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And so when a service provider is bringing something new, it’s not okay to just install it and say, well, “There it is. I’m sure you’re going to like it.” There’s a migration period. There’s a transition period during which it helps to have the human there to encourage and assist and educate and then congratulate the person who makes the transition.

This is especially so in things like banking, where you’re looking to migrate the customer base from standing at the counter in a branch to actually doing it all on an app. And yet, we know that there’s a customer segment today that has a lot of accumulated wealth that may not be comfortable banking in that way. So you can’t just say, “Lucky you, now we have an app.” You’ve got to also provide the human support that can educate and encourage and congratulate those older folks as they become comfortable with the new technology.

Now, there’s something else about using technology to, as you called it, you know, delegate the work to the customer. But on the other hand, it could also be a lot more convenient for the customer- better service. So, for example, there are some purely digital banks today that deliver an outstanding customer experience. But from day one, they were designing the technology to serve the customer. They weren’t letting the, letting the technology drive the change.

All of us have become familiar with using ATM machines. And those are certainly more convenient than having to stand in line at the counter at the bank in order to make a withdrawal. But when the first ATM machines came out, people couldn’t understand what was on the screen. There was too much there. And it took the industry a while to realize that offering a customer on an ATM screen many, many options was actually bad service. And so they had to, you know, learn over time.

But even once the ATM machine has been worked out, I’ll tell you a story that happened here in Singapore. One of the big local banks, they installed an entire set of eight ATM machines. So lots of capacity. And they put a big sign over them that says, “Now you can make your deposits and withdrawals here.” And then they watched what happened. And it turned out they got complaints that there weren’t enough ATM machines. They thought, how could that be? So they went and they watched carefully and they realized that everybody was using the ATM machines on this end, and the ATM machines on this end were not being used. And so there were literally lines forming for these ATMs, and these were empty. And the bank couldn’t understand because every ATM could do everything until somebody came along and realized the problem was the sign that they had installed above the ATMs, because it said, “Now you can do your deposits and withdrawals here.” And everybody came for the withdrawals, and they weren’t that many doing the deposits. And so then they had, it wasn’t the ATM technology at all. It was the human interface with the customer that had to be understood and designed for their understanding and their convenience.