I’ve shared before my dislike for most forms of automation, and personalization is often closely related. Both of those are marginally acceptable for huge companies, but it’s shaky at best. It’s cute that Verizon sends emails that actually start with my name, but as Seth Godin has said, “A mail merge makes nobody happy“.
Personalization is meant to save the company time. You can set up some systems to create a facade of being personal so that you don’t need to actually put in the effort.
Personal is different. It takes time. It takes focus. It takes caring.
It means answering the phone without a dizzying array of prompts intended to scare you away.
It means sending emails with a human at the other end, rather than a ridiculous “no-reply” address.
Personalization and automation are easier, but are also fake and lazy. Be a human.
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