3 ways to ensure a personalised customer experience

A personalised customer experience is one of the most important aspects of doing business today. Indeed, the more a consumer feels valued and special, the more they will bond with the brand. But how can companies provide a personalised customer experience? Beyond marketing tools or techniques, there are some basic principles to follow. 

First things first: why a personalised customer experience is so important

In general, people want to be treated as individuals, they want to feel recognised. In fact, each of us has our own needs, desires, and habits, and we don't like being treated like everyone else.

In recent decades, the relationship between companies and consumers has changed. If companies used to speak to an indistinct mass of consumers who could not reply, today thanks to technological innovation they can send us messages directly to our smartphones, or read our comments to their posts on Instagram.

Contrastingly, in the past consumers used to shop exclusively in physical stores, where staff took time to get to know their tastes and needs. This is not the case with online shopping, which can be cold and impersonal.

In this context, the key to success is creating emotional engagement. Just as with the luxury customer experience, emotions no longer stem from the product itself but from when and how the purchase takes place. The result of a positive customer experience is customer loyalty.

How to ensure a personalised customer experience

According to research by McKinsey and Company, people take customer experience customization for granted:
- 71% of customers expect companies to offer personalized interactions,
- 76% experience frustration if this does not happen.

During COVID-19, unprepared companies suffered the consequences of this, losing customer loyalty: 75% of them chose a new store, product, or purchase method. However, companies capable of personalization show 40 percent more turnover.

There are 3 elements that, more than others, should be considered in building a tailored customer experience. Here they are.

1) Customer segmentation

We said that people like to be recognized as individuals. However, it is impossible for a company to know all customers one by one.
If audience segmentation used to be limited to a few clusters, today it is possible to divide consumers into numerous groupings with very specific behaviours. This is due to the abundance of data available. Companies can take advantage of data analytics platforms, such as those of Google and social networks, but also leverage AI software. In addition, they can easily create and distribute surveys or simply ask questions to their followers on social networks.  

The more companies know about the demographics, preferences and habits of customers, the better they will be able to offer them exactly what they want.

2) Message Customization

There is nothing more personal than receiving a message that was created for us. Every communication from the company to the consumer should at least:

- contain the customer's name,

- include content that addresses the consumer's interests and needs,

- use language and tone of voice that is appropriate to the recipient (a Boomer does not speak the same language as a GenZ),

- be conveyed in the medium the customer prefers most (some like push notifications and some prefer emails).

Personalization of the customer experience also affects loyalty programs. These should offer the customer challenges and rewards that fit their habits and desires. Think of a clothing company that sends offers to buy women's cocktail dresses to a big lumberjack who only wears jeans and flannel shirts. Okay, that's an extreme example, but the failure to target corporate messages is a widespread reality.

Finally, personalized customer experience also includes customer service. Companies can offer automated guided paths through website, apps, chat bots, virtual assistants so that customers can solve their problems themselves, leaving human intervention only for the most complex cases. This increases the quality of service, satisfying all kinds of customers.

3) Customer control

Nowadays, it is the company that has to adapt to the customer, not vice versa. 

Successful companies will come up with a range of content, offers, and rewards from which individual customers can customise their experience based on their personal preferences.

Best performing brands adopt omnichannel communication so that customers can choose which channels through which to maintain their relationship with the brand

It is not a good idea to use only one social network, or emails, or one format for content, because this limits the ability to reach as many customers as possible. In fact, customers expect to interact with brands in the way they find most convenient at that moment. Sometimes it may be a direct message on social media, others a phone call. The important thing is that the company is present where they are looking for it.