If you own or manage a service industry company, then you will recognise that your staff and their performance is a critical component to deliver a competitive advantage and achieve sustainability outcomes. Staff who are loyal, diligent and keen to deliver your service are worth their weight in gold. They make the difference between a poorly performing or a leading low-footprint business. Simply by focusing on curtailing waste (both cost and materials), delivering added value and high customer satisfaction, staff and sustainability outcomes create a highly competitive point of difference.

Rather than technology aiming to replace talented hospitality staff, how can technology best humanize to assist in excellent staff outcomes?

Humanized Technology

Humanized Technology is a highly repeated phrase in today’s industry. It is now perceived as a customer expectation more than a point of parity that any technology worth investing in is humanized.

When technology is humanized, it uses processes that are intuitive and relatable to human behaviour. This doesn’t necessarily mean AI assistants; it can be evident in the smallest features in any user interface, such as following psychological attention principles (e.g., attentional load) to lead users to the correct location and quantity of information, and using icons, buttons and colours that align with a user’s expected meaning (i.e., green = “on” or “good”).

Hospitality specifically is a people industry at heart. Any technology introduced must be some element of humanized otherwise the connection between the staff service and customer experience is detracted.

Let’s look into what humanization really achieves and how it can be implemented, how its effectiveness is evaluated, and how it can lead to greater outcomes for a hospitality’s business and its guests.

How To and What Humanization Really Achieves

There are three key benefits in humanizing technology, improving user: accessibility, engagement, and retention.

Accessibility

When a technology is humanized, it builds upon a foundation of understanding already present in its user. This allows any user to start using the service and find immediate value. It also reduces user error resulting from a misalignment between the user’s expectation and the system’s execution. In WISE Sustainability’s services, we emphasize the importance of accessibility as users are any level of staff at any type of hospitality business around the world!

The accessibility of information is equally important – take the following example: When the technology service celebrates 13kWh made today, it is unlikely to register as much of a reward for a front desk staff member and inspire them to make further savings. But when this is translated to 722 full charges of a smart phone (iPhone 16 Pro Max with a ~18Wh battery), this feels like a very significant saving made!

This humanization by removing technical jargon and building upon existing user expectations allows a technological service to become more accessible and be effective for a greater range of people.

Engagement

A technological service is the same as any car: many can get you from A to B, but wouldn’t you rather enjoy the drive? When the user experience is enriching, the value of the service is much greater.

As opposed to a strategy for AI assistants to be more engaging by mimicking human voices and faces, let’s explore a strategy to engage hospitality staff who can then deliver excellent guest experiences and sustainability outcomes.

Gamification is a strong tool to make any service more engaging. By adding a multitude of elements users can find enjoyment in, it provides an intangible point of parity ahead of competitors. After all, being human means feeling drawn to things that are fun!

There is a vast multitude of methods to gamify a system, but the core principles are to appeal to a wide variety of “player types” a user may be when interacting with your system. Example player types are those who seek to win, to achieve their chosen goals, to socialize, to explore, etc.

There are a myriad of methods to engage each player type, and whilst the full scope may be well beyond a system’s purpose (e.g., a notes app couldn’t use all methods), using a select range of elements still improves the engagement of a service for a wide range of users.

So long as it does not undermine the system’s functions (e.g., the purpose of the service becomes lost behind the mass of gamification elements), then gamification is a powerful tool to humanize technology and increase engagement.

Retention

Finally, a humanized technology promotes user retention. When a system achieves its purpose and is accessible and engaging, there is an emotional connection that is created between it and the user. Why would a user choose a different service, when they know exactly how this service works and finds it more engaging? The power of this feeling is strong and even leads users to select a system that might be more humanized but less functional.

What an effectively humanized service can do is then intrinsically motivate a user. As opposed to extrinsic motivation (think when someone needs to comply, wants to obtain an external reward or avoid punishment), people are intrinsically motivated when something brings them interest, enjoyment, or inherent satisfaction. This provides even greater retention and value of the service, more possible via the humanization of the technology.

Evaluating a Technology’s Humanization

Humanization is not a dichotomous feature, i.e., a technology either has it or it doesn’t. The evaluation of humanization is subjectively made along a continuous scale. Like any service, it is valued by any one user in how they connect with the technology. The more effective a service can complete this across a wider range of people, the more humanized it is seen as.

Of note, the humanization of a technology is not universal, there are important cultural aspects to consider. User’s expectations will differ depending on a wide variety of psychological factors. It is important to remember there are not rigid rules for humanizing technology and its effectiveness will change depending on how well it reflects its specific userbase.

The Green Insight