The Strange Problem of Being Too Human

Here's a genuinely funny problem I run into: I'll message someone directly, personally, about something specific to their actual business, and they'll still assume it's automated.

That's not a compliment to the automation. It's a sign of how rare a real, one-to-one message has become.

Why people assume the bot

We're all so used to being messaged by something automated now, a chatbot, a sequence or template with someone's first name dropped into it, that a genuinely personal message doesn't register as genuine straight away. People have been trained to expect the fake version, so the real one looks suspicious by default.

I find that properly funny, if I'm honest. Being real is now the thing that looks fake. It says a lot about where things have got to with automation, and not much of it good for the businesses relying on it too heavily.

What actually cuts through

Voice notes help. So does asking something specific and non-generic, a question about the actual business in front of me rather than a copy-paste line that could apply to anyone. A bot can read sentiment and mimic warmth reasonably well now, but it can't sit with someone properly in something that actually matters to them, and people can tell the difference eventually, even if it takes them a message or two to clock it.

I want to be clear, I'm not against AI or automation, there's a real time and place for both, and I use tools like it in my own business where it makes sense, though selling, proper selling, the kind that leads to a real relationship rather than a one-off transaction, is built on genuine connection. Efficiency alone doesn't get you there.

The bit I actually love

This is maybe the part that surprises people most, I genuinely love getting under the bonnet of someone's business, working out what they're actually chasing and where they're stuck, and yes, a properly sales full inbox gets me a bit excited too, which probably says something about me. That curiosity is exactly what a script can't replicate though, because a script doesn't care what you're stuck on, it just has a reply ready regardless.

If your own messaging is starting to feel like it could have come from anyone, that's usually the moment worth pausing on. Not because automation is wrong, just because somewhere along the way, the human bit might have quietly gone missing.

Wondering how human (or how automated) your own inbox actually sounds right now? Let's have a chat to see.