Shakeel Jhazbhay, General Manager: Digital Business Solutions, Datacentrix, says that personalising the customer experience (CX) is necessary to build and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Effective personalisation within CX involves several key elements, namely:
Data collection and analysis: gathering relevant customer data from various touchpoints, as well as gaining an understanding of preferences, behaviour, and context.
Segmentation: dividing the audience into meaningful segments based on demographics, behaviour or other criteria, thus allowing for tailored messaging.
Hyper-personalisation: going beyond basic personalisation by leveraging AI, machine learning and automation to deliver real-time, context-aware experiences.
Content customisation: Shaping content, such as emails, recommendations and offers, to an individual’s preferences, but at the same time avoiding superficial personalisation – it’s critical to know more than just the customer’s name.
Cross-channel consistency: Ensuring a seamless experience across all channels, including web, mobile, social and email. This type of consistent personalisation can help to build trust.
Measuring The Effectiveness Of Personalisation Endeavours
To determine the success of personalisation efforts, organisations should ideally track several engagement metrics, such as click-through rates, revenue impact as measured by average revenue per user, cart abandonment rates and more.
The following metrics should be considered:
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): This measures user satisfaction with a product, service or website on a scale of 1-5.
Customer Effort Score (CES): Gauges the effort customers must go to in order to perform an action (for instance, resolving an issue).
Net Promoter Score (NPS): Assesses customer loyalty by asking how likely they are to recommend a product or service.
Customer churn and retention rate: Churn measures the percentage of customers leaving, while retention evaluates customer loyalty.
First Response Time (FRT) and Average Resolution Time (ART): These metrics reflect customer support efficiency.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): Predicts the average revenue a customer brings over time.
Crafting A CX Strategy That Delivers Results
A robust customer experience strategy, and one that is aligned with these metrics, revolves around personalised touchpoints, continuous optimisation and empowered teams.
Here, best practices will include a clear understanding of the customer’s journey, mapping out interactions, while identifying challenges and using data to personalise each exchange. The building of rich, detailed customer personas, based on behaviour, preferences and demographics, is also key.
From here, it’s possible to go into ‘hyper-personalisation’ territory, delivering real-time recommendations, chatbots, and personalised offers.
Content libraries too cannot be underestimated, so ensure that personalised content for different segments is developed, with customised messaging based on location, age and interests.
The breaking down of internal departmental silos is another essential consideration, enabling marketing, sales and customer service teams to work together to deliver consistent experiences.
Avoiding CX And Personalisation Pitfalls
Despite its benefits, personalisation can backfire if not executed correctly and knowing what to avoid if possible is helpful.
CX personalisation mistakes can include superficial personalisation, where basic data (like someone’s name for example) is heavily relied upon, without an understanding of the individual’s preferences. There is also the risk of over-personalisation, which essentially crosses the line from helpful to unsettling, calling attention to the importance of respecting the individual’s privacy and avoiding intrusive practices.
Furthermore, irrelevant promotions or canned offers and content, due to poor targeting, should never be used. By the same token, bombarding customers with advertisements for products they’ve already purchased or aren’t interested in is another no-no.
Successful CX personalisation requires maintaining a delicate balance between data-driven insights and genuine human connection. By continuously refining strategies based on feedback and evolving customer needs, businesses can deliver exceptional experiences that meet evolving customer needs, driving up both loyalty and revenue.
DATACENTRIX
www.datacentrix.co.za
