The Human Experience Part 1 - Hannibal v John Stewart

Recently I asked the following on @thebankchannel - "If we changed the term 'customer experience' to 'human experience' would it change the way we treat people?"

This thought came from something I'd been been listening to (for the second time) - a series of podcasts by Dan Carlin, an American historian and presenter, on the Punic Wars, the ancient clashes between the Carthaginians and Romans many hundres of years ago.

The podcasts are excellent. I recommend them highly.

When traditionally told, the stories of the Punic Wars, like many stories of ancient history, focus on dates, data, facts, names and results - as Dan says, its easier to focus on these things, as it helps to unravel a story set in very different and foreign times, as well as the complexity and vague detail from this episode long ago.

The textbooks you read at school probably had this tone, where you embedded the numbers and names in your head to regurgitate for an impending exam some weeks later.

The difference with Dan's podcasts is his intense focus on the human experiences - the actual emotions, sights, sounds and scenes the people themselves must have endured in some of the most epic and brutal confrontations in history.

Dan asks you - "Have you and your neighbours ever had hand to hand combat with an Elephant?", "Imagine being amongst a battalion of men, with the sleet raining down, you've no food or drink, you're not prepared for war, and suddenly the bulk of the battalion on front shunt backwards" ... etc etc.

If I'm sounding a little Dungeons and Dragons right now, then forgive me. Dans delivery of something I'd previously not known or much cared about is what has captivated me.

So let me get to the point.

These stories, and importantly the way they're told and the things they focus on, are important to remind us of the emotional responses and events people endure that truly define us. Its not the numbers or dates, its the way people think and feel that connects us to each other and these stories.

In corporate life and customer experience, whilst far less bloody than the Battle Of Cannae (where Hannibal marked his greatness forever) for example, the human emotion and experience is still something that is neglected - customer experience is something we use in banks to connect our business view to the end user.

Perhaps this isnt right.

Perhaps we should assess how we interact with customers on a human level rather than just a customer level.

Or, maybe we need elephants in each branch. It worked for Hannibal.

I think John Stewart confronted it in a modern and business context:

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Chrysler chose to be efficient in a time where the human touch was sorely needed. They were insensitive to the very network that previously had made them a success, or at least kept them alive.

The management at Chrysler would have had a whiteboard, with numbers and locations of dealers, ready to be told the news. Letters would have been efficiently drafted, approved and sent. PR and Comms would have been briefed, and on alert.

But it was this very delivery as much as the message that made this experience very much an inhuman one.