With more than 3,500 MarTech solutions on the market today, choosing and applying marketing technology has become a complex and intricate science. Analytics technologies facilitate understanding and can even predict user behavior, providing vendors the opportunity to cater to the needs and desires of their customers.

Yet there are threatening repercussions when vendors think they can completely understand and convert customers through digital-only means. While the myriad MarTech solutions are highly sophisticated—“learning” and responding to different patterns and trends in user behavior— sometimes what a user really wants or needs is lost in translation.

With the push to automate, companies often fail to humanize.

According to the 11th annual Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Survey, 77% of US customers prefer dealing with human beings when they need advice.

This could be for a number of reasons. Perhaps people have unique questions that cannot be found on a FAQ page. Or they are having a hard time navigating through a website. Or maybe they feel like they can more readily judge the character of a company when they interact with a human being.

The human aspect of business has always been there, and it is likely that it will always be there.

So how does valuable, time-saving, automated technology integrate with human interaction for an effective omnichannel experience? What role does each play and how do they complement each other?

If a MarTech solution can effectively predict at what point a customer has a concern—a concern that, if unaddressed, could result in a failed conversion— then that tool can inform and involve a human being at that critical juncture via a digital chat and phone call experience with the customer. By capitalizing on this opportune moment, conversion rates will increase, customers will be more satisfied, and ultimately incremental revenue will flow.

Matt Langie, CMO at MarketLinc, recently said, “A digital-only journey is insufficient for some customers. In order to not only drive conversions, but to capture the loyalty and devotion of customers, you must present an opportunity for human-to-human interaction. A company can consider itself successful when customers connect their brand to a voice, a face, or a name of a human being, which in turn, creates revenue lift that would be otherwise lost.”

Matt Langie will be presenting “The Power of Human Engagement in a Digital World” at the ObservePoint 2016 Analytics Summit on November 17, 2016 (video now available on-demand). He will be delving further into the necessity of combining automated analytics with real-time human interaction.

Matt Langie’s session was part of the 2016 Analytics Summit. Watch his and other sessions on-demand.

About the Author

Jack Vawdrey is a content marketing strategist and closet programmer interested in the opportunities that marketing technology and automation present for enterprises. Passionate about digital marketing, content marketing, and analytics, Jack is continuously honing his skills in these areas and relishes an opportunity to share what he's learned. Jack joined the ObservePoint marketing team in 2016 as Managing Editor and now works as a Content Marketing Consultant.

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