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 practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pract ...

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-high- ...

real estate Real estate is property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this (also) an item of real property, (more general ...

, 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 John Naisbitt (January 15, 1929 – April 8, 2021) was an American author and public speaker in the area of futures studies. His first book '' Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives'' was published in 1982. It was the result of alm ...

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 a branch of medicine, biology and pharmaceutical sciences concerned with drug or medication action, where a drug may be defined as any artificial, natural, or endogenous (from within the body) molecule which exerts a biochemica ...

, high-touch may refer to medicines that require temperature control, ongoing drug management, or compliance monitoring.

Related to High-Tech

High-touch was coined as a term in response to "high tech."

High-tech High technology (high tech), also known as advanced technology (advanced tech) or exotechnology, is technology that is at the cutting edge: the highest form of technology available. It can be defined as either the most complex or the newest te ...

, 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 at chatbots, allow customers to get what they want on-demand.

References

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