Customers expect brands to know them and understand their needs. Especially after giving them their business for a while.
Imagine you’re waiting in a long line at your favorite coffee shop before heading to work. The line manager spots you and asks, “are you having your usual?” You nod, and your drink (with your extra shot of espresso) is ready when you reach the cashier. Now that’s personalized service that makes you feel special—and keeps you coming back.
How can brands provide personalized service when they’re serving thousands (or even millions) of customers? Delivering consistent, personalized customer experiences at scale is challenging—but achievable with the right strategies, processes and technology. The “I’ll have the usual” VIP treatment that people love from their in-person interactions is something you can give every customer you serve.
Keep reading to learn how to scale personalized customer experiences.
Why Scaling Personalized Customer Experiences Is a Must
Customers now expect Amazon-like experiences in every industry. They seek personalized product and service recommendations from their favorite shoe stores, streaming platforms, banks and even healthcare providers. A recent survey found that 81% of American consumers prefer companies that offer a personalized experience.
Delivering a personalized customer experience means providing a specific, customized experience to every consumer. McKinsey survey respondents defined personalization as “positive experiences of being made to feel special” from receiving custom…
- Messaging
- Offers
- Promotions
- Recommendations
- Support
PwC found that customers value discounts and rewards the most when it comes to personalization. Their survey asked, “which parts of a personalized experience are most important to you?” Responses were…
- Discounts/rebates on products I regularly use (48%)
- Loyalty program that has flexibility in rewards (43%)
- Easy or fast access to products and services (22%)
That coffee shop manager provides easy and fast access to your favorite beverage—no ordering or long waits required.
Personalization, in and of itself, probably isn’t enough to build loyalty. The PwC Customer Loyalty Survey found that only 8% of consumers keep buying from a brand because of a personalized experience. But personalization is important for providing exceptional customer service that prevents customers from churning. More than half (55%) of respondents said they would stop buying from a company after several bad experiences, and 32% would drop a company if it provided inconsistent experiences. Among survey respondents who stopped using or buying from a specific business in the past year, bad experiences with products or services (37%) and customer service (32%) were top reasons.
Predicting customer needs and providing proactive, even preemptive, support elevates personalization, effectively preventing negative customer service experiences. For example, a wireless provider contacts a customer who is about to exceed their data allowance (for the third month in a row), offering them a special deal on an upgraded data package. This communication keeps the customer from being unpleasantly surprised by a charge on their phone bill.
Why Scaling Personalization Is Such a Challenge
Personalization at scale refers to analyzing reliable customer data—such as purchase histories, online and on-site actions, and customer service interactions—to deliver highly relevant, individualized experiences to many customers across multiple channels. To deliver personalized customer experiences at scale, you must overcome several obstacles:
Data silos. Many businesses store customer data in different, disconnected systems (such as customer relationship management [CRM], billing and contact center software) across departments. Siloed data makes it virtually impossible to create the unified customer data profiles that are essential for understanding customer behavior and needs and delivering personalized, consistent experiences.
Balancing customer expectations and privacy concerns. Many customers demand personalized experiences, yet as consumers think generally about data practices, they’re reluctant to share the personal information that makes them possible. The PwC Customer Loyalty Survey found that many consumers are willing to share their email address (61%) and birthday/age (48%), but far fewer want to share product usage data (22%) and current location (15%). Brands must provide custom experiences without infringing on privacy rights. To gain consumers’ trust, businesses must collect and use data transparently and securely, complying with data privacy regulations such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Technical requirements. Companies need the right software systems and tools to collect, analyze and activate customer data effectively. To integrate data sources, you must be able to connect legacy systems with the personalization platform.
3 Best Practices for Scaling Personalized Customer Experiences
1. Centralize customer data. Implement a customer engagement platform (CEP) that unifies data across systems. The CEP collects, stores and integrates customer data from multiple sources—including CRM software, contact center systems, billing records, browsing history and electronic medical records—and consolidates it to create a unified profile for every customer. Many businesses use a customer data platform (CDP) for segmenting data. A major limitation of these CDPs, however, is they can’t create unified, individual customer profiles that also pull in data from offline channels (like voice interactions).
Customer data profiles provide the context needed for exceptional customer service. Surprised to see unexpected charges on their wireless bill, a customer visits the billing FAQs webpage, complains via a social media post, and calls the contact center for assistance. Armed with the unified customer data profile and a bill explanation tool, the contact center agent knows what happened during the previous interactions and can quickly explain the charges without the customer having to describe the problem in detail.
2. Employ a customer journey management system (CJM) to activate the data. Customer data alone isn’t sufficient to deliver a personalized customer experience. You need a solution that makes customer data actionable. A CJM system like CSG Xponent uses real-time data to personalize every touchpoint at an individualized level. It coordinates communications across departments and channels, anticipating customers’ needs and delivering the right message, at the right time, in the right channel. CJM orchestrates customer journeys that occur after the sale by sending appointment and payment reminders, fraud alerts, service outage notifications and other proactive messages.
3. Prioritize personalization efforts that get results. Use journey analytics to examine how customers interact with your brand and identify moments that really matter (and those that lead to negative outcomes such as abandoned journeys). Provide personalized experiences at those moments that will build loyalty.
Use predictive analytics to identify high-impact areas of personalization that deliver measurable business value (return on investment):
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- Tailored product or service recommendations that increase sales
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- Proactive customer service that improves retention
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- Customized discounts and rewards that boost loyalty and customer lifetime value
What Personalization at Scale Looks Like
Personalization at scale leverages data and advanced analytics to create meaningful, individualized customer experiences such as:
Tailored recommendations. Use predictive analytics to recommend products or services customized to individual usage patterns, such as faster internet plans for gamers or families streaming 4K content.
Healthcare appointment reminders. Instead of sending generic reminders, personalize communication with relevant details, like specific pre-visit instructions: “Avoid food or drink (other than water) after 8:30 p.m. Tuesday for accurate bloodwork results.”
Proactive fraud alerts. Deliver immediate alerts notifying customers of unusual credit card activity, simplifying the verification process: “Someone charged a $2,500 massage chair at Sharper Image to your credit card. Was this you?”
Service outage notifications. Send customers timely notifications about planned or unexpected internet outages—and real-time updates—through the most effective channel for reaching them (that is still working).
Intent-based call routing. Employ an interactive voice response (IVR) system that uses natural language processing to determine the caller’s intent, directing the call to the right self-service option or agent group. This reduces call transfers that waste time, frustrate customers and increase operating costs.
Measure Success—and Build Upon It
To maximize the impact of personalized customer experiences, it’s essential to track success, refine strategies based on insights, and expand personalization efforts to new opportunities.
Measure success
Track key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate your personalization initiatives and understand their impact on high-priority business goals.
- Customer retention rate
- Conversion rates
- Average order value
- Customer lifetime value
- Customer satisfaction
- Contact center metrics
- Call handle time
- First-call resolution
- Upsell/cross-sell rate
Refine personalization strategies
Use KPIs, journey analytics and customer feedback to identify areas for improvement. Personalizing customer experiences requires continuous monitoring and adjustment—it’s not something you can set and forget.
Build upon success by scaling further
Identify touchpoints in other areas of the business that could also benefit from personalization and use similar datasets.
Give Every Customer the VIP Treatment With CSG Xponent
Your brand can give every customer the kind of experience that understands them as individuals, not segments. To do it, you have to unify customer data, anticipate customer needs, and provide relevant, consistent interactions across channels.
That’s the power of CSG Xponent. Xponent is an intelligent customer engagement platform that personalizes every interaction at the individual level, using real-time data and insights to orchestrate high-value customer journeys that build loyalty and long-term business growth.
