How Personalized Customer Experience will Make Customers Yours Forever?

Customer Experience is no doubt the most important aspect of customer loyalty. But can Customer Experience suffice on its own? We know that no two customers are the same and that they do not have the same expectations and journeys with your brand.

So can a single plan for Customer Experience make a difference? Or do we need a personalized customer experience for each customer?

It may sound like a lot of work but customer personalization is more effective than the usual chants of customer experience. According to research by Lumoa, a personalized customer experience can help your business to grow its revenue by 5–15%, annually.

Doesn’t it make it intriguing to know more about the personalized customer experience meaning, how to create a personalized experience, and the difference it can make for you? Let’s dive into the matter right away!

Customer Personalization: A Unique Approach to Customer Experience

Before knowing why personalization is important and how can it create a difference, it is necessary for us to understand what Customer Personalization exactly means.

The basic essence of a personalized customer experience lies in creating personalized customer journeys through individual customer targeting.

In simpler terms, analyzing each customer’s requirements and expectations from your brand and customizing your service to help them realize their need is what Customer Personalization means.

As a customer, you may have encountered such personalized customer experiences yourself. Like a marketing mail starting with “Hello Michael” or a call to action button for a “High-Five” at the end to direct you to the registration page is personalization. And not just online, you can witness Customer Personalization offline too.

Like when at a restaurant you are asked for your preference of water temperature, or when at a car shop you are asked your purpose of purchase to suggest the perfect model, it’s all part of creating personalized customer journeys.

The uniqueness of a personalized customer experience can drive a lot of customer base to your business. According to research by New Epilson, 80% of customers prefer brands that understand and offer them personalized customer experience. And not just this, personalization has a range of other benefits.

That’s why it’s important to know why personalization is important?

Why Personalization is Important for Customer Experience? (Stats)

A personalized customer experience does not only lure people to shop with you, but it also has many other advantages that make Customer Personalization very important for any brand. On one hand, a personalized customer experience increases revenue and loyalty while on the other, it creates a long term relationship!

Some prominent advantages of Customer Personalization are:

• Higher Customer Attention and Greater Reach: As per Marketing Dive, about 40% of customers attend to marketing efforts by brands that use personalization to answer their needs. A personalized marketing approach reduces frustration amongst customers concerning the bulk redundant marketing messages.
• Helps in Creating Personalized Customer Journeys: Personalization generates touchpoints that are custom-made for each individual. This generates personalized customer journeys, surpassing their expectations, and adding it to their overall experience and perception of the brand.
• Increases Lead Conversion: A higher customer engagement through personalized customer journeys leads to increased lead conversions. Statistics from SmartHQ reveal that personalization increased lead generation and acquisition by 46% in companies creating a personalized customer experience.
• Improves Brand Loyalty: When customers are able to relate to a brand, they are bound to return. Personalization creates a sense that your brand understands what the customer wants and delivers it most appropriately. And this also creates word-of-mouth publicity.
• Reduces Costs: According to data from AdWeek, companies can reduce their acquisition costs by up to 50% and increase the efficiency of marketing spend by 30%.
• Personal Relationship Development: Personalization makes it easy to trust a brand. That is why 90% of millennials are willing to share personal behavioral information with brands that offer Personalized Customer Journeys.

The list of advantages doesn’t end here. But to reap these benefits it is necessary to know how to create a personalized experience?

How to Create a Personalized Experience for Customers?

Personalization cannot be done with rigid steps. However, we can provide you with some tips and tricks on how to create a personalized experience for your customers:

1. Always build new experience on the records. Use Customer Journey Maps to analyze your current CX state to know the gaps to be filled in and act upon them.
2. Use automation tools, machine learning, and external agencies for creating personalized campaigns.
3. Know your customer more by regular research and surveys. Try to understand their pain points and tailor your message to address them.
4. Get executives involved. Ultimately, it is your people who are going to interact with the customers. Get their ideas and derive best practices to ease their work too.
5. Timing matters. Look out for the time when the pain can be triggered the maximum and then launch the product to seize the opportunity.
6. Put in efforts for creating Customer Delight. Observe the little things and moments that are cherished across the customer journey.
7. Be consistent in your efforts. After all, Personalized Customer Experience isn’t a short-term project.
8. Acting upon feedback is critical. Never ignore customer feedback as they are self-served experience reviews.
9. Your messages, notifications, and emails must be personalized beyond the name factor alone. Recommend to customers products that they seek for.
10. Keep online navigation easier. Your brand and products must be easier to find when the customer searches for them. Optimize your search for personalized keywords.

Hopefully, these tips would guide you on how to create a personalized experience but for further clarity let’s look at some Personalized Customer Experience examples…

Popular Personalized Customer Experience Examples

Big brands have long acted upon the virtues of personalization. Here are some Personalized Customer Experience examples from popular brands:

Apart from these, there are many more companies using the tactics of personalization both online and offline. And if you are curious about how all of this works, especially for social media, you can watch The Social Dilemma, a masterpiece highlighting how over personalization can be dangerous at times.

Over Personalization: The Down Side

As the saying goes, too much of anything can be dangerous. And so is the case with Customer Personalization. While you are striving to create personalized Customer Experiences, you should bear in mind that personalization beyond a mark can be perceived as creepy and frustrating for the customers.

It can even result in repelling customers from choosing your brand and create a negative brand perception.

There is a line between being personal and too personal. Brands have crossed that line before and it hasn’t paid off well. One such example is Target which sent marketing messages regarding baby products to teenage girls which came out to be offensive and outrageous for them.

Another example can be Facebook which uses personalization as a tool to sell customer attention to ad sponsors. When people started to know the mechanism that keeps them scrolling down the screen and how it manipulates them now, their trust for the brand shook!

And this can be the case with any brand. Personalization of Customer Experience is a great marketing tool but, as a brand knowing the limit is very necessary.

Final Words…

The personalized customer experience meaning, tips on how to create a personalized experience, its importance, and benefits for your business, and how over personalization can be dangerous, brings us to one final remark. Personalization in its limits can help you boost your business manifold times. This is why 89% of leading brands like Coca-Cola, Saphora, USAA, etc are investing in creating a personalized customer experience, according to Forrester. So strategize your personalization and you can be way ahead of the competition!!