Personalization is not a new marketing technique. In fact, it’s a central tenant of many shifts in marketing approach and technology over the past decade. We can gather and store customer data from volunteered preferences to transactions. There are marketing automation tools that provide increasingly sophisticated ways to customize communications. And more and more companies take an account-based marketing (ABM) approach to provide highly surgical in and outbound techniques for specific buyer segments by industry, company, and title. Personalization is key to exceptional customer experience and inherent in what marketers do every day.
But personalization is not a gimmick. It is not simply being nifty by dropping a name in a communication. It is not just curating what a company wants you to experience. So, if you hear someone say, “personalization is the ability to put individual names in the salutation”, they’re falling short of understanding. They’re missing the company’s ability to listen for and react to customer needs and behaviors as the indicators that refine how and what they say and do for them.
What should you be aiming for? Try this definition. Personalization is delivering truly bespoke communication, content, or experiences for your customer designed for their specific needs or desires where they feel known and appreciated. Wrap them in love. Make them realize just how important they are to you.
Wondering where to begin?
Think about your own personal customer care delights. Recall times when you received exceptional customer experience. Have you ever received:
- a handwritten thank you note for doing business
- a phone call after providing care to see how you or your loved ones are doing
- a car salesperson searching inventory far and wide to suggest a vehicle they think you’ll like based on careful listening, and he was right!
- an offer of a try-and-buy or a sample ahead of purchase
- cooked-to-order breakfast at the hotel instead of trays of eggs and bacon
Sometimes personalization may seem easy – if it’s because personalization is a part of product development or a company’s service delivery model. But how do you offer an authentic and true personalized experience when it is not part of your day-to-day business? There are some steps to take to get you on the right path.
The path to personalization
- Conduct a voice of customer (VOC). VOC’s give you first-hand, heard direct from the source, articulation of their needs and wishes.
- Implement or use your customer relationship management system (CRM) to work for you. Refer to your customer’s history of conversations and interactions with marketing approaches (what pages on the web did they visit, what have they downloaded, etc.) to inform your next sales conversation.
- Develop buyer personas for your most important audience segments. Think of the elusive customer as a human being with demands, preferences, and needs so you can think about how to make their experience with you great.
- Humanize your sales and marketing efforts, particularly for key accounts and business partners. Pick up the phone. Use video. At your workplace, create a hospitable environment. If you have experience centers, make sure they immerse all the senses.
- Always ask yourself, “what else”? What else might you do that truly delights your customer? Is there a gesture or approach that will surprise them and appeal to their taste – whether that is something to stimulate their thinking, make them laugh, or have them feel well taken care of.
Think of personalization as an approach to demonstrate to your customer or prospective customer that you hear them, see them, and care about meeting their needs and exceeding their expectations.
Personalization will set you apart
Personalization may have a very big role as a differentiator in an era post the onset of COVID and a stressed workforce when arguably, the population has relaxed their service-level expectations to settle for nearly anything. But knowing that things have a propensity to change, expect this era won’t last forever. The brands that can figure out ways to smartly create an exceptional experience will win a premium share of the market and wallet because they’ve won the hearts of their customers.
Read more about delighting the customer. Check out our customer centricity blog.