Today’s consumers want communication that is relevant to them and tailored to their specific requirements. Highly competitive businesses are set up to offer this advantage.
Consider how Netflix suggests what to watch based on what you’ve already watched, or how Amazon recommends goods to buy based on your previous searches and purchases. These algorithms are always learning and making new recommendations depending on your actions, rather than offering a fixed set of recommendations.
These are examples of hyper-personalization, which combines artificial intelligence (AI) and real-time data to provide users with more relevant products, services, and content information.
Customers expect individualized experiences, and 80% say they favor companies that provide them. Personalization has been shown to increase customer satisfaction by 20% and sales conversion rates by 10% to 15% in retail. Moreover, tailored calls to action have a 202% greater conversation rate than default or standard calls to action.
The static, transactional approach to customer engagement won’t succeed anymore. The five key points below examine factors to understand about how customer engagement is changing and what hyper-personalization entails.
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1. Generalized Personalization Is Not Enough
Personalization goes beyond general approaches such as a customized salutation. To be successful, your customer engagement strategy needs to rapidly adapt, which is where hyper-personalization capabilities play a key role. Using many areas of personalization can become a force multiplier, increasing the efficiency of your interactions, but this requires a continuous approach.
Personalization is fine-tuned by finding and verifying behavioral patterns as well as regularly testing and fine-tuning the next encounter depending on what was learned from the last interaction with that customer.
2. No More Static Rules of Engagement
Most of the solutions available today focus on getting real-time data to drive engagement. But it’s not just the data that needs to be real-time; the rule set/campaign/algorithm needs to be dynamic to achieve hyper-personalization. Nothing is fixed when it comes to human engagement.
Real-time data and a dynamically adapting engagement strategy are key. The most important thing to remember is that you cannot rely on stagnant, obsolete data. The importance of immediacy cannot be overstated. It’s crucial for a company to properly understand its customers in real time and provide them with the best possible solution.
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3. Insight Into Customer Habit Is Key
Not only should hyper-personalization be based on consumer preferences but also on their habits. Because customer needs and attention shift rapidly, it must be done promptly and continuously.
It’s also important to keep in mind that what customers say they want is sometimes very different from what they do; you need to learn from what they do and rapidly adapt to it. To do so, focus on key areas of the offer, user experience, and behavior.
For instance, based on a customer’s desires, how is the offer being framed? Is the activity they must take stressful? Should the experience be simplified to make action easier for the customer? Do they respond more often to messages that express empathy or messages that express urgency? All these factors need to be taken into consideration.
4. Starting From Scratch Is Not Fast Enough
You need to leverage the lessons and mistakes others have made to jump-start your hyper-personalization journey. Time is of the essence; a customer’s attention span is short because many other things are vying for their attention.
According to McKinsey, companies that use technology to improve customer experience can boost customer satisfaction by 15–20%. From the start, make sure you have robust, scalable infrastructure in place that meets the ever-evolving demands of personalization.
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5. Less Is More
The customer experience game will not be won by favoring quantity over quality. Amid their busy lives, customers don’t want to be bombarded with messages that are irrelevant to them. They want communication that is tailored to them in terms of content, distribution, and timing.
That’s what hyper-personalization is all about. With the right solution, you can send fewer but more relevant communications to your customers. This will improve their experience of your brand – as well as your financial outlook.
About the Author:
PehKeong Teh, Chief Product Officer, Symend