The Art of Personalization in Elevating the Customer Experience and the Tools That Make It Easier Than Ever

A 2021 survey from McKinsey & Company discovered that 71% of shoppers expect personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when brands don’t provide them. Clearly, customers now demand tailored experiences from companies before becoming brand loyal. 

At the forefront of enabling personalization are your communications tools. With the right features, you can gather the necessary information about customers and prospects to improve how you interact with them.

Find out more about how to personalize the customer experience (CX) and which tools help you elevate your game.

Key Takeaways:

• Personalization means interacting with each customer on a human level that makes them feel special.
• Personalizing interactions can make the difference in whether a customer sticks with your brand or heads to a competitor.
• Cloud-based unified communications and contact center as a service platforms allow you to deliver more personalized interactions with the latest tools.

What Really Is Personalization in CX?

Personalization involves more than just using a customer’s name or repeating random details about them during discussions. The McKinsey survey found that customers associate genuine personalization with positive experiences that make them feel special.

Nearly everyone can tell the difference between the desperate salesperson who is utilizing tactics to close a deal and the empathetic consultant who cares about providing helpful solutions. Insincere personalization often involves marketing that just inserts buyer or company names into a soulless template. 

For example, you’ve probably seen emails like this: “Hi John! I just saw your LinkedIn profile, and I’m really impressed with your success. I know that you folks at ABC, LLC, are looking for ways to make more money, so I wanted to share our amazing solution with you.”

That message doesn’t say anything of value and could apply to nearly any business. It’s just a thinly veiled sales pitch.

On the other hand, an example of real personalization could be when a customer calls your contact center about a technical issue. Imagine a conversation where the agent’s responses look something like this:

• “Hi John, it’s good to speak with you again. How can I help you?”
• “I see that your firm called about this same issue two months ago. Is this the first time you’ve had that same problem since then?”
• “It looks like you’ve only had this challenge since you’ve switched plans to a lower tier of service. Did you ever have this issue when you were using our premium offering?”

Of course, you want to avoid getting too personal. Still, when your team can refer to specific details and interactions that the customer had with your company, discussions feel more like seamless conversations heading toward a resolution instead of a business-as-usual transaction.

Why Is Personalization More Important Than Ever?

Personalized CX is the new battleground for customer loyalty. Companies that provide the smoothest and most comfortable experience will have more return buyers.

Of course, increased customer loyalty connects directly to higher revenue and growth. As you attract and retain more customers, you’ll see a higher customer lifetime value and reduced churn.

Additionally, implementing and automating personalization tools makes your team more productive. Instead of hunting through records to find details about customers so you can offer a personal touch, unified communications software can provide what you need at your fingertips.

What Communications Tools Are Enabling Personalization?

It’s easy to talk about personalization, but making it happen in real time is another story. Obviously, personalized experiences occur when you’re communicating with customers, so your communications and collaboration tools will be at the heart of helping you offer more personable interactions.

Start by making sure your business line itself offers communication across all channels so you can reach out to people in the way they prefer. The best way to do this is with a unified communications as a service platform. 

UCaaS not only allows you to reach out to customers in whichever format they prefer, but you can also preserve, archive, and retrieve those conversations easily. For example, Intermedia Unite can integrate with customer relationship management software, so when a customer calls you can access all of their details and pick up right where you left off. 

Imagine impressing a customer when you casually recall a detail about their new puppies or recent anniversary trip. You can do that when you record helpful facts about them in your CRM and converse like a close neighbor.

If you need to bring those same capabilities to a contact center, you can do so with Intermedia Contact Center. Once again, the benefit is each time customers call, they won’t feel like they’re starting a new conversation with a different agent. Interactions are seamless, and your brand becomes a reliable partner.

What Strategies Can Help You Personalize CX Even Better Than Ever?

Personalization doesn’t happen haphazardly. Keep the following pointers in mind as you personalize your services:

• As third-party data becomes harder to come by, focus on collecting information directly from your clients and leads. However, be transparent about your policies and practices. 
• A great way to collect data beyond storing details from conversations in a CRM is to run surveys. Fortunately, you can use interactive voice response software to automate the process and collect valuable data about your callers without hiring a team of survey takers.
• Ensure that customer data stays secure. Instead of trying to purchase a full security suite to protect your UCaaS or CCaaS, work with a vendor that secures your system physically and digitally. 
• Once you have customer data, don’t forget to review and understand it. Regularly analyze customer sentiment from interactions and make adjustments to your operations. 

As you proactively assist your customers with personalized solutions, you’ll start winning the battle of CX and outperform your competitors.

Improve CX Through Personalization With Intermedia’s Industry-Leading Communications Platforms

Your journey to impressive personalization begins with the right communications provider. Talk to our team at Intermedia to discover how Intermedia Unite and Contact Center can help you deliver the CX your customers will love.