Personalisation is key to increasing customer loyalty

It’s no longer enough to know your sort of cus­tomer or even the kinds of places they are like­ly to fre­quent. You have to know, for instance, what time your cus­tomer walks into the café every day, what they order for break­fast and where they’re going on hol­i­day.

Luck­i­ly, that’s not too dif­fi­cult. With 66 per cent of UK adults own­ing a smart­phone, the world is at con­sumers’ fin­ger­tips. But that also means their data is at yours.

Per­son­al­i­sa­tion, the buzz­word of the moment, is now one of retail­ers’ key tools for increas­ing cus­tomer loy­al­ty. It is dri­ven by the mul­ti­ple sources of cus­tomer data avail­able to busi­ness­es, thanks to things like smart sen­sors, bea­cons, face and object recog­ni­tion tech­nolo­gies, the inter­net of things and wear­able devices.

Now it’s pos­si­ble to gath­er and analyse more infor­ma­tion about con­sumers – loca­tion, pref­er­ences, pur­chas­ing his­to­ry – than ever before, offer­ing not just cus­tomer insight, but a form of sixth sense.

Com­pa­nies such as Apple, Google and Face­book are already putting to use the infor­ma­tion that indi­vid­u­als gen­er­ate through online buy­ing, brows­ing, “lik­ing”, swip­ing and com­ment­ing to antic­i­pate their users’ wants and needs with greater accu­ra­cy.

Know your customer

Man­ches­ter-based mar­ket­ing agency Ori­gin deliv­ers cam­paigns for some of the UK’s biggest brands, includ­ing the BBC, Super­drug, the Co-oper­a­tive and Man­ches­ter Unit­ed.

Per­son­alised expe­ri­ences are more engag­ing, enter­tain­ing, mem­o­rable and inspir­ing for audi­ences, which ulti­mate­ly dri­ves sat­is­fac­tion, sales and loy­al­ty

Ori­gin dig­i­tal strate­gist Geor­gia Mar­shall-Brown says: “The advent of dig­i­tal and mobile chan­nels has not only empow­ered con­sumers, it’s also increased the amount of data that retail­ers know about their cus­tomers.

“With con­sumers now active across a diverse mix of phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal retail chan­nels, a seam­less cus­tomer expe­ri­ence through­out the path to pur­chase is essen­tial. Research from Google shows that 90 per cent of con­sumers now move between devices when mak­ing a pur­chase. If a cus­tomer shares infor­ma­tion with their favourite brand in one chan­nel, they expect this to be known and under­stood at future inter­ac­tion points with that brand.”

Gaining actionable insights

Through effec­tive data col­lec­tion, com­pa­nies such as Ori­gin are able to devel­op com­pre­hen­sive user pro­files, which can be used to keep tar­get audi­ence pref­er­ences at the heart of all cus­tomer offers.

Cus­tomers have come to expect com­pa­nies to know who they are, what they pur­chased and their pref­er­ences for inter­ac­tion

“Per­son­alised expe­ri­ences are more engag­ing, enter­tain­ing, mem­o­rable and inspir­ing for audi­ences, which ulti­mate­ly dri­ves sat­is­fac­tion, sales and loy­al­ty. The results speak for them­selves with 35 per cent of Amazon’s rev­enue gen­er­at­ed by its rec­om­men­da­tion engine and 75 per cent of users select­ing movies based on Netflix’s rec­om­men­da­tions,” says Ms Mar­shall-Brown.

But not every­one has caught on to this, says Ben Pring, co-direc­tor of Cognizant’s Cen­tre for the Future of Work. “Busi­ness­es should explore in more detail how tech­nol­o­gy can bet­ter sup­port their busi­ness. A study from Cog­nizant and Oxford Eco­nom­ics revealed that large num­bers of busi­ness­es in Europe are not tak­ing the nec­es­sary steps to unlock the val­ue and oppor­tu­ni­ties pro­vid­ed by their cus­tomers’ dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences.

Missed opportunities

“Cur­rent­ly only 24 per cent of busi­ness exec­u­tives sur­veyed claim to be effec­tive at col­lect­ing and using dig­i­tal cus­tomer data, mean­ing many are miss­ing out on a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty to refine their prod­ucts and ser­vices in line with cus­tomer pref­er­ences. By access­ing this data and analysing it, com­pa­nies can under­stand their cus­tomers bet­ter, react faster when need­ed and, cru­cial­ly, pre­dict future pref­er­ences.”

Per­haps this dis­con­nect is to do with not want­i­ng to appear too “big broth­er” about it, says Mr Pring. “Cus­tomers’ expec­ta­tions are a mov­ing tar­get and com­pa­nies’ capa­bil­i­ties are advanc­ing at unprece­dent­ed rates,” he says. “Amid the pro­lif­er­a­tion of per­son­al­i­sa­tion and CRM [cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment] tech­nolo­gies, cus­tomers have come to expect com­pa­nies to know who they are, what they pur­chased and their pref­er­ences for inter­ac­tion, but not to go so far as to invade their pri­va­cy and sense of secu­ri­ty.”

Actu­al data analy­sis no longer requires end­less hours of brain-dead­en­ing human graft, says Miguel Milano, Europe, Mid­dle East and Africa pres­i­dent of Sales­force. “Adopt­ing an API-first strat­e­gy [appli­ca­tion inter­face strat­e­gy] not only gives app devel­op­ers the pow­er and flex­i­bil­i­ty to cre­ate new busi­ness ser­vices or enhance exist­ing prod­ucts, but also the oppor­tu­ni­ty to remove the need for human influ­ence where appro­pri­ate,” he says.

“This makes per­son­al­i­sa­tion on a large scale not only pos­si­ble, but also prof­itable for busi­ness­es, while at the same time con­sumers get exact­ly what they want, at a low­er cost and faster than pre­vi­ous bespoke ser­vices could offer. What­ev­er way you look at it, the poten­tial of ana­lyt­ics spells a bet­ter expe­ri­ence for con­sumers.”

Making data personal

Per­son­alised data is going to rev­o­lu­tionise the trav­el indus­try, accord­ing to Pas­cal Clement, head of trav­el intel­li­gence at trav­el tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny Amadeus. “There is a vast amount of data avail­able across the trav­el and tourism indus­tries, not just through book­ing engines, but through social net­works, review sites and oth­er exter­nal sources,” he says, “This infor­ma­tion has his­tor­i­cal­ly been stored in silos, with most process­es being dis­con­nect­ed from each oth­er.”

Amadeus is work­ing to bring this infor­ma­tion togeth­er and, through its trav­el intel­li­gence busi­ness unit, use the data to devel­op a clear under­stand­ing of each traveller’s spe­cif­ic wish­es, work­ing towards help­ing trav­el providers deliv­er a more per­son­alised expe­ri­ence.

Else­where in trav­el, air­ports such as Heathrow are already using bea­con tech­nol­o­gy to improve the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, alert­ing trav­ellers with push noti­fi­ca­tions when the gate is open or the plane is board­ing, and inform­ing them of rel­e­vant offers based on their pro­file and behav­iour, result­ing in a more seam­less air­port expe­ri­ence and a boun­ty of per­son­alised data for retail­ers.

Case Study: O2

O2 uses the Crim­son Hexa­gon social media ana­lyt­ics plat­form to inform strat­e­gy across its busi­ness and per­son­alise offers. This data is passed on to inter­nal sales, mar­ket­ing and prod­uct devel­op­ment teams to cre­ate a more per­son­alised cus­tomer offer­ing.

The com­pa­ny also looks at trends in con­ver­sa­tion as well as iden­ti­fy­ing its cus­tomers’ favourite fea­tures on dif­fer­ent mobile devices. The web team then uses these insights to tai­lor assets in a more rel­e­vant way.

Daryl West, O2 Telefonica’s insight lead, says: “If we can see a spike at the same time each year, we can make sure we have the rel­e­vant offers on our Pri­or­i­ty app.” For exam­ple, O2’s analy­sis exposed a peak in con­ver­sa­tions sur­round­ing people’s sum­mer hol­i­day plans between Feb­ru­ary and June when book­ings were being made, which coin­cid­ed with a peak in con­ver­sa­tions around gym and fit­ness train­ing in the same peri­od.”

Based on this insight, O2 placed offers on its Pri­or­i­ty app in Feb­ru­ary pro­mot­ing wear­able prod­ucts to inter­est those who were already think­ing about get­ting fit for their escape to the sun. The result? A more per­son­alised cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, opti­mised mar­ket­ing, and an increase in rev­enue and prof­it.

To get to know their tar­get audi­ence bet­ter, O2 also makes use of Crim­son Hexagon’s Affini­ties fea­ture. “Affini­ties allows us to look at the inter­ests of our audi­ence and from there we can com­pare and con­trast what an iPhone user, ver­sus a Sam­sung user, is inter­est­ed in. There­fore, we can cre­ate more tai­lored con­tent towards that audi­ence,” says Mr West.