… received a birthday email from my dentist.

It was fine – and it was 100% automated.

Pretty much the happy birthday equivalent of seeing “Have a nice day” printed on the bottom of your gas station receipt.

It’s not doing any damage, but in terms of moving the needle on customer relationships, it’s a big fat zero.

We all need to be efficient (especially if you are a tiny professional service firm), and that necessarily involves some degree of automation.

But try not to let the process goal of efficiency get in the way of the (bigger) retention goal of connection.