Why should brands personalize experiences? Because consumers want companies to understand their needs and preferences and interact with them as individuals, not customer segments. According to McKinsey research, 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when they don’t. In other words, personalized communications and experiences are table stakes.
But keep in mind: Not all “personalization” is created equal. To deliver outstanding CX, personalization must go beyond using a customer’s name, sharing popular AI-generated content, or placing a customer into a persona or segment. The personalization that really matters to customers is at the individual level. Brands must deliver personalized experiences across all customer touchpoints—ideally as part of a connected journey where the customer goes from email to web to store to app to call center—and is treated as a known individual during every interaction. To do all that requires certain digital capabilities. But first, let’s talk about why it matters.
What Is True Personalization? And Why Should Brands Personalize Experiences?
True personalization is tailoring an experience or touchpoint to the interests and needs of individuals. Instead of providing the same information and promotions to every website visitor or email recipient, it’s delivering customized content to audiences based on criteria such as physical location, browsing/download history or expressed preferences. For example, an insurance company could send an email to customers who viewed various bundling plans within the past two weeks. It could include the specifics of the exact bundles they viewed, or different educational materials related to those specific policies or coverages.
Consumers associate personalization with positive experiences that make them feel special. According to McKinsey research, people want companies to tailor messaging to their needs (66%), provide relevant product/service recommendations (67%), offer targeted promotions (65%), celebrate their milestones (61%), and follow up post purchase (58%). Consumers expect brands to show a commitment to the relationship—not just the sale. By checking in after the purchase, sending a how-to video or asking customers to write a review, brands demonstrate that relationship focus.
Personalization aims to increase customer engagement, sales, and retention by delivering the most relevant content to each user. Most (78%) consumers said they’re more likely to make repeat purchases from companies that personalize.
But oftentimes communications are focused on what the brand is trying to sell, not what the individual wants or needs. If messages aren’t coordinated across channels and implemented at each step of the customer journey, personalization will fall short of delivering the best possible experience and business results.
Limitations of Personalization
No consideration of context. Personalization efforts typically focus on a single touchpoint (usually the point of sale) and limited communication channels (usually website and email), not all the possible points along the entire customer journey. People often interact with a company via multiple channels, so when brands personalize touchpoints and call it done, they don’t deliver those next-level experiences that will set them apart.
For example, someone may view their wireless bill via an email link and then call customer service to resolve a problem. Unable to reach the right agent via interactive voice response (IVR), the person visits the website and engages with a live chat agent. Will all these interactions be coordinated? Without knowing what happened at each step in this process, it’s impossible to deliver the right message at the right time. Someone who’s in the midst of contesting their bill probably won’t take advantage of a speed upgrade offer (sent because they visited the wireless web page). That person is on a support journey, not a purchase journey.
Risk of over-personalization. Online interactions are tracked and analyzed to create customer profiles, and then customers are placed into segments that determine the personalized website content they get. Website visitors may then start seeing only information that’s relevant to that segment. That’s a kind of over-personalization—the focus is segmentation of popular themes, not on the individual intent. Most people have varied interests that change over time. When they only see homogeneous content, they may become bored or annoyed, and the company misses opportunities to promote other products. If you continue displaying ads for car insurance after the person renewed their policy, you’re no longer sending relevant messages, and you risk annoying or frustrating the customer.
Truly Personalizing Customer Experiences With Real-Time Decisioning and Journey Orchestration
While they provide a degree of personalization, content and campaign management platforms don’t provide intelligent, real-time decisioning with connected communication channels.
To ace CX, you need real-time customer data (at the individual level) to be able to analyze current behavior, understand context, predict future behavior and adjust the journey to deliver relevant, meaningful messages at the right time via the right communication channel.
First-party data and personalization go hand in hand. First-party data, collected directly from customers, is crucial for understanding their needs and preferences, allowing for more targeted and personalized marketing efforts. This data enables businesses to tailor their messaging, offers and experiences to individual customers, resulting in higher engagement and satisfaction. In essence, first-party data is the foundation for creating personalized experiences that drive customer engagement, satisfaction and—ultimately—revenue growth.
Customer journey management platforms, paired with connected engagement tools make all that happen by connecting data across channels from different touchpoints—whenever and wherever the customer interacts with your brand—to deliver consistent experiences. An orchestrated experience is, in essence, a series of connected real-time decisions spanning all customer interactions that is both proactive in outreach to customers. It’s also preemptive in the way it intelligently responds to customer needs.
Content management system approach
- Identify customers who browsed your store’s website within the past 30 days
- Send an email (personalized with the customer’s name)
- Include a coupon for your store
Journey management and customer engagement system approach
- Determine that a person is probably expecting a first child (based on recently purchasing What to Expect When You’re Expecting) (context)
- Check the customer’s purchase history to ensure a match with past activity (relevance)
- Send a recommendation and a coupon for a car seat (something a new parent needs)
- Reinforce that same recommendation when the customer visits the website, or even walks into the store and gets to the point of sale
- Send a follow-up message via the best communication channel for reaching them (e.g., email or text), either thanking the customer for the purchase and recommending a next product (such as a car seat cover), or reminding them of the special offer (if they didn’t purchase the product)
- Ask the customer how the car seat is working out (the next time they call customer service looking for help) and then offer them a special deal on the next, relevant product
Customer-Centric Journey Approach to Personalization
When using a campaign management system, the brand controls customer interactions by sending emails at a particular cadence (e.g., every two weeks), inviting customers to take one specific action (e.g., click on this link to download a coupon). This predetermined, linear journey mapping will only go so far to satisfy customers and build loyalty. Customers are your business’ lifeblood, and they should be treated as individuals, not just a number in your marketing campaign.
In a customer-centric journey approach, customers control their engagement and journey with the brand, from acquisition and onboarding to support. There is absolutely still a need for outbound communications to alert customers to new offers or send bills, or updates on the loyalty program. But a journey management platform adds to this and provides another layer of sophistication that personalization really demands. A journey management system with connected customer engagement can then deliver the right treatment, on the right channel (inbound or outbound) at the right time, with the right call to action—a series of next best actions. It also provides a real-time controller to prevent sending irrelevant information.
Start Personalizing Customer Experiences Like You Mean It
CSG Xponent, our customer engagement platform, is built with journey orchestration, analytics, communications delivery and advanced profiling at the core of the technology. Xponent bridges the gap between customer experience and customer engagement by unifying experience design with proactive management. This combination of capabilities allows brands to drive action in critical customer moments. Xponent integrates with your existing systems—CRM, billing, personalization platforms, marketing systems—with no need to rip and replace. You won’t need to purchase multiple systems to take personalization to the next level and deliver exceptional CX.
