Providing Greater Access to Human Support: The Rise of Tech-Enhanced Human Services

Many of us have experienced the magic of what can happen after receiving a great piece of advice. The things you've been struggling with can suddenly fall into place and what seemed difficult before becomes easier. While some people can receive such advice from friends, family, professionals, or a mentor, many others don’t have access to such priceless support.

Human Support Is King But Hard to Access 

That support may be difficult to access because no one within their circle has the relevant experience to provide help. One’s social capital is an important, though less talked about dimension, of equal opportunities.

And while there’s no shortage of coaches, professionals, and advisors ready to offer their service, that advice isn’t affordable for most people. For example, health coaches can cost more than $500 a month and just 2% of Americans use them even though, according to some surveys, 60% would like to.

One-to-Many Support Solutions Are Not Sufficient 

When people can’t access the human support they need, they often rely on one-to-many solutions. These solutions include books, apps, classes, podcasts, and videos among other resources.  While they have greatly expanded access to much-needed support, the unique value of two-way human engagement is irreplaceable for a majority of people.

To tackle weight loss, for example, automated apps are usually more effective for those requiring minimal support to make lifestyle changes. They are less effective for the vast majority of overweight people needing more support and with that most new users of health & fitness apps stop utilizing them within the first month.

Certain things just need the human touch, they can’t be automated (at least not for now), like situational advice, artistic design, or motivational support to commit to a goal. 

Technology Can Unlock Access to Human Support

Even if tech can’t fully replace human-led support, it can complement it to expand access to more people that need it. This opportunity rests on a key insight: people often don’t need all of the human time that is traditionally involved in providing support. Even a little bit of human touch can make a big impact. 

I saw this taking place at scale for the first time “offline” as a treasury policy advisor on government employment policies. Millions of job seekers were given the opportunity to have limited fortnightly contact with a job advisor. I saw those job seekers greatly benefit from short bursts of quality human interaction.

There were similar benefits observed at PathMotion, a recruitment software company I co-founded where employees engage as ambassadors with job candidates at scale. Candidates undoubtedly benefit from employees answering their unique questions. Additionally, given the fact that candidates face many common issues, they can rely on past answers that require no additional employee effort.

Various fields like health coaching have demonstrated why high-touch support is not always necessary as people are generally resourceful when it comes to driving change in their lives. At Fitmate Coach, the affordable weight loss coach solution I recently founded, we see that short dialogue with a human coach is highly-effective. It keeps people intrinsically committed to adopting healthier habits and accountability can be maintained with the help of tech with, for example, automated check-ins.

These experiences showed me that tech tools could streamline less essential human tasks involved in the support. That tech-induced streamlining could then drive service costs down to make wide-scale support accessible to more people while enhancing the user experience.

The Rise of Tech-Enhanced Human Services

We are seeing more tech companies moving to offer traditionally exclusive human services like coaching, therapy, and legal advice to a wider spectrum of people. They can provide such services to greater numbers by enhancing the expensive human element with tech.

This trend is also being accelerated by the explosion in demand for remotely-delivered services. It’s also being helped by the impressive progress in technologies like natural language processing (NLP) and voice recognition, which help in replicating some aspects of the one-to-one human experience. 

While startups in the space go about it in different ways, they all keep a central role for humans in their solution. The human touch isn’t going anywhere. This is an exciting yet undefined space, but one that’s going to provide more social capital to more people and level the personal and professional playing field. We can call this space Tech-Enhanced Human Services (TEHS’).

Let’s Discuss

We’re at the start of a fascinating journey in this rising tech space that is set to improve the lives of millions.

Startups are exploring the boundaries of where a human task can end and an AI task can begin while preserving service integrity. Many more human services have the potential to be tech-enhanced.

I plan to explore those questions in future blogs with a view to help define the field, drawing on my experiences founding two TEHS startups. I’m also excited to get into how the field can develop through discussions with entrepreneurs, investors, and others active or interested in the space.