When organisations lose the human touch

I became a member of Club Mahindra in 2010. Whenever I needed something beyond my normal entitlement-an additional room, for instance-I would write to them. Someone would call to understand my requirement. If I missed the call, they would call again. I would be placed on a waitlist and, sometimes, the additional room became available. At other times, it did not. Even then, there was an apology and an explanation. Whether I eventually got the room was not what stayed with me. Someone had listened. Someone had tried. I felt valued.

Over the past few years, I sensed a change. A missed call is sometimes followed by an email saying that I could not be contacted, bringing the conversation to an end. Recently, dissatisfied with the response to a request, I gave a poor rating on their app. An executive called but explained that he was helpless. He could not even place me on a waitlist. When I asked for the escalation matrix, he promised to send it by email, which he never sent.

It would be easy to blame technology or the increasing scale of organisations. Yet my experiences elsewhere make me hesitate. Whenever I stay at Taj or ITC properties, I encounter employees who appear instinctively inclined to help. They cannot always fulfil a request, nor should one expect them to. But there is usually an attempt to understand whether something can be done. The difference is subtle but important. Good service is not about always saying yes. It is about making the customer feel that the request has been heard and someone has genuinely tried.

My father still narrates an incident from more than four decades ago. While browsing at Harrods in London, he inadvertently left his camera behind. He realised it only after boarding his flight back to India. This was before mobile phones and emails, when international calls were prohibitively expensive. On returning home, he wrote to the store. Sometime later, he was surprised to receive the camera. Accompanying it was a letter from Harrods apologising for the inconvenience. The customer had forgotten his camera. The store apologised.

Perhaps technology, therefore, is not the real issue. Harrods could demonstrate concern without apps, customer relationship management software or automated tracking systems.

Taj and ITC demonstrate that modern organisations can retain the human touch. And my experience with Club Mahindra suggests that an organisation can possess that quality and gradually lose it. Why does this happen?

As organisations grow, processes become necessary. Standardisation improves efficiency and technology allows businesses to serve customers at a scale otherwise impossible. But processes also define what employees may or may not do. Somewhere along the way, an employee can stop asking, "How can I help?" and begin asking, "What does the system allow me to do?"

Perhaps this is where leadership and organisational culture matter. Employees work within the systems, authority and expectations created for them. It is leadership that determines whether procedures become rigid boundaries or allow room for empathy when circumstances demand it. Technology and growth need not make organisations impersonal; much depends on the culture created at the top. When employees know that helping customers matters as much as following a process, that understanding shapes every interaction.

Systems may become smarter and processes more efficient. But an organisation retains its beating heart only as long as its leadership remains willing to care-and creates a culture in which caring is possible.

The writer is a founder of Kala - Krazy About Literature And Arts, is an author, speaker, coach, arbitrator, and strategy consultant; Views presented are personal.