Tap into the power of personal touch
THE most crucial trend in customer experience requires a mindshift from viewing your customer as an LSM demographic to hyper-personalisation – a target market of one.
It is a return to the days when the customer was known and loved.
It is mass-customisation taken to scale through advanced digitisation and artificial intelligence.
The biggest cost to most businesses is human interaction.
Many customer service channels have been automated or consigned to call centres, which leave people feeling like a depersonalised cog in a wheel.
Hyper-personalisation seeks to reconnect with the customer using big data and intuitive machine learning. Companies that can gather, interpret and use data effectively to connect with their customers are gaining the edge and the exponential bottom line.
How to hyper-connect
What I enjoy about booking accommodation through European AirBnB is the fact that I can connect personally with my host.
It builds trust and gives me a sense of security. I can chat to my Uber taxi driver about the current water crisis and Amazon is fine-tuned to my somewhat eclectic reading preferences.
Facebook tells me when it is your birthday and if no one else knows where I am, Google does.
All this from the data that I have given them. So how can we, in a very practical way, hyper-connect with our customers?
Be part of your customer’s story
Algorithms and machine learning allow you to build your client profile over time and intuitively engage at a deeper level to influence future buying behaviour.
Those algorithms tell you that “people who bought this book also liked these” – the power of recommendation.
Maximise use of online platforms
Talk to your customer, not at them. They are looking for an immersive, multi-channel experience where they can interact in their own way. Know where they hang out, how they communicate and where they are likely to make their buying decisions.
The benefit of the cloud is much of the work has been done for you. Start with online platforms that are doing this well.
Connect your calendar to LinkedIn and get to know you customers before you meet them. Use video to connect in real time.
Use hashtags and keywords strategically not #randomly.
Find out which portals your customers like, when they are most likely to read their feed. Millennials are on Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp and 55-year-old women are on Facebook.
Turn your data into gold by using one of the many CRM systems available – to inform strategy, sales and decision-making.
Craft messages to speak personally to your customers. Address them by name and avoid jargon.
And lastly, there is only so much connection you can do digitally.
So pick up that phone, walk down the passage, switch off the Wi-Fi and talk to your customer.