Trust Issues In Business
Even the most well-meaning and well-intentioned people will behave in seemingly unpleasant ways when put in situations where outcomes are zero-sum.
Encountering behavior of this sort frequently in one’s career could lead one to develop the false belief that no one is trustworthy, and could immediately cascade into a pessimistic worldview.
This is dangerous because it could mean that person will start to treat everything as if it were out to get them. If enough people do that, we end up having a low-trust society. Trusting people is no longer a useful heuristic in a world that’s as volatile as ours. Instead, try to look at the incentives upon which people operate.
A business that is going on a hiring spree, paying exorbitant salaries, and offering generous perks isn’t doing so out of the goodness of its founders. It hopes that treating employees well will translate to improved performance, which will then lead to more revenue.
Similarly, a manager who fires a subordinate might be doing so because they are under pressure to cut costs and go for the one they believe has the least impact on revenue. Incentives constantly keep changing and as professionals, it is incumbent upon us to pay attention to them and alter our course accordingly.
In an increasingly connected world, are we becoming more disconnected?
When phones provide all the entertainment we need, is there a need to look up and see the people and the world around us? Chatting with strangers has become a thing of the past. We are constantly looking for efficient and convenient ways to get things done. The customary chat with shopkeepers, and auto guys has been replaced by online reviews and maps. Human contact is viewed as a transaction that needs to be completed as fast as possible and gain the most out of it. Loitering purposelessly, and discovering new streets, is no longer acceptable in the offline world. The need exists but it has been replaced by mindless binge-watching or discovering new content or restaurants online.
This decline in human conversations feels okay at most times, but when things go wrong, you want to complain to a human, not a bot, not an endless selection of IVR inputs. Our need for humanity is highest in times of distress. Amica takes the same insight by offering empathy as their proposition. There are no rational reasons like claim clearance, coverage, etc, just empathy.
Insurance is a category that people don’t want to think about, it is rife with denial. HDFC did the Sar Utha ke Jeeyo campaign to give it a positive spin, and reframe it as a requirement to live a life of respect even when you retire. This ad showcases how things could go wrong at times, but what makes it possible to get through it is some empathy. It makes empathy a core tenet of being human, it is not something aspirational, it is what makes us human. It is easy to extend empathy to those close to us, but extending it to strangers is difficult because that requires us to look at them as part of our tribe, to look for similarities and not differences. Online we are constantly taking sides, inadvertently getting bucketed into sub-identities, but are we losing our most basic identity? That of a human, who can feel what others feel, a human who wants to connect with others?
The insight in the film is strong, but for this communication to work, Amica’s customer service must be empowered to deliver empathy, Amex does a wonderful job at this and could own the same space. What did you think of the ad?