personal touch

In an effort to be efficient and still “personable”, I am feeling a loss of humanity in some recent interactions that could be avoided. Specifically, in interactions where I’ve paid for something and the person responding has set up a system where they can seem engaging without actually needing to engage. The most egregious and repeatable example is often in my booking airbnbs. The last three times I’ve booked something, I’ve reached out in some combination in the way I always do: providing why I’m coming, when I expect to arrive (if I know), who I’m traveling with, and usually a personal anecdote about why I’m there (“I used to live here! My partner is from here!” etc). Every single time, I get some autoresponder that then asks me something I just provided. This most recent time went something like this:

Me: “Hey [Name of Host]! My partner and I are coming here after a trip to [Enter City} (I go to [Enter City] with my family every summer). Your spot looks perfect to continue our time outside!”

Them: “Hi Anne! We are excited to have you!! I will be sending you check in details, address, dining and activities recommendations the day before you arrive. Tell us what brings you to our beautiful home and please feel free to reach out to us with any questions you may have.”

I just told you! Today, I opened my email and got a generic message from the sales agent who I bought my car from last year congratulating me and reminding me “Let’s make sure it stays in top-notch shape. Schedule your first annual appointment with our service department”. I already got my car’s annual service done more than two weeks ago on May 10th ahead of a roadtrip.

This is not what scaling authentic communication looks like. This feels worse than if someone did not even try to connect. To anyone in these situations, I highly recommend keeping things general, having some conditional logic behind the messages (aka remove this sentence if XYZ action has been done), having a way to review a pre-drafted message before sending, using predefs you can quickly modify instead of mass responders, naming clearly when something is an autoresponder, or just genuinely respond if you’re trying to connect. I don’t need nor want everyone I interact with to have some personal touch and I’d rather drop it to save room for when we actually do want to have connection with one another.

At the same time, I feel for the many of us who are trying to eek out 1% more in returns by trading in our humanity for this scaled communication that sometimes has the opposite effect. How did we get here?