When Did We Stop Dealing With People?

Summary for busy people

We are a small New Zealand operation competing with enormous online retailers, multinational health companies and increasingly automated businesses. Through GaryMoller.com, Precision Health Testing and the FreeRangers Marketplace, we cannot always compete with these giants on price, and I do not pretend that we can. What we offer instead is something that is becoming surprisingly scarce: real people who know their work, take pride in it and genuinely care about the people they serve.

Technology certainly helps us behind the scenes, including artificial intelligence, but I do not want it replacing the human relationship. If you have a question, a problem with an order or a health concern requiring professional judgement, there is a person at the other end. In health especially, this is so important because a laboratory result, supplement or computer-generated recommendation can never tell the whole story. As I often say in my clinical work, the chart provides clues; the person provides the context.

We may sometimes cost a little more than the giant retailers, but price and value are not the same thing. What you are supporting is personal service, experience, accountability, New Zealand businesses and communities, and people who care about what happens after the sale. As artificial intelligence and automation become commonplace, I suspect genuine human attention will become more valuable, not less.

We cannot always compete with the giants on price. What we can offer is something increasingly difficult to find: a real human being who cares.

An outline of the problem

There was a time, not so very long ago, when buying something usually involved dealing with another human being. The butcher knew which cut of meat you preferred, the pharmacist knew your family, and the person at the hardware shop could often tell you how to fix the leaking tap before he sold you the washer. The shopkeeper knew which products were good and which ones caused trouble, while the local tradesman knew that a poor job would quickly become common knowledge around town. These relationships were unremarkable because they were simply part of everyday life. Commerce was certainly about buying and selling, but it was also about knowledge, reputation, trust and relationships between people. By the way, the big box hardware stores like Bunnings and Placemakers know this very well - they ensure there is a smiling face to greet you on arrival, and they stock the store with helpful attendance as much as they stock their shelves. Their websites are back up this personal service. I suspect that they know what we know, and that is that there is nothing like a real human to serve you.

Sadly, in the health and wellness sector, much of this personal touch has disappeared remarkably quickly. In fact, I predict that the general practitioner, now an endangered species, will disappear entirely in a few years and be replaced by an all-knowing and all-seeing chatbot. We now order products from "Health and wellness" businesses we know almost nothing about, selected for us by algorithms and dispatched from warehouses we will never see. When something goes wrong, we may find ourselves corresponding with an automated system whose replies are perfectly polite, remarkably efficient and occasionally maddening because nobody appears to be listening to what we are actually saying. Increasingly, even the friendly voice or helpful message on the other side may not belong to a human being at all. Artificial intelligence can now answer questions, recommend products, write emails, handle complaints and conduct conversations sufficiently well that it is sometimes difficult to know whether there is a person involved anywhere in the process.

I am not a Luddite. I use modern technology every day and increasingly depend upon it to run several small enterprises. Used well, technology is magnificent. It can perform tedious work in seconds that once consumed hours, help organise enormous quantities of information and allow a small New Zealand business to accomplish things that would have required a sizeable staff only a generation ago. What concerns me is not the technology itself, but the growing assumption that because a human function can be automated, it necessarily should be. There are some things where efficiency is everything, but there are others where knowledge, experience, judgement and genuine human concern remain extraordinarily important. Health, in my opinion, is one of them.

The problem is not technology. The problem begins when we assume that because a human function can be automated, it necessarily should be.

Competing with the giants

The health and wellness business has changed enormously during my working lifetime. A relatively small New Zealand operation now finds itself competing with multinational retailers, enormous online marketplaces and highly automated businesses capable of purchasing, warehousing, advertising and distributing products on a scale we could never contemplate. Their purchasing power can drive prices down, their logistics can be superb and their websites can place tens of thousands of products in front of a customer within seconds. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of this. When I know precisely what I want, I am as happy as anybody to enjoy the convenience and competitive prices these businesses provide.

The difficulty arises when we begin to confuse price with value. GaryMoller.com, Precision Health Testing and the FreeRangers Marketplace operate at the other end of the scale. We cannot purchase container-loads of every product or spread our overheads across millions of transactions, and therefore we cannot always compete with the prices offered by enormous overseas or corporate retailers. Nor, on reflection, do I think that is the battle we should be fighting. What we offer is quite different and, as commerce becomes increasingly automated, perhaps increasingly valuable: knowledgeable and personal service from a real human being.

This human distinction becomes particularly important when health is involved. A bottle of magnesium may be a commodity, but the person buying it is not. Neither is the woman trying to make sense of an unusual laboratory result, the older man wondering how to regain his strength, the athlete who is not recovering as expected, or the exhausted mother confronted by a bewildering assortment of supplements and wondering which, if any, might actually help. Behind what appears to be a simple question there is often a history, and sometimes what matters most is having somebody at the other end who will listen carefully enough to discover what that history is. The query may be as simple as: "Which of the 20 brands of magnesium on display is the most suitable for me, and what is the best dose for me, what time of day, and for how long?"

A bottle of magnesium may be a commodity, but the person buying it is not.

There is somebody at the other end

When somebody contacts one of our businesses with a question, there is a real person at the other end. If an order has gone astray, somebody will try to find out what happened. If something does not make sense, we will try to explain it. If a question about testing or health requires my professional input, it can find its way to me rather than having to fit within one of several predetermined categories before a computer decides which standard response to issue. This may sound hopelessly old-fashioned in an age obsessed with scalability and automation, but I increasingly regard it as one of our greatest strengths.

I have worked in health, rehabilitation, nutrition and sports medicine for more than half a century, and one of the lessons those years have taught me is that people rarely fit neatly into boxes. People are not widgets, nor are they cookie-cutter shapes. The longer one works with human beings, the more cautious one becomes about simple answers. This is particularly evident in my work with Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis, where I have a saying that summarises my approach: the chart provides clues; the person provides the context. A laboratory result may contain useful information, but it cannot tell me everything I need to know about the person whose hair produced that result. Their symptoms, health history, occupation, diet, stresses, environment, physical capabilities and aspirations all matter. Our HTMA recommendations guide expresses the same principle: recommendations should be individualised according to the person's circumstances, because the person always comes before the chart.

There's a big difference between someone asking an experienced health practitioner, "Which zinc and vitamin C should I take?" The question is specific to an individual with a unique history. They might be on medication, have digestive issues, be training for a marathon, recovering from illness, or reacting to something they read online the previous night. Providing good service can sometimes involve recommending a product, but it might also involve posing another question, suggesting a thorough investigation, or advising the person that purchasing anything might not be necessary at all.

The chart provides clues; the person provides the context. The person always comes before the chart.

Knowledge is not the same as judgement

Artificial intelligence adds another fascinating dimension to all of this. I find the technology remarkable and use it extensively. It can organise information, compare documents, analyse data, assist with research and take over tedious tasks that once consumed hours. Used intelligently, it can make a knowledgeable person considerably more productive. I expect it will transform much of the way we work, just as computers, the internet and smartphones have done during my lifetime. Trying to stop this development would be both futile and, in my opinion, undesirable.

However, information and judgement are not quite the same thing. A computer may have access to more published information than any human being could absorb in several lifetimes, but it has not spent fifty years watching what happens to people. Experience accumulates differently. You remember the patient who did not respond as the textbook said they should. You remember the athlete whose apparently minor complaint turned out to be something important. You remember treatments that were fashionable twenty or thirty years ago and subsequently fell from favour. Most importantly, you remember your mistakes, or at least you should, and over the years these experiences tend to make a thoughtful practitioner a little more cautious about certainty.

Eventually, one develops something that is difficult to measure. We might call it judgement, wisdom or simply experience. Whatever name we give it, I believe it remains one reason the relationship between practitioner and patient, producer and customer, tradesman and householder still has considerable value. My approach has long been to place professional experience alongside scientific evidence, practical observation and common sense, rather than pretending that any one of these is sufficient on its own.

A computer may have access to more information than I could absorb in several lifetimes, but it has not spent fifty years watching what happens to people.

Pride in one's work

There is another quality involved that our grandparents would have understood immediately: pride in one's work. The good butcher does not merely sell meat. He cares about the quality of what crosses his counter. The mechanic who has looked after the same family's cars for twenty years does not want one breaking down a kilometre after leaving his workshop. A farmer who cares about the land takes pride in the food leaving the farm gate because it represents years of work and his reputation travels with it. The same should apply to somebody providing health services or supplying products intended to improve people's wellbeing. When your name is attached to what you do, and when you know the people you are serving, the transaction acquires a personal dimension that is difficult to reproduce at industrial scale.

This does not automatically make a small business good or a large business bad. The NZ Muscle Scandal sure taught us that one.There are excellent large companies and dreadful small ones, and trust must always be earned. Nevertheless, scale inevitably changes relationships. When a customer becomes transaction number 8,643,217, it becomes increasingly difficult for anybody inside the organisation to know that person, let alone care personally about what happens to them. For the small operator, the opposite is often true. We recognise names, remember conversations, hear about successes and disappointments and sometimes get to know several members of the same family. When something goes wrong, it bothers us because there is a person attached to the problem rather than merely a statistic on a monthly performance report. Often, instead of writing an email, I will simply phone the person up and resolve matters on the spot. There is nothing like the personal touch!

When your name is attached to what you do, and you know the people you serve, the work becomes personal.

Price and value are not the same thing

There is a curious contradiction developing in modern commerce. We have become extraordinarily sensitive to small differences in price while sometimes paying surprisingly little attention to differences in service, provenance, expertise and accountability. If precisely the same product can be purchased reliably for considerably less elsewhere, people are perfectly entitled to do so. I would never argue otherwise. We have to earn people's business, and being small is not an excuse for being inefficient, expensive or providing poor service.

There are occasions, however, when the extra few dollars support something more than the object inside the parcel. They support somebody who has selected the product, knows something about it, can answer questions concerning it and remains available after the credit card has been processed. That difference becomes especially important with health products and services. Buying a packet of paper clips is one thing; making decisions that may affect your health is another. Cheap advice can become remarkably expensive when it is wrong, while sometimes the most valuable advice a knowledgeable person can give is that you do not need to buy anything at all.

There is also a broader issue here for New Zealand. Every time we choose where to spend our money, we make a small decision about the kind of economy and communities we want to have. Buying from a local producer, practitioner or small business keeps knowledge, skills, employment and relationships alive within our communities. This does not mean we should buy New Zealand-made regardless of quality or pay absurd prices simply to support a local business. It means that value can include things that do not appear beside the dollar sign on the checkout page.

Sometimes the extra few dollars are not paying for the product. They are paying for knowledge, accountability and somebody who will still be there afterwards.

The kind of marketplace I want to build

This thinking sits naturally with the philosophy behind FreeRangers. FreeRangers was never intended to become simply another enormous catalogue of things for sale. Its broader purpose is to strengthen health, resilience, families and communities while connecting people with trustworthy products, useful knowledge and producers who take pride in what they do. Its foundational philosophy talks about combining practical modern knowledge with enduring principles, strengthening community and ensuring that progress serves humanity rather than replacing it.

I would like to see more New Zealanders buying good food from people who care about their soil, animals and produce; buying products from businesses that know their suppliers; and obtaining health services from practitioners who know something about the people they are advising. This is not nostalgia for some imaginary golden age. I have no desire to abandon online banking, return to handwritten ledgers or spend the morning queueing to pay the electricity bill. The sensible course is to take the best of both worlds: use technology for the things technology does particularly well, then use the time saved to do the things human beings still do particularly well, such as listening, observing, exercising judgement, solving unusual problems, building relationships and caring about the consequences.

Technology should serve people, not replace them.

The human premium

Perhaps there will eventually be what I think of as a human premium, the additional value attached to dealing with somebody who knows their subject, takes pride in their work, remembers who you are and genuinely cares whether things turn out well. We already accept this principle elsewhere. Handmade furniture generally costs more than mass-produced furniture. Food from a small producer may cost more than its industrial equivalent. People employ an experienced craftsman even though a mass-produced alternative may be cheaper because they value skill, provenance and accountability. Personal service may increasingly acquire the same value as automation becomes ubiquitous.

When people deal with GaryMoller.com, Precision Health Testing or FreeRangers, they will certainly encounter modern technology. There is plenty of it working away behind the scenes, and I expect there will be considerably more in the years ahead. But I want the technology to remain where it belongs, helping the human being rather than replacing him or her. We may not always be the cheapest, and occasionally we may take a little longer because a real person is investigating a problem rather than a computer issuing an instantaneous standard response. We will also make mistakes from time to time because that is part of being human. What I can promise is that there is somebody here who will read your message, listen to your concern, try to find an answer and care about what happens next.

As artificial intelligence and automation become more capable, there will undoubtedly be pressure to remove human beings from more and more transactions. In many circumstances that will make perfect sense, but I hope we retain enough wisdom to recognise that efficiency is a means rather than an end. Commerce has always been about more than moving goods from one place to another. At its best, it is an exchange between people, built upon usefulness, trust, reputation and mutual benefit. In a world rapidly learning how to automate almost everything, perhaps genuine human attention will become one of the things we value most.

As artificial intelligence becomes commonplace, genuine human attention may become more valuable, not less.

In conclusion

So perhaps the next time you are about to save a few dollars by buying from a faceless online giant, stop for a moment and ask what else is contained in the price. When we choose where to spend our money, we are also choosing what kind of businesses, communities and relationships will survive. If we want knowledgeable practitioners, independent producers and small New Zealand businesses that still answer the telephone, remember our names and care when something goes wrong, then we have to support them. Use technology by all means, and enjoy the efficiencies it brings, but do not underestimate the value of dealing with a real person. In the increasingly automated world ahead, the most precious thing a business may have to offer will not be faster delivery or a cheaper price. It may simply be somebody who gives a damn.

https://freerangers.co.nz/pages/membership