Today we’re speaking with Aisha Amaira, a MarTech expert who has built a career at the intersection of CRM technology and customer data. She has a unique perspective on a problem many businesses face: as our tools for communication have become more powerful, our actual connections with customers often feel weaker. She argues that the future of customer experience isn’t about more automation, but about using technology to bring back the human touch.
This conversation explores how businesses can move beyond seeing CRMs as data repositories and transform them into ecosystems for building genuine relationships. We’ll touch on the delicate balance between efficiency and connection, how to make empathy a core business strategy rather than a happy accident, and the evolving role of AI as a behind-the-scenes partner for your team. Aisha will share her vision for how technology can help businesses of any size create the kind of authentic, memorable experiences that build lasting loyalty.
The article contrasts the genuine care of a small Prague restaurant with modern CRMs built for data. How can leaders use today’s technology to foster that same sense of authentic connection at scale? Please share a specific example of a company that successfully makes its customers feel “seen.”
That little restaurant in Prague is something I think about constantly because it represents the gold standard of connection, achieved with zero technology. The owners simply saw us, remembered us, and showed they cared through small, generous actions. The challenge today isn’t to replicate that without technology, but to use technology to scale the memory and intent behind those actions. The secret is to automate the logistics, not the relationship. For instance, a wealth management firm I admire uses its platform not to send generic market updates, but to create prompts for its advisors. The system might flag a client’s anniversary or a note from a previous call about a child’s graduation, and then prompt the advisor to send a personal, handwritten note. The technology does the remembering, which is the hard part at scale, but the human delivers the connection. That’s how you make someone feel seen beyond their account number.
You highlight a tension where businesses automate faster than they humanize, leading to declining satisfaction with AI-only channels. What practical, step-by-step process can a company follow to identify the right things to automate while empowering its teams to build stronger customer relationships?
It’s a critical tension, and the dip in satisfaction with AI-only channels tells us we’ve reached a breaking point. The first step for any company is to map out the entire customer journey and identify what I call “moments of transaction” versus “moments of connection.” A moment of transaction is functional—like a shipping notification or a password reset. These are perfect candidates for automation because customers want speed and efficiency. A moment of connection, however, is emotional—handling a complaint, celebrating a success, or providing complex advice. These are the moments you must reserve for humans. Once you’ve separated the two, you can automate the transactional tasks to free up your team’s time and mental energy. That newfound bandwidth is then reinvested into the moments of connection, empowering your people with the tools and time to listen, empathize, and solve problems in a way no chatbot ever could.
A 2024 study found that consumers want companies to remember basic details about them. How can a business transform empathy from an “accidental” soft skill into a core operational strategy? Could you describe the specific tools or processes a team might implement to ensure this consistency?
That study from PwC really gets to the heart of the matter. We can’t leave empathy to chance or depend on the memory of a single employee who might leave tomorrow. To make it a strategy, you have to operationalize it within your systems. This means evolving your CRM from a static database into a dynamic “context engine.” A practical tool would be a shared internal notes system where any team member can add small, human details—a customer mentioned their dog’s name, or they’re training for a marathon. The crucial next step is for the system to proactively surface that information at the right time. Imagine a support agent opening a ticket and seeing a small pop-up: “Remember to ask how marathon training is going!” It transforms a generic interaction into a personal one, making empathy a consistent, repeatable part of the experience.
The piece suggests AI’s role should shift from replacing people to “revealing” helpful context. Beyond simply pulling up a customer’s history, what are some innovative ways AI can act as a “behind-the-scenes” support system to help employees create more timely and meaningful interactions?
This shift from “replace” to “reveal” is the most exciting frontier for AI in customer experience. Going beyond a simple contact history, AI can act as a true co-pilot for your team. For example, it can analyze the sentiment of an incoming customer email and provide the support agent with a suggested opening line that acknowledges the customer’s frustration or delight. It can also monitor a customer’s activity—like if they’ve repeatedly visited a certain help page—and prompt a team member to proactively reach out with a helpful guide before the customer even has to ask. In this model, AI isn’t the voice of the company; it’s the whisper in your employee’s ear, giving them the insight to show up as more informed, more empathetic, and more helpful in every interaction.
You predict CRMs will evolve from data dashboards into “relationship ecosystems.” What does this look like in practice? Please describe the key features or metrics a leader should look for in a modern platform designed to humanize operations, not just track efficiency.
A relationship ecosystem feels completely different from a traditional CRM. Instead of a dashboard filled with pipeline stages and conversion rates, you’d see metrics that measure the health of the relationship itself—things like a “connection score,” the time since the last meaningful interaction, or customer sentiment trends. In practice, this platform would integrate communication tools, making it seamless to send a quick, personal note. A key feature would be an AI-powered suggestion engine that prompts relationship-building activities, like “It’s been six months since you spoke with this client; here’s an article on a topic they’re interested in that you could share.” Leaders should look for platforms that prioritize ongoing contact over simple data tracking and provide tools that make it easy and natural for their teams to stay in touch in a human way.
What is your forecast for how “empathy at scale” will evolve beyond 2026? As AI becomes even more sophisticated, what is the biggest opportunity—or the biggest risk—for businesses trying to maintain a human connection with their customers?
My forecast is that by 2026 and beyond, the line between proactive service and predictive empathy will blur. The biggest opportunity is to use increasingly sophisticated AI to anticipate customer needs with stunning accuracy, allowing businesses to solve problems before they even arise. Imagine an e-commerce company’s AI detecting that a delivery is delayed due to weather and automatically triggering a personal apology and a small gift card from a human agent, all before the customer even notices. However, the biggest risk is the “empathy uncanny valley.” As AI gets better at mimicking human emotion and conversation, we risk creating interactions that feel hollow or even deceptive. The ultimate failure would be for a customer to feel a connection, only to discover they were talking to a sophisticated algorithm. The businesses that will win in the future are the ones who use AI to empower their people, not impersonate them, maintaining transparency and ensuring that true connection always remains fundamentally human.