Five benefits of delivering personalised customer experiences
The customer experience is pivotal to maintaining customer loyalty and longevity, and today, customers are expecting more than ever from their favourite brands. From 24/7 service, to social media channels and rapid response time to queries, customers expect a lot.
Customers also expect their customer journey to be personalised and humanised, with McKinsey finding that 71% of customers expect such an experience from brands. But what are the benefits of offering this personalised CX to brands?
1. Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty
A whopping 76% of customers get frustrated when they don’t receive a personalised experience from a brand meaning personalisation isn’t just a ‘nice-to-have’ anymore – it’s a necessity in meeting today’s customer expectations in a competitive market place where customer satisfaction is intrinsically tied to customer loyalty.
Considering 90% of customers claim that the experience a brand provides is as important as its products or services, and that CX drives over two-thirds of customer loyalty, it’s key that brands deliver on what customers are demanding – and that’s personalisation.
2. Reduction in customer churn
Almost three-quarters of customers expect the businesses they buy from to recognise them as individuals and know their interests – and if they don’t, they will look elsewhere to brands that can offer the personalised experience they’re expecting.
In order to ensure customers don’t jump ship to the competition, take a close look at what experience you’re offering your customers. Are customers greeted by name when they speak to an agent? Are they sent information on products and services that matches their unique interest? Or are customers left frustrated when they aren’t greeted like the individual they are and receive generic information that’s not relevant to them?
It’s also important to consider your channel offerings. Digital channels are becoming increasingly popular, with Gartner predicting that digital messaging, such as WhatsApp and WeChat, will be the favoured method of delivering CX by 2025. As customers disperse across multiple channels to contact their favourite brands, ensure that you are meeting the need for personalisation across these channels so they don’t go looking elsewhere.
3. Enhanced brand perception
A good customer experience is everything. When customers come away from a brand interaction feeling they’ve been heard and recognised, they feel positive about that brand and are more likely to return and recommend that brand to others.
In a competitive market where consumers have access to thousands of brands at their fingertips, the quality of CX matters. In fact, 86% of consumers would leave a brand after as few as two poor experiences.
Ensuring you meet the customer expectation for a personalised experience then, is no small thing.
4. Reduced handling time and improved first-call resolution
A streamlined customer journey is a good customer journey, and personalisation can be hugely helpful in adding efficiencies to any customer experience.
For example, when customer service agents have insight into customers and their interaction history with a brand – by integrating the likes of CRM and Knowledge Management Systems into contact centre channels – they can not only deliver a more personalised service but also have all the information to deliver a faster resolution to customers’ queries.
The growth in cloud-based, API-enabled contact centre platforms enables greater integration with organisations’ key customer systems to extract data for use in personalising the experience through proactive communications, personalised interaction routing, and information presented to agents. AI and automated tools can enhance this even further, with the likes of automated ID&V tools streamlining the customer journey by ensuring customers reach the right service team without having to repeat identifying information.
In short, when contact centres know more about who the customer is and why they’re getting in touch, the more efficiently and accurately they can resolve their query.
5. Increased sales conversion rates
When customers have a good customer experience, the chances of them buying into the services and products a brand offers will increase exponentially. If you add a personalised element to this journey, something customers expect, the results are even greater, with 60% of consumers reporting that they will become repeat buyers after a personalised purchasing experience.
Personalisation isn’t just good for ensuring customers remain happy and loyal – it’s good for business too.
Delivering on expectations
Providing a personalised, empathetic customer service is a must-have today in order to meet customer expectations and thrive against rising competition and tightening regulatory environments that demand greater relationship-building between customers and brands.
To hear more about the benefits that you can experience from taking a personalised approach, join us at our IPI Spotlight events in London on 25th January and Manchester on 30th January to hear more. Full details can be found here.
Stephen is IPI’s CX (Customer Experience) Solutions Director, with responsibility across product, commercial and development functions. A CX expert and technologist with over 20 years’ experience, Stephen has worked both partner and vendor side at some of Europe’s biggest contact centre integrators and at the world’s largest workforce optimisation and analytics vendor. His focus has been on pioneering the development of AI, self-service and compliance technologies for the contact centre space and he was recently awarded a patent for the co-invention of a revolutionary fraud prevention tool for contact centres. Passionate about helping organisations realise the promise that technology makes, he is a regular contributor and speaker at CX and contact centre events around the world.
