Business is all about Empathy

Businesses try to make shopping a memorable experience, more forward-thinking businesses focus on people, not technology. Business is all about P2P (person to person).

If the buying experience is memorable, it is usually because it was a bad experience. Unfortunately, most of us have these memorable bad buying experiences almost daily. A good buying experience is simple,
effortless, and easy, like taking care of an entire transaction with one push of a button on Amazon.

We only pay attention to technology these days when it is not working. The leaders of tomorrow make things like buying products and streaming content easy and simpler, whenever you want it and wherever you are.

Ultimately, making things seamless and easy is not about knowing which technology is the most cutting edge. It’s about Empathy and knowing what people want and how to make it simple for them to achieve their goals. So, forget about buzzwords like “interactive” and “digital” and think about the tools that people are already using and how to make those tools more connected.

We can see that the digital era is moving us toward a hybrid world. It is time to think across all boundaries and how we can help people everywhere have better more frictionless experiences.  People are pointing at AI (artificial intelligence) as one of the big innovations of the future. But how many businesses are just bolting a chatbot onto their website as a way of saying hey, we use AI? The real innovative companies will have the latest technology at the core of their business model as a tool for helping people in innovative ways.

The innovation is meeting the unmet and unarticulated needs of the customer. It comes from your ability to read between the line and extrapolate.

That is Empathy. It doesn’t cost a penny!

Shan Shanbhag, Ph.D.
Mentor and Business Development Advisory
Principal, Shanbhag Enterprises
[email protected]
407-718-8115