A Guide to Implementing Personalised Customer Experience

There’s a single factor that can draw your customers back to you even more than an exceptional customer experience: an exceptionally personalised customer experience. In line with recent customer experience research, implementing personalised approaches on a larger scale can lead to revenue growth ranging from 5% to 15% for businesses in sectors like retail, financial services, entertainment, telecommunications, and travel.

What is Personalised Customer Experience?

Personalisation within the context of customer experience involves tailoring products or creating services to cater to the distinct needs of individual customers. Personalisation is now a requisite for not only survival but also prosperity in the age of the empowered customer. From addressing customers by their first names to formulating offers aligned with their preferences and interests, personalisation has emerged as the new distinguishing factor for brands.

In the current landscape of the ’empowered customer,’ personalisation has garnered such significance that businesses can no longer afford to disregard it. According to a report by Accenture, 33% of customers who severed ties with a business did so due to a lack of personalised attention.

Why is a Personalised Customer Experience Important?

Even a subtle touch of personalisation can yield remarkable outcomes for all parties involved: your employees, customers, and the business as a whole. The two vital roles personalisation play in the customer experience are:

Customer Trust

When you convey a personalised message to your customers, it leaves a lasting impression. This modest gesture demonstrates your business’s willingness to comprehend the needs of customers and provide them with the attention they merit.

Customer Engagement

Consider this question: would you prefer to interact with an employee who treats you like a complete stranger or someone who makes you feel comfortable and valued? Naturally, we all lean toward engaging more with a brand that tailors each customer interaction to create a sense of familiarity.

How to Implement a Customer Personalisation Strategy

Have a Grasp of The Customer’s Expectations

Delivering exceptional customer experiences hinges on comprehending your customers’ expectations. This stands as a pivotal initial phase in your customer personalisation strategy, enabling you to gain insight into their perspectives. Here are some methods to initiate the process:

1. Administer routine opinion polls and customer surveys
2. Monitor the online discourse concerning your business or direct competitors
3. Scrutinise online customer feedback

Segment Your Customer Demographics

Personalisation and segmentation, though sometimes used interchangeably, actually work together harmoniously. To achieve personalised experiences, it’s crucial to divide your customer base into distinct groups. This practice will streamline your efforts. You can segment your customers based on the following categories:

• Online vs. In-Person Shoppers: Separate customers who favour online shopping from those who prefer physical stores.
• Gender: Men and women gravitate toward products aligned with their gender.
• Age (Children, Youth, Adults, Seniors): Various age groups exhibit distinct purchasing patterns.

Execute Your Strategy Across Various Channels

After gaining insight into customers’ expectations during their interactions with your brand and segmenting them into distinct groups, the next step is to create memorable experiences. For example, if your target segment is “Women” and they often purchase accessories alongside apparel, suggesting complementary items on your online platform can potentially boost the average cart value.

Extend this approach across multiple channels. Whether customers reach out via email, chat, phone, or any other means, ensure a consistent and smooth experience across all mediums.

Some Examples of Personalised Customer Experience

Amazon

Customer-centricity is deeply ingrained in Amazon’s core principles. Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, emphasises the importance of prioritising customers, fostering innovation, and maintaining patience.

Drawing from their extensive knowledge of customer purchasing behaviours, Amazon employs personalised strategies to provide tailored offers and promotions that align with individual customer interests. This approach not only heightens customer contentment but also cultivates loyalty and encourages recurring purchases.

Netflix

Netflix is another prominent pioneer in the realm of customisation. The company has significantly transformed the landscape of the movie and online entertainment sectors. Netflix employs a proactive approach to comprehend user preferences, consistently delving into the interests of its audience. Using this data-driven insight into user behaviour, you may encounter familiar actors, thrilling sequences like car chases, or pivotal dramatic scenes that effectively encapsulate the essence of a movie or TV show within your personalised feed.

Facebook

Despite the recent privacy concerns associated with Facebook, the social media behemoth has honed the skill of personalisation to a remarkable degree and offers valuable insights. Facebook impeccably tailors all the content that each user encounters: from their feed and updates to local event recommendations, advertisements, marketplace deals, and more. Through this comprehensive personalisation of the user journey, Facebook effectively captures interest and cultivates a profound rapport with its users.

7 Tips for Enhancing Customer Experience Through Personalization

1. Create a Visual Representation of the Customer Journey

A customer journey map illustrates the various phases an individual undergoes when interacting with your business, starting from being a potential lead to becoming a devoted advocate for your brand. By utilising a customer journey map, you can pinpoint customer requirements, their anticipations, and the factors that propel them forward in their engagement with your brand. This understanding enables you to structure pivotal touchpoints in the customer journey, and enable you to curate the most impactful and individualised encounters for your customers.

For instance, when a customer is in the ‘Interest’ phase, you can provide content that showcases your product’s features. Conversely, for ‘Paying Customers’, you can offer content that aids them in optimising their usage of your product or service.

2. Capture More Data

In today’s consumer landscape, data privacy has gained significant importance in shaping the rapport between consumers and brands. It’s noteworthy, however, that the majority of customers are comfortable with sharing their data, provided they have a clear understanding of how and when it will be utilised.

A substantial 83% of customers are open to sharing their data to facilitate a tailored experience, as long as brands maintain transparency regarding data usage.

The achievement of a personalised user experience relies heavily on possessing data that offers comprehensive insights into customers – encompassing their expectations, purchasing patterns, interests, and more. To initiate this process, consider obtaining insights into these questions:

• What prompts them to choose our brand over competitors?
• Which web pages do they predominantly engage with?
• What are their preferred customer service communication channels?
• Through which mediums can we effectively keep customers informed and updated?
• How are our email click-through rates performing?

3. Use Personalisation During Customer Service

In the realm of customer service, even the smallest enterprises possess the opportunity to stand out and establish a notable reputation. When clients reach out seeking aid and are met with a personalised assistance, they take notice. This communicates the assurance that whenever assistance is required, your business is prepared to swiftly address their concerns. Here are strategies you can employ to provide a tailored customer service:

1. Personalised Greetings: While this advice might sound familiar, its effectiveness cannot be overstated. Greeting a customer by their first name upon entering your establishment, accompanied by a warm smile, and attentively listening to their needs goes a long way. Nothing surpasses the value of offering undivided attention to a customer.
2. Diverse Communication Channels: Recognize that customers have varying preferences when it comes to communication channels. It’s not necessary to invest in every available channel. Instead, identify the preferred channels of the majority of your customer base and ensure your availability through those channels.
3. Customised Self-Help Resources: Establishing a dedicated knowledge base for self-service allows you to share relevant articles and FAQs tailored to each customer’s unique needs and issues.
4. Harness Help Desk Software: Making use of an effective help desk software enables you to track all customer interactions across multiple channels. When a customer approaches with a concern, your agents will have access to the context needed to offer informed assistance.

4. Keep Emails Personalised and Engaging

Provide tailored content through avenues like newsletters, links to self-help materials, and instructional videos. It’s crucial to understand that an excess of emails doesn’t necessarily yield better outcomes. Collaborate with your marketing experts to establish a well-planned schedule for sending personalised emails at regular intervals.

Running extensive email marketing campaigns guarantees your customers’ engagement in various forms. To manage this, consider utilising email management software. This tool assists in monitoring all email exchanges and facilitates quicker responses if you leverage pre-drafted replies.

5. Keep Recommendations Relevant and Relatable

Modern consumers can easily discern when a business is promoting its products or services solely to achieve sales targets. Proposing irrelevant offerings not only damages the customer experience but also erodes trust in your brand.

According to a study by SmarterHQ, 70% of millennials express frustration with brands sending them irrelevant emails.

Numerous enterprises fall into the trap of suggesting items based on what they perceive as “best-selling” or those yielding the highest profits. Dispensing generic or recurrent recommendations only results in customer frustration with your brand and yields minimal click-through rates.

Following the example of Amazon, it’s essential to personalise each customer’s homepage. This way, when they log into their account, they encounter products truly aligned with their preferences and interests. The same principle applies to emails—keep recommendations succinct and highly personalised

6. Embrace Customer Feedback

In addition to generating profits, successful businesses place a significant emphasis on enhancing customer service. It’s crucial to recognize that your standing in the market is largely due to your dedicated customer base.

To truly delight customers and bridge any gaps, it’s essential to directly ask about ways to enhance their satisfaction and overall experience. Customers possess invaluable insights that can pinpoint areas on your website, app, or campaigns in need of some improvement.

To efficiently gather substantial insights, employ periodic surveys throughout the customer journey. For instance, you can directly inquire about preferred communication channels (such as social media, email, customer portals) your business can use for suggesting products that genuinely meet their needs.

Conclusion

The art of personalisation is a dynamic process, where adaptability and genuine care pave the way to customer-centric excellence. As the market continues to evolve, nurturing these personalised connections will undoubtedly remain a cornerstone of successful customer engagement.