As more people live, work, and shop online, brands that deliver personalized digital experiences will snag a serious competitive advantage. Effective personalization can lead to increased revenue, stronger customer loyalty, and higher user engagement. But with more companies making it a strategic focus, it can be difficult to stand out.
So what’s the key?
Great personalized digital experiences put the spotlight on the customer.
Personalization is more than inserting your customer’s name into an email or web page. It’s about designing experiences specifically for them. Making them feel seen and heard. For you to stand out, you’ve got to put them in the spotlight.
Customer centricity is the act of putting your customers at the heart of everything an organization does. To be customer-centric, brands should consider a customer data platform - here’s why.
Technology advances have made it easier than ever to do just that. Here’s how.
You want to create experiences that keep customers coming back (and buying) again and again. Your customers want to be seen and treated as individuals.
Here are three tactics that will help you get there:
You can’t deliver intuitive, enjoyable, personalized digital experiences until you know your customer. After all, different people have different ideas about what “intuitive” and “enjoyable” even mean. Learn as much as you can about your target audience through your customer data. Who are they? Where do they live? What do they do for a living? What do they love when it comes to brands, and what are their deal-breakers? Develop distinct customer personas based on your findings.
Don’t be afraid to get specific. The better you understand your target customer, the easier it is to design a digital experience they’ll love.
Once you have a deep understanding of your audience, identify opportunities to personalize their experience based on their preferences. If customer service is a priority for them, for example, you may want level up your call center experience. If speed and efficiency is what matters to them, see if there are ways to create a fast-pass experience to get them in and out quickly.
For decades, brands have chased the goal of creating a 360-degree view of the customer. It hasn't worked out so well, and now there’s a better, faster, more agile way to gain customer insight and improve CX.
As you’re learning about your customer, ask: Why do they engage with you? People come to you with a goal in mind. They may be looking for information, or a product to purchase. They may be trying to connect with someone, or be entertained, or resolve an issue. Identify their goal and then make it your top priority to make it easy and enjoyable for them to achieve that goal.
This is where you want to take a step back. Don’t narrow in on a specific touchpoint or department. Instead, look at the customer journey as a whole. What would be the easiest, best path for them to find what they’re looking for?
Taking a broad view of the customer journey also lets you see all the key players of your experience. Who owns each of the touchpoints? How are they all connected to each other?
One of the biggest challenges in digital CX is delivering consistent, omnichannel experiences that allow customers to transition seamlessly between channels and touchpoints. Identify those transition points, and see if there are ways you could personalize the experience there. For example, when my phone sees I have a meeting on the calendar, it will prompt me ahead of time to switch on do-not-disturb for the duration of the call. Or it may suggest apps I commonly use at different points in the day.
Making it easy for customers to switch from one task to another, or one channel to another, demonstrates that you understand their experience. And that’s something they’ll come back for.
To get the most out of the holiday shopping season, retailers need to deliver personalized experiences that wow their customers. But how? The answer is in the data.
Delivering personalized digital experiences gets exponentially more complicated as companies grow. How do you create personal human experiences for hundreds, or thousands, of users?
Modern solutions that utilize AI and machine learning help companies deliver empathy at scale. From recognizing trends in online behavior to extrapolating emotions in text or voice, these tools make it easier for brands to read customer interactions.
When you recognize a customer’s tone, you can adjust their experience based on their mood.
Angry or frustrated customers may get fast-tracked to skilled service agents. And happy customers may be prompted to write a review, or invited to a loyalty program.
Marketing automation solutions can help you reach customers more effectively, generate and nurture better leads, and lend deep insights into customer needs, attitudes, and behaviors.
Personalization is an exercise in empathy. It requires you to look outward and put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Only when you understand what’s important to them can you design a tailored experience that makes a positive impact on them and for your business.
