When “We’ve Got It From Here” Isn’t Reassuring

It was late summer in Chicago, the kind of afternoon that made me wish for sunset or a snap thunderstorm to break the humidity. I hadn’t reached full career-related burnout, but I could feel it coming on. I’d started to feel brittle, with small disappointments landing like verdicts on my worth – a pitch not answered, a lukewarm email turning into a whole story in my head – and I knew if I didn’t get ahead of it, I’d stall out instead of moving toward work I actually liked.

I did what a lot of people do: I clicked around professional directories and provider search tools, looking for someone to talk to. I picked what looked, from its web presence, like a small, neighborhood psychology practice — all empowerment‑focused language and soft colors. 

It presented as the kind of place that caters to “professionals like you.” Looking back, I might’ve spotted that this mostly signaled “not super-inclusive” and aimed squarely at the well‑insured side of the zip code, but that wasn’t a deal-breaker at the time.

So. “Get Started” … aaaand, click.

The first prompts were basic intake: name, address, insurance info. Fine. But I wanted to say, in my own words, over the phone with an actual human, why I was there, what I was worried about, what I hoped would change.

“Next.” Ummm … Click?

Instead, I was dropped straight into a calendar. My only choice was to pick a time with a specific therapist – one of several in the practice – whom I had never heard of, had not researched, and knew nothing about. 

No list of clinicians. No bios. No specialties. 

No “Tell us what you’re here to work on.” 

Just: “Here’s Dave. How’s Thursday?”

There he was on the screen: a guy in his late 20s with big and curly blonde hair (held away from his eyes with a bandanna) and a trendy beard. He looked like a pleasant human being. He also looked like “the mental health professional lab-grown specifically to work with ‘bummed-out bros.’”

Hmm.

Oddly, some text on the intake screen assured me that our 20-minute first visit “may be treated as in-network care, depending on your plan.” (So a “complimentary fit check for new prospective patients” was not a thing, and our first conversation would be more about helping him decide whether I was someone he wanted to work with.)

“Oh,” I remember thinking. 

“You’ve already decided who I am and what I need. You just forgot to ask me.”

Smooth Convenience, With Some Rough Edges

In under five minutes, I’d been processed, quantified, and steered — nicely and neatly teed up to spend money I didn’t really have on someone who might be competent, but (maybe? Who knows?) might not be remotely the right person for me.

So I did what I hope my own clients will do when something doesn’t sit right. I asked a real person a real question.

I sent a short, polite note through their contact form: essentially, “Hey, I’m interested, but is there any way to talk to someone first so I can see if we’re a fit? This feels a little fast.”

The answer came back: no.

Not a rude no. Just a curt, closed door. No explanation of their system, no “we’ve learned this works best,” no “here’s how we think about matching,” no alternative path or reassurance that I’d be able to try again if something wasn’t right. 

Just: this is the way we do it. Take it or leave it. (I closed the tab and never booked.)

Several years later, what sticks with me isn’t the bandanna or the stiff-arm when I sought more information. It’s how backwards the whole experience felt for the context. I had brought them something personal and a little scary: early‑stage burnout, and a growing concern about lack of resiliency in the face of smallish setbacks. In return, they pointed me to a (backwards) funnel.

No space to say, “Here’s why I’m here.”  

No sign that my words would matter to the process.  

Just a quiet “We’ve got it from here.” Unearned confidence packaged as convenience.

I think about that afternoon a lot now, as more of the “front door” to our businesses moves behind automation and AI.

Does This Sound Familiar?

You’ve probably seen this same story in another costume: 

• Intake forms that jump straight to a generic proposal. 
• Employment search tools that compress a detailed description of your work into three vague bullet points that describe someone else (or no one at all). 
• “Smart” platforms that boil down thoughtful answers into bland little slugs, because brevity and industry slang tested better than clarity and facts in somebody’s product development meeting.

On paper, it all sounds efficient:

• Fewer clicks for the customer.  
• Faster time to a booked call or a sale.  
• Less time spent on “unbillable” conversations.

In practice, when you aim that model at something sensitive or emotionally charged — therapy, health care, money matters, career development and job searches — it can land the way it did for me on that couch:

“You’re a data point. We’ve already slotted you. Just pick a time.”

That’s the illusion: if we can cram people into neat categories quickly, we must be serving them well.

What’s actually valuable, especially in sensitive contexts, is almost the opposite: “See me clearly before you sort me into a category.”

That doesn’t mean you throw out every bit of automation. I’m not nostalgic for the era of endless phone tag and handwritten intake forms. 

It does mean you need to get very choosy about which parts of the experience you speed up, and which you deliberately leave human and slow.

Go ahead and automate:

• Eligibility checks  
• Reminders and rescheduling  
• Basic triage that the client can see and edit

But you probably shouldn’t automate the first moment someone says, “Here’s what hurts,” and looks at you expectantly to see what you’ll do with that information.

Stop. Don’t Build a Zap For That (Yet).

Business owners: you’re my people — but sit with this idea.

Where, exactly, does your system act like that calendar widget, deciding who people are before you’ve really listened?

In the words of Dr. Ian Malcolm: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. 

In our world, that can sound more like this: “We were so focused on shaving steps off the funnel that we forgot to ask whether this is something people actually want sped up.”

By all means, FAFO. Experiment with how tech can remove friction from your flow. 

But sometimes, the most powerful thing you can offer a client or customer is not “I can get you in and out of here faster.”

It’s the difference between treating people like case numbers, and like individuals.

It’s “I saw you before I sorted you.”