Navigating the Balance Between Automation and Personal Connection in Client Relations

A founder's note on where automation earns its place and where it quietly costs you the relationship.

Alba Mora Sanllorente, CEO of North Consulting

I learned that the slow way. In 2010 I started working with businesses, no AI, no flood of information. We segmented by hand even with SAP in the room, wrote emails one by one, and crossed our fingers every time we had to send one in BCC. The contact, even by email, was personal, because there was no other way for it to be.

Then I stepped away. A son in 2019, a daughter in 2021, a move to Italy for my partner's project, twenty-four months out of the office. When I came back, I hadn't missed the train the train was on the moon. AI-generated documents, automated funnels for everything, people on Instagram selling the course that would make you a millionaire. The knowledge was still mine, but it had gone quiet, and so had my confidence. So I bought in. I tried the funnels. I tried selling on autopilot.

It didn't work, and somewhere I already knew it wouldn't: a relationship doesn't survive being processed.

What we did instead

We spent the next months rebuilding our CRM around qualitative data segmenting by sector, testing groups of fifty with messages thought through one at a time. The question that organised the whole exercise was the plainest one available: what emails would we want to open ourselves?

No two clients read a proposal the same way. No two donors read an impact report the same way. Treating everyone identically is expensive in both directions, too little, and the portfolio cools without anyone noticing; too much, and people stop opening what you send.

Where the line goes

None of this is an argument against automation. It is an argument for knowing where it belongs. The welcome to a new member, the renewal reminder, the annual report going out: there, automation saves hours at no relational cost.

The first conversation with a strategic donor, the proposal to a key client, the answer to an objection: not there. That line, drawn well, is what separates an efficient operation from a cold one.

You may not have stepped away to look after your family. But day-to-day management rarely leaves room to experiment either, and you can feel that something is moving fast without being sure whether it's leaving you behind.

We've tested this, in your sector and with your kind of client. If you'd like to look at it together, let's talk.

— Alba Mora, founder, North Consulting