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Personalizing the CX Requires Blood, Sweat, Time and Passion

September 19, 2016

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Author: Morag Lucey, CMO Avaya Inc.

Research undeniably proves that personalization is key for delivering amazing customer experiences. (After all, companies can’t provide just one customer experience—rather, they need to provide ongoing experiences that adapt and evolve as technology and customer needs change.) For example, a recent study found that nearly one third of customers desire higher levels of personalization when shopping. At the same time, 96% of businesses believe that personalization is what influences key purchasing decisions and inspires and strengthens customer loyalty. Personalization done right means customers are with you for the long haul.

Customers are hungry for more personalized experiences, and businesses understand the benefits in providing them. So why is it that 20% of companies have no plans to improve their personalization efforts?

As a consumer, I find this sort of inaction unacceptable. As a business leader, I’m perplexed why any company wouldn’t immediately begin to make the shift. The experiences a company offers its customers are its best chance at substantial differentiation. Differentiation means growth. More importantly, differentiation means survival. Organizations need to make customer experiences more personalized, and they have no time to waste. But this isn’t a simple undertaking. Personalization is more than just a buzzword. It’s a mentality, a company culture, a lifetime commitment. Above all, it’s something that’s expected by consumers today and generations to come.

What is a Personalized Customer Experience?

To deliver the personalization that customers desire, businesses must first understand what this really means. Personalization can be summed up into two words: contextual and predictive. Customers must be served in such a way that companies already know who they’re dealing with and how they want to be treated.

Let me give you a personal example to illustrate this. Anyone who knows me knows I love fashion, and I have a favorite retailer. Based on my shopping history and engagement with that brand, the company knows what size I am, what my color palates are, and what styles most appeal to me. They have every piece of relevant information about me to ensure my experiences are contextual and meaningful. So much so that the company can anticipate what products I’d like and dislike. For instance, they know to never suggest to me products from St. John (Vince, on the other hand, I’ll go all out for!).

By having this relevant information at the right time and by leveraging it the right way, companies can quickly create a contextual experience that’s tailored to their customers’ personalities. At the same time, they’ll be able to increase the amount of revenue they generate. In fact, according to the abovementioned study, nearly 60% of customers who have experienced personalization say it’s a notable impact on their purchasing. In my case, this is great for that favorite retailer (and perhaps not so great for my husband!).

The Only Way to Deliver True Personalization: Are You Ready?

The key to delivering this level of personalization is to find the most relevant information about each customer and use it to service them in a way that’s relevant to them.

How can businesses find this relevant information? Think of all of the data that exists about you on the web. Every action and transaction you’ve ever made lives online somewhere as part of your digital footprint. The information is out there. Companies need to be able to mine this information in such a way that it makes the customer feel special and attended to. But this can lead to a big problem: having too much information.

This is where the blood, sweat and tears happen. I wish there was a simple way to resolve this issue, but there isn’t. The only way to effectively work through this is to identify how large your customers’ digital footprints are and sift through that data to find what’s most relevant to them. The goal is to build customer profiles that reflect each individual’s preferences, behaviors and habits. After all, what every customer considers relevant is unique to them as an individual.

The good news is that there are technologies available to help minimize this grueling process. For example:

A customer engagement solution: But not just any solution. You need a platform that is truly multi-touch, enabling you to easily create, innovate, optimize and future-proof customer experiences. You must find a top-shelf platform with a proven ability to generate customer loyalty, retention, and repeat spending at the individual consumer level. Here are a few tips for finding your best solution—invest in a software-based platform that:

Supports easy drag-and-drop visual workflow capabilities

Supports multiple customer devices and operating systems

Identifies and preserves contextual data from every customer touch point to enrich all future interactions

Analytics: Again, not just any solution will do. You need a platform that will provide a powerful, contextual visualization of the customer journey across all touch points, enabling employees to make real-time decisions that will drive positive business outcomes. My tip for finding your best analytics solution: make sure the platform is truly integrated and that there are no silos. This integration enables businesses to flexibly collect, process, and analyze data across all real-time and historical systems to provide rich data visualization.

The goal is to know your customers so well that you can anticipate what they’ll want. If customers don’t know what they want, the contextual visualization you’ll have of them will show suggestions to make. As Steve Jobs once said, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

Two Things That Must Go Hand in Hand

Leaders in personalization understand the critical role that both technology and personal commitment play in driving success. On one hand, advanced technology helps breakdown silos, streamline the user experience, and personalize the customer’s journey across every touch point in their interaction.

At the same time, the way that companies actually use this information is just as important for coming out on top. We must care about our customers. We must be passionate about helping them. We must be their biggest advocates in order for them to become ours.

At the end of the day, customer experiences will always be human experiences. Personalization isn’t something that can be bought. It’s a belief that’s promoted and enacted organization-wide. Companies that have the right technology, supported by this belief, will go far.


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