High-touch refers to the involvement of personal attention and service. In business, the term often refers to situations where trust between the customer and employed individual(s) is necessary.
High-touch areas include:
medicine
Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, ...
,
wealth management
Wealth management (WM) or wealth management advisory (WMA) is an investment advisory service that provides financial management and wealth advisory services to a wide array of clients ranging from affluent to high-net-worth (HNW) and ultra-hi ...
,
reference desk
The reference desk or information desk of a library is a public service counter where professional librarians provide library users with direction to library materials, advice on library collections and services, and expertise on multiple kinds ...
,
real estate, and legal.
Stock trading done by humans, as opposed to automated trading or using
online brokers, is also referred to as high-touch.
Origins
The term was coined in 1982 by
John Naisbitt in his book ''Megatrends''. It was explored further by Naisbitt in his follow-up book ''High Tech/High Touch''.
In medicine
High-touch may also refer to the frequency in which a surface is touched.
In
pharmacology
Pharmacology is the science of drugs and medications, including a substance's origin, composition, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, therapeutic use, and toxicology. More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur betwee ...
, high-touch may refer to medicines that require temperature control, ongoing drug management, or compliance monitoring.
Relation to high tech
High-touch was coined as a term in response to "
high tech
High technology (high tech or high-tech), also known as advanced technology (advanced tech) or exotechnology, is technology that is at the state of the art, cutting edge: the highest form of technology available. It can be defined as either the ...
".
High tech, as opposed to high-touch, is when customers don't need human interaction to perform activities such as onboarding, ordering, and account management.
High tech services, such as chatbots, allow customers to get what they want on-demand.
References
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Business terms