Next-Level Personalization Creates Killer Customer Experiences: Four CX Guideposts
How do
you turn a one-time customer into a loyal brand advocate? What's the difference
between a consumer who buys a plane ticket from whichever airline is running a
deal that day and the one who always flies, for example, with JetBlue? Why
should brands pay attention to how customer experience leaders like Apple and
Netflix communicate with their users?
The answer to all these
questions comes down to one number: 5.7.
Customer experience (CX)
leaders are generating, on average, 5.7 times more revenue than companies that
fail to prioritize these efforts, according to Forrester. "Superior CX drives
superior revenue growth in industries where customers are free to switch
business and competitors deliver a differentiated customer experience,"
Forrester states.
Brands become CX leaders by
personalizing engagement in a relevant, valuable, and entertaining way. Here
are four guideposts for getting your customer experience right.
1.
Help customers achieve their goals rather than simply buy your products
Personalization should serve a purpose for your customers other than just making a positive impact when the customer opens the app or other platform or touchpoint. The data you're collecting about your customers should help you learn what they want to accomplish and why, as well as what they're doing in the moment and which next action makes the most sense for each person.
Personalization should serve a purpose for your customers other than just making a positive impact when the customer opens the app or other platform or touchpoint. The data you're collecting about your customers should help you learn what they want to accomplish and why, as well as what they're doing in the moment and which next action makes the most sense for each person.
Those personalization efforts
might start with segmenting at the group level, but to achieve the best
customer experiences brands need to whittle down their communications to a
one-on-one level. Those birthday and friend-anniversary videos on Facebook, for
example, hit a lot of the right notes on personalization: They're tailored to
the individual viewer, they're relevant, and they're generally entertaining.
But once you've seen one,
you've seen them all. The social network could push the usefulness factor of
these videos by also including updates from friends or pages recipients follow,
thus creating a more action-driven experience.
2.
Engage with customers emotionally
Too often, marketers say
"customer experience" when what they're really talking about is
"user interface." An experience has an emotional factor and is built
on perception; an interface does not. Emotion is a critical part of building
the kind of relationship with consumers that spurs them to say things like,
"I buy [the product you make] only from [your brand name here]."
Among various mediums,
personalized video helps brands tap into the emotional ties with their
customers. As the most compelling storytelling medium, video combines sight,
sound, and motion to captivate viewers. When videos are personalized for the
individual recipient, they can spark excitement, nostalgia, and a host of other
emotions that ultimately lead to purchasing decisions.
Atlantis
Paradise Island, for example, used video to reach guests, before
they arrived at the resort, by embedding each individual guest's itinerary into
personalized videos. This sort of personalization sparks anticipation, as well
as add-on activity purchases.
3.
Give customers what they need and want, the moment it matters
Forrester reports that almost
three-quarters of consumers say the No. 1 thing a company can do to provide a
good experience is to respect their time. Amazon has certainly made the most of
this CX tenet, with its Echo Dot for reorders at the touch of a button, and
Lockers for order pickup. The company uses customer data to better understand
what its customers want and need the moment they want it.
The practices of digital-first
companies like Amazon can teach other brands best-practices for CX-driven
communication. Namely, the experience on digital and off, when applicable,
should be equally superior.
Hilton is one company getting
it right: When guests opt for a digital channel for check-in rather than the
traditional human-assisted one, they get an intuitive, personalized process
that walks them through a digital floor plan and lets them pick their rooms
from a computer or mobile device.
4.
Provide customers with the next best action to influence their behavior
The most effective
personalization efforts harness data to influence customer behavior in a way
that benefits the customer and the business. By humanizing engagement, brands
can blend their data-driven marketing with good service to create exceptional,
personalized customer experiences.
Brands reflect a spectrum of
understanding vis-à-vis customer engagement—why it matters and how to do it
well. While some companies are still at Step 1, trying to personalize the
simplest content on their websites, others have learned that sophisticated
personalization strategies can be used to create the customer experiences that
drive customer loyalty. And loyalty is such a clear driver of value for
companies, that it's worth marketers' time to evolve their practices.
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