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“Somebody that you can just talk to
and a little of that human touch.”
-Human Touch, Bruce Springsteen
The Newsletter Article below was written before the Supreme Court Tariff ruling and the attack on Iran. Both are important issues that are currently unresolved and their impact on the overall economy unknow. I'll address those things in the future or in separate emails.
I had a dental cleaning recently at the place I’ve been going to for a good ten years now. When I went to give the receptionist my credit card to pay for the visit, she said “Oh, we don’t do it that way anymore, you’ll get a link sent to your phone and you pay from there.” So instead of a quick transaction where they take my card, swipe it or scan it, then hand the card back to me and maybe I have to sign, maybe I don’t, either way – it’s thirty seconds at most, I had to login to a new website, input all my information from scratch, then type in the 16 digit card number, the expiration date, the security code etc. Besides the fact that I have trouble seeing the little entry boxes on my phone, and I’d left my glasses in the car because why would I need my glasses at the dentist? And besides the fact that I know many people who would not have been able to deal with this new system at all; why are they doing this? In what possible world is this better for anyone? Replacing cashiers with self-checkout at the grocery store saves the grocery store money. Replacing gas station attendants with pumping your own gas saves the gas station money – but how on earth did this benefit my dentist office? And then it hit me, there’s not going to be a receptionist anymore. What else could it be? Next time I expect instead of a smiling face I’m going to see a touch-pad kiosk where I input my name and date of birth instead of telling the receptionist – and then the hygienist comes out to get me. Another job gone, and another small, pleasant interaction with a real human being removed from our reality. I wonder if she knows.
Now I admit, I actually like the self-checkout better than the cashiers – but that’s because the cashiers and baggers aren’t any better than I am. If the 30-years ago bagger who had your stuff packed correctly and in your cart before the cashier even rang up the total was still around, I’d prefer that. But why hire really good cashiers and baggers? That’s just going to delay the inevitable shift to everyone using the self-checkout. Same with gas station attendants (New Jersey where it’s illegal to pump your own gas notwithstanding) pumping the gas was the easy part. Getting your windshield cleaned, your fluids topped off, your oil checked – that was the service. Once they stopped doing that, I guess having someone pump your gas is just fluff. I bring this up because this is the way it’s been going for years and the “AI Revolution” is going to make it much, much more common. Tasks that companies used to do for you, as part of the cost of doing business, are increasingly going to be pushed on to you. Want to pay your plumber? You can’t just hand him a check as he walks out the door, no you need to download his payment app which will conveniently alert you to all the other businesses around that use that app, and coupons and emails and texts forever. You want to schedule a doctor’s visit, vet appointment, carpet cleaning or anything else? Nobody answers the phone, everyone is always experiencing unusually high call volume (which means, of course, they just don’t want to pay for enough staff to answer the phone calls.) You must use their web site to schedule. Got a question first, maybe the chatbot can help you, but probably not. Customer service is simply a thing of the past, so much so that when you actually experience it somewhere you’re usually ecstatic about it and tell your friends – that almost sounds like it could be a selling point over other companies – but what do I know, I didn’t get an MBA.
So, what is the point of all this? It has nothing to do with the stock market or economy or price of a gallon of gas. But in many ways, it has everything to do with those things. A lot of the momentum in the stock market over the last couple years has been based on this projection of what AI can do to increase productivity across all kinds of industries. This AI boom has also led to massive data center buildouts which are keeping employment pretty steady on the plus side but also causing massive energy usage which is pushing up the cost of electricity and natural gas for all of us on the negative. It’s also going to be a decision point for many executives to determine what tasks they are going to assign to these new AI “assistants” and what tasks are going to continue to be done by people. This has already started and in many cases and I think the executives are making a giant mistake. They seem to want the first interaction people have with their companies to be through these AI bots rather than people, doing all the things I complained about above; setting appointments, trying to direct calls to the right departments, etc. The goal of many companies is to not have to have a customer ever actually interact with a person. In some industries and for some specific issues I guess that could be better or more efficient, but it seems to be happening across the board regardless of the circumstances. How long before one of these giant Private Equity companies that has bought up all the funeral homes and crematoriums want you to plan Mom’s funeral on your iPad rather than face-to-face with a human being who might understand what you’re going through?
These decisions are going to continue to be made here at Keeling Financial as well. There are an array of new AI tools that are going to become available to us once this transition to LPL is completed later in the year. As the business owner, I’m going to have to decide which of these tools I want to adopt and which I don’t. Now, I’m all for greater productivity and efficiency. When I started in this business you had to call a trade desk to make any trades, you had to call an accounts specialist to get a client’s up to date account holdings, and you had to send a fax to distribute money from an account, which was always by check and took up to two weeks to arrive. The fact that I can do all those things in thirty seconds, and EFT money to a client who’ll get it the next business day (with exceptions) has allowed us to have the business that we do. We could never have serviced this many clients as well as I feel we do; with the staff we have thirty, twenty or probably even ten years ago. Things like DocuSign® (which I know some of you still don’t like) have saved us literally tens of thousands of dollars in postage since we adopted it during the Pandemic. Our online meeting system has allowed me to have a more flexible schedule and allowed my wife and I to spend more time in warmer climates or visiting her relatives that live halfway across the country. And as my brain continues to progress into middle age, I don’t know where I’d be without automatic reminders, tasks and pop ups to keep me on schedule. I’m excited about some of the new tools available. We’re going to have access to a meeting note taking app, that will summarize our meetings, whether in person or on Teams, and put that into our notes as well as add follow up items to our schedules. Right now, I take physical paper notes of our meetings and then do my best to summarize what we discussed by physically typing it into our client’s files after the meeting is over. I haven’t seen this in action yet and it may not live up to the hype right away but in theory it saves a lot of time and makes it less likely something is forgotten. The replacement for DocuSign that we’ll have with LPL is also supposed to be easier to use and may finally get me to buy that iPad for the office so you can sign forms electronically and we don’t waste as much paper. There’s also a trading platform that I haven’t quite wrapped my head around but sounds like it could also save us time and money without costing our clients anything. And that’s the key when I make these decisions. I don’t want the experience that my clients have with our office to suffer just so we can process a form a few seconds faster. Our whole value proposition is that we meet you face-to-face (even if it’s not in person) and work with you to solve your financial issues not just with investments and distribution strategies, but also with knowledge and empathy. I want a human being to answer the phone as much as logistically possible, and if you get a voice mail, I want a human being to call you back in a reasonable amount of time. I would rather an interaction take a few more seconds, than be faceless and ultimately meaningless. Yes, we do this job for the money and I couldn’t do it as a volunteer and put my kids through college. But I love this job because I get to sit across from so many people from diverse backgrounds and professions and help them accomplish their financial goals, which need money to accomplish, but aren’t about money. Helping your grandchildren go to college or getting out of the cold for a few months each winter are things you want for emotional reasons, not because they give you a better rate of return. Likewise, as AI starts to consume all parts of our lives seemingly whether we want it to or not, the aspects of it that we implement are going to be about doing the behind the scenes more efficiently and never about pawning our work on to you so we can squeeze another couple cents out of each fee.
I appreciate all our clients and value the relationships we’ve built over as long as 30 years in some cases. If you have any questions about anything, as always give us a call. Otherwise, hope for the early twinges of spring, get your taxes done, and we’ll talk again soon.
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