I was very excited to be in that environment. People with all hair colors and dressing styles. It even smelled differently. We all knew what was about to happen. The start of a long awaited annual conference hosted by a huge digital brand, based close to the Silicon Valley.

My hopes were to get some tips on how to better support my team. To understand how I can help them grow. Get pragmatic hints on how to optimise our operations. There I was: with a pen in hand and ready to write down all my impressions.

On purpose I decided not to revisit my handwritten notes right after the conference. I wanted the experiences to sit a bit within me. My intention was to understand what remained from all I had heard and felt.

Eventually when I read my written notes again, I was rather surprised on what I found. It was mostly about human beings. Our needs. Our fears. Our wishes.

It would be an overstatement  to say I had an epiphany. However, it was a nice surprise indeed. It hadn’t been that clear to me how so-called soft skills are key assets to digital businesses. And to what extent companies are missing the point.

Here are four lessons on how to practice our humanity:

1. “You either build or destroy where you come from”

In this session Cleo Wade drew our attention to the human ability to evolve and change. She brought up what might seem obvious. That we all have fear. At the same time we all have imagination. She concluded it this way: The fear of change simply represents the absence of imagination.

She threw a question to the public: “If all your dreams came true, would they just change you or would they change the world?” She has a point: If we’d be fully focused on ourselves, that’d be a very sad world to live in. We would only destroy where we come from.

Some people might point out that people need to connect to be able to build something. She refutes this idea. Cleo says that we are all connected already. No need to establish further connection. The need is to be aware of this connection.

Cleo proposes that we all leave room for our personal evolution. Room for change in our lives. For imagination. For an impactful positive change to everyone around us.

2. It’s time to ignite the empathy movement

Tiffany Apcyznski, VP of Social Impact and Public Policy of Zendesk, brought us a fresh perspective about how powerful our social interactions actually are, the micro moments we share with each other.

Our brain is hardwired to accept and mirror the behaviour of those we interact with. Try this simple experiment: observe your most natural reaction when somebody screams at you for no understandable reason. How do you reflect and answer to that with your body?

I’ve also learned a new term: The Conversation Economy. With the proliferation of mobile devices and messaging platforms, we are constantly communicating with each other. Be it with a “like”, a “share” or a “comment”. In this economy, we spend more time being a client than being a friend, spouse, sister, or parent. That was for me quite an eye opening reflection. So simple yet so out of my radar.

Tiffany suggests that in our companies we hire for empathy. And that does not apply to customer service department only. The best hard skills will never beat an empathetic attitude.

3. We’re still the same humans with the same old needs

Maxwell Luthy continuously provoked us with his questions. No answers though. Just new impulses.

Maxwell emphasised one point though: It doesn’t matter how smart our machines are or how smart they could ultimately become. How fast they can process data. In the end we still have to satisfy the needs of a being who hasn’t biologically evolved in the same pace as technology did.

One of his questions about the relation between human and machine was the following: How can you ensure that your digital resources are unbiased and ethical?

He shared a couple of examples of what results are shown by search engines e.g. Google based on what’s most searched by people. He brings up that’s a human’s job to teach machines on how to avoid such biases that computers aren’t able to identify and filter out. A great article from MIT Technology Review you can find here as well as the example below.

It was followed by another thought-provoking question: At which stages of your customer journey are certain groups currently excluded? How will you include them?

Maxwell closed his talk by inviting us to think about the future and by bearing in mind these aspects:

1. Listen to diverse voices;
2. Understand what’s the emotional role that your product plays in people’s lives;
3. Think about user experience, not on demographics of user groups;
4. Leverage FREE media to establish fluid communication with people using your product
5. Find a human side in every single new technology you develop

4. It is essential to be relatable

During the whole conference there was a fuss about a surprise we’d get towards the end of day two. And about Mindy Kaling, a famous US actress and producer. Both unknown to me.

All the attendees gathered for the last talks in the Grand Ballroom. Tension was in the air. You could ask the CEO of Zendesk anything you wanted. But somehow it felt that this session was only an excuse to present us something bigger than that.

The announced Q&A session with the CEO actually happened. Just right after, the lights turned off all of a sudden. We heard a chorus of male voices. Goosebumps. The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus was on stage.

I haven’t heard of them before. Nor did I know what was their purpose. The CEO is one of the supporters of this movement and decided to bring this group to the conference.

Apparently in California living one’s sexual orientation is not a problem. These men though realised that this was not true everywhere. 26 states in the United States still have laws that discriminate the LGBT group.

The approach these men decided to take is remarkable. They got together. They improved their singing skills. They travelled to those states. They made themselves relatable to people who didn’t know what they were up to.

They’ve come to realise that they had so much to learn in these places. People were only afraid of the unknown. Afraid of behaviours they haven’t observed before in their lives. Here I circle back to Cleo Wade’s talk: These people were just lacking imagination.

The choir left the stage. Mindy Kaling came in.

I asked myself: What could I possibly learn from an actress about business? About customer service? About empathy? I was so wrong.

Mindy played a role that many of us can relate to in the series The Office. Filled with humour and satire, she was interpreting a customer service agent. Mindy understood so well what were the pain points of people who deal with our humanity every day and became a great success.

The key to this success, said Mindy, is driven by one element: People feel they can relate to her. They could recognize themselves in her tears and laughs.

That’s the connection we already have. That’s the connection we need to be aware of.

I invite you to think about how a more empathetic world would look like. How can we help build this world? How can we not destroy the place we come from?

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*Big thanks to Feli, Michi, Laura and Vanessa, my dear colleagues from TrustYou, for reviewing this article.

If I got you curious about which conference is that, there you go: Zendesk Relate conference in November 2018 in San Francisco, US. Below you can find the talks I attended. Approach me anytime to ask for more inputs about specific sessions and pragmatic solutions for Client Success teams:

A conversation with Cleo Wade

Cleo Wade – Poet, Artist, and Author

It’s time to ignite the empathy movement

Tiffany Apcyznski – VP, Social Impact and Public Policy, Zendesk

Know thy customer: Critical factors impacting the customer lifetime value

Diane Hagglund – Founder and Principal, Dimensional Research

Astha Malik – VP, Platform and Product Marketing, Zendesk

Get ahead of your customers with proactive engagement

Justin Huskamp – Lead Product Marketing Manager – Connect, Zendesk

How Shopify’s support gurus drive revenue

Marcie Murray – Director of Support, Shopify

Rick Nucci – Co-founder and CEO, Guru

What women leaders bring to the contact center

InaMarie Johnson – Chief People Officer, Zendesk

Marcie Murray – Director of Support, Shopify

Stephanie Dorman – SVP, Client Services, Mediaocean

Beth Held – Director of Call Center Operations, Micro Center

Laura West – Senior Manager, Customer Experience and Operations, ThirdLove

What’s next for CX in 2019?

Maxwell Luthy – Director of Trends & Insights, TrendWatching

Trends and best practices for optimizing self-service with Guide and AI

Jason Maynard – VP and GM, Guide, Zendesk

Raphael Fontes – VP, Customer Operations, Squarespace

What separates leaders from managers?

Solu Nwanze – Director Business Operations, Zendesk & Executive Coach

Creating space for customers not like you

Mikkel Svane – CEO & Founder, Zendesk

Chris Verdugo – Executive Director, San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus

You want to know Mindy Kaling

Mindy Kaling – Actor, Writer, Producer, Director

Elena Gomez – CFO, Zendesk