Personalisation is the big buzzword that is circulating among customer experience experts as of late. This is not a big surprise. The reason why personalisation is such a huge trend is because it has proven that it works.
Personalisation has become table stakes. Whether you are talking about business-to-consumer or business-to-business marketing, you have to personalise your marketing message if you want to drive revenue and increase sales.
Despite all this, only a relatively few number of companies are actually getting it right. According to Dynamic Yield’s Personality Maturity Assessment, 36 percent of respondents said they could not effectively deliver a personalised customer experience in 2019, up from just 17 percent in 2018. Marketers are beginning to realise that crafting a personalised experience is going to take more effort than just mentioning a customer’s name on a birthday card.
When you talk about marketing, you are talking about providing people with something they value. Adding a customer’s name to an email does add value from a relationship perspective, it is just checking-off the bare minimum. All too often do companies personalise their offering based solely on purchasing history. In order to take the customer experience to the next level, businesses must learn to customise the way they interact with customers.
Netflix is one such company that has often been praised by their personalisation attributes. Even then, they are not immune to fault. As of late, customers have been vocal on how their experience with the streaming service have declined – mostly focused on personalisation.
The highlights of Netflix’s personalisation included consumer-centred recommendations, user-created reviews and ratings, and the ability to share titles with Facebook friends. But the algorithms have been compromised. As Netflix has created more in-house content, the company has added its own priorities to the algorithm and made it harder for viewers to discover new content that fits their interests.
With new competitors such as Apple TV and Disney Plus making headway into the media streaming service industry, Netflix’s growth has hit a bit of a snag, at least in the Americas. This is one such example of how personalisation can fail if recommendations do not provide customer value.
If personalisation is being done right, companies should be seeing an increase in profitability, conversions, and customer retention. Even industry giants can learn new things in order to grow.
Take McDonalds for example. The fast-food behemoth invested billions into growth initiatives. One such purchase involved Dynamic Yield, a company which helped McDonalds with their customisable digital menus – thus improving drive-thru sales. Thanks to their efforts, McDonald’s said drive-thru customers are purchasing more add-on items because of this, increasing the average sale.
Perhaps the most important indicator that your personalisation efforts are working is customer satisfaction. And if we are talking about customer satisfaction, there is one name in particular that comes to mind; Ritz-Carlton. The luxury hotel brand is known for its consistently excellent customer service. Through a standardised process and customer relationship management, Ritz-Carlton employees learn from every interaction. From before you arrive all the way until your next visit, Ritz-Carlton employees make sure all your preferences are afforded to you.
The company’s dedication to providing a flawless experience is so high that every employee could potentially be spending up to US$2,000 per guest per day, without supervisor permission – to resolve customer problems.
Businesses can use personalisation in marketing through customer acquisition, up-sell, cross-sell, and retention efforts. However, they must always keep in mind that there is a right way to go about doing so. Only by using personalisation throughout the customer experience can a company elevate it to the next level.
