mission and Investment

Deb: Thoughts on social conscious investment or the ESG?

Liz: Our mission and our business practice already aligned because most of our customers are federally subsidized or qualify for federal subsidies because they are at a percentage of the poverty line. So we're serving incredibly underserved communities with healthcare. Our social responsibility is naturally built into our business. Our consumers are at great risk. By using systems and technology to stratify the risk populations to deliver better care, we are already focused on doing right for customers and communities. There’s great purpose in this. So in many respects, we don't have to invent a purpose.

I do like that investors are thinking about how to support positive movements in ESG. Although there is the danger of going too far and becoming over-reliant on it. Many companies went too far down the shareholder value path. Now there is a potential to swing too far down the ESG path. The risk is that you’ll end up with a pretend mission that takes you off the path of why you exist as a company. I've been making everybody watch Simon Sinek's Golden Circles. Not because it's revolutionary, but because it's not. If everyone is clear on the why, we can get away from needing to create it. It is not always about making money. It’s also about serving the vulnerable public. When the why is understood and done, these things can go together well.

Deb: That's the danger. Purpose becomes a program. We tag it, brand it, and promote it without really making any real impact. If this is reality, it won’t change business behaviors.

Liz: We operate in a world of near-perfect information. It is both an incredible gift and responsibility. Back in 1999, I was working with a global consumer electronics company. They were working out pricing for their products in global markets. They were pricing exact products at different coats depending on if it was being sold in Brazil or South Africa. You can't do that anymore. The practice of obfuscating costs to drive profit based is gone.

The responsibility of marketing is to help people understand what choice they are making. It’s not to try to pretend that they're making a different choice. In the old days, you could almost pretend the choice to buy or not to buy was based on anything you wanted it to be. Now it needs to be based on the truth. Anybody can find almost any information they want so the truth is better than trying to hind bad news. My hope is people are able to understand if my marketing is honest and clear and helps make them smarter, they can make choices based on all of the information available.

Looking Forward

Deb: What's the biggest challenge for marketing going forward?

Liz: The biggest challenge is to remain human. I’ve met with companies that do AI-generated creative to populate blogs and social media channels. It’s appealing in many respects because there’s a lot of content and information to be had. But does doing this really meet a need? Or is it just about satisfying a call for volume? How do we stay human in that world where technology can appear to be creating like one? Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. As more and more data come in, how do we keep marketing in a way that is engaging and interesting without freaking everyone out?

Nothing is anonymous, everything can be traced to your living room. People were blown away by The Social Dilemma. I'm frightened when people don’t know that this is going on. The trick will be finding ways to move your business forward through marketing, but doing it with an eye on being human.

Deb: What's your greatest hope for the future?

Liz: That we remember the power of one another. The simple act of sitting in a restaurant or sitting in a movie theater is so powerful. We are herd animals, and we learn a lot from being around other people, from reading faces. I want us to remember that we're all humans with the same desire to connect and trust. It’s true for marketing and for just people in general. Connection and the act of people connecting with one another is the most important thing.

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Liz reminds us that humanness is needed for our organizations to build trust with all the people we engage and serve inside and outside our organization. Technology creates physical connections, but people are the real emotional connectors. Humans bring energy and emotional electricity to build trusting relationships. While technology has many benefits, the question is how businesses can and should use technology, data, and insights to pursue human-centric business outcomes.

We know that most organizations are collecting and analyzing enormous amounts of data collected, much collected from us. We hear corporate messages about caring for customers, communities, and humanity. Yet we remain unsure about whether we should trust those commitments. Keeping people at the center of our decision-making will help to keep the balance between people, technology, and the purpose of our business.