The best example of the importance of personal touch is when a customer has a question related to the product. One of the questions that comes to our customer service center in St. Louis the most is about what base the caller should buy for the size (and weight) of their table top. It doesn’t matter whether the question comes through email or by phone, or whether the person asking is planning on buying directly from us or through a dealer: if they have a question a person will answer it. Unlike a computer, which relies on programming to find an answer put in a database, a person can utilize their experience and think through problems that require new answers.
The personal touch not only can provide answers that a computer cannot, it minimizes the customer’s aggravation. There is no strange lag, or disconnection. Instead, the personal touch allows for the maximum ease for the customer, which is what, after all, the customer wants. It is the ease that the personal touch creates that brings them back again.