Why personalisation is the new customer battleground

In today’s com­pet­i­tive sales land­scape, many believe the price of a prod­uct or ser­vice has become less impor­tant in pur­chase deci­sions. Instead, deliv­er­ing a high­ly per­son­alised expe­ri­ence is the new cus­tomer bat­tle­ground.

With the UK fac­ing a tough cost of liv­ing cri­sis, the price some­one must pay for goods or ser­vices can nev­er be over­looked. But busi­ness­es are begin­ning to see how a smoother cus­tomer expe­ri­ence (CX), packed with per­son­al­i­sa­tion, can achieve longer-term loy­al­ty and greater finan­cial returns.

A CX focus could take many dif­fer­ent forms. Some could use cus­tomer data to tar­get effec­tive dis­counts or gen­er­ate sea­son­al offers by analysing spend­ing habits. With­in e‑commerce it might include sug­ges­tions for upselling extra goods and ser­vices that com­ple­ment an exist­ing or planned pur­chase.

Oth­ers might decide to add addi­tion­al sup­port ser­vices or lev­els of advice to per­son­alise a suite of prod­ucts, ones that best suit an individual’s lifestyle or might match more accu­rate­ly with a cor­po­rate client’s needs. This could be in-store or over the phone, both before and after pur­chase.

Alex Thom­son is region­al vice-pres­i­dent of Quan­tum Met­ric, a com­pa­ny focused on con­tin­u­ous prod­uct design in the online retail space. He says that cre­at­ing a “stand­out, pos­i­tive cus­tomer expe­ri­ence” is about look­ing at what cus­tomers are doing and why they’re doing it. 

“To entice cus­tomers and demon­strate a ded­i­ca­tion to CX, retail­ers need to rethink their online stores,” Thom­son says. “Per­son­alised ser­vices give online retail­ers an oppor­tu­ni­ty to stand out. These could include vir­tu­al or AR [aug­ment­ed real­i­ty] siz­ing through apps, ‘try before you buy’ or cloth­ing loan schemes. In turn, retail­ers can reach high­er cus­tomer life­time val­ues (CLVs), the pin­na­cle of cus­tomer loy­al­ty.”

Cus­tomers don’t active­ly expect per­son­al­i­sa­tion all the time, Thom­son says, but it makes a “huge dif­fer­ence” when it’s there to offer con­ve­nience. “Such expe­ri­ences include things like pro­vid­ing offers on items that have been left in bas­kets or pre-empt­ing the pur­chase of essen­tials based on when a cus­tomer last bought them,” he adds.

“It can even extend to mak­ing the sug­ges­tion at the point the per­son is most like­ly to buy, which could be dif­fer­ent for indi­vid­ual cus­tomers.” For exam­ple, a pop­up on open­ing the app or a short ‘did you for­get’ note at check­out.

Personalising stores 

E‑commerce has had a strong pull for many cus­tomers since the start of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic. How­ev­er, the role of a store or phys­i­cal venue shouldn’t be over­looked in dri­ving per­son­al­i­sa­tion. Such expe­ri­en­tial spaces can now deliv­er a high­ly per­son­alised cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, espe­cial­ly to meet spe­cif­ic local and com­mu­ni­ty needs. 

Brid­get Lea, man­ag­ing direc­tor of retail at EE, points to its new store in London’s Aldgate East. “We’ve cre­at­ed an expe­ri­en­tial space where cus­tomers can get expert advice, or just have some fun with the very lat­est tech­nol­o­gy,” she says. “As part of EE’s com­mit­ment to deliv­er the most per­son­al and local ser­vice on the high street, the new store has been designed to be a hub for the com­mu­ni­ty with an event space avail­able for local groups to use to host work­shops, sup­port meet­ings and be an infor­mal place to get tech sup­port and advice.”

Lea also high­lights the role that omnichan­nel plays in invest­ing in a more per­son­al cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. It needs to include a seam­less process from one chan­nel to anoth­er, depend­ing on the customer’s pref­er­ence. These include online, over the phone or in-store.

“Invest­ing in cus­tomer data-dri­ven insights allows us to make bet­ter deci­sions to deliv­er per­son­alised offer­ings to our cus­tomers in-store, which ulti­mate­ly deliv­ers a bet­ter expe­ri­ence, not sole­ly focused on price,” Lea adds.

In the health­care space, a Bupa Glob­al analy­sis of cash-rich and time-poor cus­tomers showed an appetite for increased per­son­al guid­ance and greater tai­lor­ing to indi­vid­ual needs. Its research found that 52% of ultra-high net worth cus­tomers strug­gled to find time to deal with issues relat­ing to health and well­be­ing. 

The health provider launched a ded­i­cat­ed ‘life­care concierge man­ag­er’ for such indi­vid­u­als, who will gain an in-depth under­stand­ing of that customer’s lifestyle and med­ical con­di­tions and then man­age their appoint­ments and claims with the min­i­mum of paper­work.

Putting people first

Such per­son­alised human inter­ac­tion shouldn’t be just for the wealthy. Nico­las Ham­mer is CEO of Critizr, a cus­tomer inter­ac­tion man­age­ment plat­form. He argues that putting peo­ple at the heart of per­son­al­i­sa­tion is the next evo­lu­tion. 

Ham­mer believes things have now moved beyond dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and algo­rithms and ref­er­ences the idea of ‘con­ver­sa­tion­al com­merce’. “This is about per­son­al, one-to-one inter­ac­tions through­out the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, pre, post and dur­ing store vis­its,” he says.

It means “allow­ing shop­pers to com­mu­ni­cate with friend­ly, engaged, prob­lem-solv­ing, proac­tive human beings in real time.”

No one wants the imper­son­al, dis­joint­ed process­es of the past, Ham­mer argues, or a chat­bot that can’t get the spe­cif­ic answers they need. Although today’s shop­pers are high­ly digi­tised, he says, more than ever they pre­fer deal­ing with real peo­ple. 

“The chal­lenge, of course, is how to achieve this in a busi­ness at scale. Retail teams have to be active in the same chan­nels where their cus­tomers are, ready to enter the con­ver­sa­tion, whether that’s in-store, online, by text or mes­sag­ing app, or even deliv­er­ing to the front door. From the cus­tomer’s point of view, it should feel seam­less. And it has to be fast,” Ham­mer adds.

On a small­er scale, guitarfxdirect.com, a UK online retail­er of glob­al­ly sourced, bou­tique effects ped­als for gui­tars, exem­pli­fies this the­o­ry. The nature of its prod­ucts and cus­tomer base means they val­ue human advice with­in a per­son­alised cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. 

The com­pa­ny now offers fol­low-up cus­tomer care to check on people’s ped­al pur­chas­es. It has com­bined that with boost­ing its cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ca­tion: for exam­ple, being sure to advise cus­tomers of their posi­tion on wait­ing lists ahead of high­ly antic­i­pat­ed ped­al launch­es.

 “There is always a trade-off to some extent between pric­ing and cus­tomer ser­vice,” says man­ag­ing direc­tor Simon Viney. “Peo­ple feel they have a con­nec­tion with the peo­ple in the busi­ness. We’re always hap­py to chat ped­als.”