If you are interested in knowing how to personalize your customer experience for your brand or business, keep reading. We tell you everything you need to know about customer experience and more!
What is a personalized customer experience?
A personalized customer experience has to do with creating heterogeneous and customized offers based on the needs and preferences of clients. A unique experience can be guaranteed by using the name, age, information collected from past interactions, knowledge of customer preferences and more.
Implementing a user experience personalization strategy is a great way to improve the customer experience. Today’s customers expect and value interacting with a company that offers a personalized experience more than one that doesn’t. In fact, according to studies, 80% of people prefer to establish a relationship with a company that cares about its customers in all aspects.
When used correctly and appropriately, personalization is an essential tool for improving consumer loyalty and retention. Many people think that the customer experience is limited only to the transaction itself at the time of purchase, but this is not the case, there are many more factors that come into play such as:
Brand identity
Consumers pay more and more attention to brand identity and are looking for companies that have similar values to them. If they identify with your brand and feel comfortable with it, it is a good indication that a good user experience is just beginning.
Product or service
Offering a good product is not enough, you also have to know how to explain it in the best way to customers. We are not just referring to explaining the product in highly technical or complex words, it is important to know how to sell it creatively to captivate and attract potential customers.
Customer service
At any time, your customers may have a problem or question that needs to be resolved, and good customer service will be your best ally for this. Whether in a physical store or an online store, we cannot give customers the impression that their questions are irrelevant or not important. Personalized interactions are key to customer satisfaction.
After-sales service
When everything goes well, we are happy, but what if something goes wrong? A good plan B can turn an inconvenience (return, defective product, shipping error…) into an opportunity to make your customer fall in love.
What is the function of personalization?
In a physical store, it is easier to personalize the experience of regular customers. Employees might already know their names and preferences, but in the world of online sales, some businesses make the mistake of paying more attention to the transaction itself than to people.
Designing a customer experience that applies to everyone may work for some of your customers, but it can be very inconvenient for others. Gathering customer data and analyzing it will help you create a personalized experience that makes your customers feel special.
By taking care of your customers, you can get much more out of your marketing strategies. Most email communications end up in the trash because they are too generic, boring, and annoying. If you learn to communicate with your clients in a personalized way, each one of them will feel that you are really speaking with them directly and they will be more likely to read your emails or newsletters.
Examples of personalization success stories
There are many technologies and customization options that are constantly updated and can be used at different stages of the customer journey. You can even offer users a personalized experience by combining different methods: personalized newsletters, web or blog content, personalized advertising campaigns, and social media posts. To better understand how the personalization of the customer experience works and its benefits, there is nothing better than looking at some examples of success stories.
Coca-Cola
The personalization of the customer experience is so effective that even Coca-Cola leveraged personalized marketing. In 2011, with the help of the Ogilvy & Mather Sydney agency, they launched a campaign called “Share a Coke” which consisted of redesigning the packaging of its cans by adding the name of its customers around the world.
The funny thing about it is that if someone did not find a can with their name, they could enter the Coca-Cola website and request it. It had very good results and great acceptance, as customers managed to get involved with the product, with some even keeping the can as a collector’s item. It was very common for people to share their photos with their personalized cans on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, giving organic visibility to the brand.
Pebble Watch
Amazon is another of the big companies that surprised everyone by launching a personalized product. The Pebble Watch is a watch that can be customized to the preferences of each user. On the product’s website, users could choose between different elements and options to personalize their watch.
Starbucks
Most of us have heard of or been to Starbucks, one of the most popular coffee shops in the world. While their coffee is probably not the best of all, their success is largely due to their incredible personalized customer experience. Not only because of their creative social networks or newsletter campaigns but also because of the sales service in the stores.
When customers receive their drinks with their names on the cup, they immediately feel identified. It is a way of involving people and encouraging them to share photos and talk about the brand. As you can see, the personalized customer experience not only applies to the online world, it can also be useful and successfully leveraged in physical stores.
Vodafone
In 2011, Vodafone launched a mixed marketing campaign that allowed users to send personalized Christmas greetings through the web, which were then displayed on a large billboard on a busy street in Madrid.
Doggyloot
DoogyLoot is a website that sells different products for dogs. In this case, the web customizes the content of the website to the size of your furry friend. When you only show products that are relevant to the visitor, it creates a personalized experience, where customers don’t have to waste time reviewing items they would never want to buy. By using the information that potential customers provide through forms or profile information, the opportunity is opened to show products that are compatible with the users.
7 ways to personalize your client experience
The type of strategy you choose to personalize the experience of your users will depend on the type of business you have, as well as the resources you have.
1. Collect data
To create fully personalized messages, content, and experiences, it’s essential to collect and analyze data. In fact, it is important to collect demographic and personal information and understand the interests and behaviors of users to build personalized pathways with strategic touchpoints.
Through this data, you can reconstruct how each user comes into contact with your website or company and, based on this, understand what the needs are and what to emphasize in the personalization process. Depending on the data you have, you can show them one piece of information or another.
2. Clicks or page views
To understand the needs of users, it is important not only to collect their data but also to analyze how they interacted with the company or website in the past. This is very useful to try to find patterns of behavior and extract the preferences they have. Once the behavior pattern is determined, you can create automated email campaigns, which will be scheduled according to user habits and preferences.
For example, a customer who frequently visits a product page may show possible purchase intent. This behavior will serve to promote conversion, you can send him an email or message that contains a positive review of the product, or send him an email that contains products similar to the ones he has been seeing.
3. Machine learning
In this case, cross data from various sources is combined to show the user certain content according to his or her behavior in different areas.
4. Capture the voice of consumers
Voice of the Customer (VoC) is helpful for businesses as it helps them gather customer feedback related to their expectations and experiences with your products or services. It’s a great tool that makes product improvement possible and focuses on customer needs. After all, customer insight is key to improving the customer experience!
The inBe platform captures the voice of the consumer in a highly secure environment with real-time access to customer insights. As soon as responses are published by customers, they are summarized in customized reports.
5. Customer calls and chat
Calling customers and offering them the option to chat live (either with a chatbot or a person) is also a great way to interact at any time with your customers and improve the user experience. These chats are highly appreciated by Internet users, as they can provide detailed and personalized information to the user’s doubts.
We live in a world where we are used to receiving answers instantly. Assuming that a customer may have a question or concern about a product that he/she is about to buy, having a live chat can be an advantage to close a possible sale.
6. Affiliate marketing and social networks
You can send visitors to your website thanks to redirected advertising from social networks or through affiliate marketing. This way, even if the Internet user has visited the sites of your competitors to compare offers and prices, they will continue to receive advertising messages for the article they consulted on your website.
7. Use geolocalization
You can use the data related to the location of the customers to be able to send them automated communications based on offers, promotions and events in the stores closest to them. It is a great way to integrate the digital user experience with the physical one since it allows you to create additional points of contact with the client and strengthen the relationship.
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