Upping the ante with personalisation

When you hit festival season, it is now quite common to see vendors luring customers with loads of benefits. Often, customers who are in a celebratory mood do end up spending money on these products and services. I’m typically quite deal-savvy and was going through some of the websites which offered attractive discounts. My experience, in recent years, has been filled with astonishment at the vendors’ proactive behaviour. Even before I could begin searching for the items I wanted to buy, the websites showcased all those products and services I was looking for!

Curious about this phenomenon, I studied the techniques these new-age marketers adopt. Though the answer to this got complex with jargon such as collaborative filtering, user profiling, dynamic content, predictive analytics, prescriptive analytics and so on, fundamentally it meant they all aimed to create a personalisation experience for the users.

The earliest memory of personalisation I have is my driving experience with a German luxury car that I had owned while living in the US. The kind of customisation choices it offered were indeed a pleasure. My wife and I shared this car. Each of us, individually, could get every aspect of comfort – seat positioning to climate control to audio settings to our dashboard views – customised to our choice. The moment we were in, a push of a button would ensure that our settings were activated.

It was a time when customisation of features was enough to create customer delight. However, in the present world needs have changed and choices have grown by leaps and bounds. If businesses must thrive they must offer something that accurately maps the customer needs and the choices. The genesis of the term user experience (UX) began here.

The advent of technology development was a real boon to the UX. Enormous amount of customer data started becoming available while technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Digital Knowhow, Machine Learning and Internet of Things had all been growing. This created a huge advantage in converting mere ‘customer data’ into ‘customer intelligence’, which the businesses combined with customisation. Further, those websites which provided personalisation started creating data-driven online experiences tailored to user-specific interests based on their previous actions. This is indeed very attractive and novel from the user’s point of view.

Helping the customer along With millions of products available on platforms such as Amazon and Netflix, it is a herculean task for users to make a choice unless they are guided. Some websites such as Demandbase use very creative methods of recommending personalised content by recognising even the kind of role we play in our real world. As per MarketingProfs, an online resource for marketers, businesses that personalise web experiences see an average 19 per cent increase in sales.

Personalisation is not limited to sales these days but even applies to the information that we consume, such as newsletters. In a survey conducted by Hubspot, 38 per cent of the survey takers said that they signed up for a company newsletter hoping to receive information that is relevant to them.

Personalisation has many advantages. It creates such stickiness that the user will not let go, ensuring repeat appeal. There is a personal touch and warmth, which goes far in creating brand loyalty. For instance, a few years ago, what one could at best expect was a message that made a website visitor feel like they were being spoken to, with phrases such as ‘Glad to have you back’, which helped in maintaining a cordial relationship. In recent years, with the wealth of both implicit and explicit customer data available, the opportunities created for personalisation have changed by far. Beyond the welcome message, users are made to feel exclusive – as though they are the only customers. Social mining is another vast subject that has paved the way for such possibilities through understanding of customer’s habits, preferences, constraints, challenges, needs and their beliefs.

Let us try and understand why personalised experiences lead to successful businesses, and what customer behaviour is responsible for this?

Personalisation increases conversion When the message that you receive resonates with your values it creates a strong personal preference for the brand. Personal campaigns work pretty much on this principle. For instance, luxury brands such as BMW implement personalised MMS campaigns to initiate their customer relationship marketing efforts. This brings in significant conversion rates and revenue even with just one campaign.

Relevant stories enhance engagement Most interesting opportunity for personalisation is in real time, in context and during the digital interaction with the customer. Such interactions should convey stories relevant to every single user, which is the core of personalisation. Facebook users experience more ad content as well as “relevant” stories that relate to them, hence making it unique for them.

It’s all about creative empathy When someone makes you feel special it is fundamental human psychology to be flattered. This is the basis of creative empathy, which is to design and personalise experiences that are truly centred on individuals. Design Thinking methodologies leverage empathy techniques in learning more about the users. Customers expect tailored and efficient experiences, but that doesn’t mean they’re willing to compromise on authenticity. They pretty much expect the brands that they patronise to understand their true wants and needs, the context of which changes in real time.

Effective personalisation is that level of creativity required to understand and empathise with their customers, while simultaneously developing a solution for them. Apple’s Siri engineers created the bot, which is deployed within one’s cell phone using such a creative empathy. Researchers and product developers at Apple found that users have a desire for a personal assistant to solve simple problems such as, “What is the weather like tomorrow?” or “Please call Mom.” Listening to and learning about user habits and needs develops insights which fuel the need for a creative product that provides solutions.

V. Mohan Srinivasan is Principal Consultant, Centre for Behavioural Excellence - Talent Transformation, Wipro Ltd. The views expressed in this article are that of the author. His employer does not subscribe to the substance or veracity of the views.

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