Personalised Customer Experiences: On the Way to Customer 360°

Is this advertisement following me? How do they know what interests me? What led to astonished reactions and internal monologues a few years ago has now become standard. Even more: customers even expect companies to know exactly what they like, when, and where. Personalised customer experiences are the measure of all things, or rather, the measure of the customer journey.

From Customer Journey to Customer Experience

The customer journey is the strategic foundation of personalised customer experiences. When developing such a customer journey, the primary goal is to understand and guide our customers step by step throughout their customer lifecycle. Key questions are asked, the answers to which flow into this strategic document:

• Which phases does a visitor go through until they become a happy customer?
• What touchpoints exist along this path between customers and the company?
• What needs, questions, pain points, and motivational drivers move our customer?
• How and where can we as a company meet these needs?
• How do we ensure that the customer moves from one phase to the next in a coordinated process?

All of this – and much more – is distilled into a semi-fictional customer journey for a semi-fictional buyer persona. However, since this fundamental strategic concept is only “semi” and real customers are not satisfied with half-measures, developing a buyer persona and customer journey can only be the first step towards a fulfilling customer experience in the “Age of the Customer.”

This path from the ideal customer to our actual customers can only lead via personalisation, the basis of which in turn consists of real customer data. But, let's proceed in order.

What is Personalisation?

Today, personalisation along the customer journey means providing individual experiences and content tailored to the needs, wishes, and habits of our (potential) customers. The personalisation of the customer journey is thus the evolution of advertising towards a digital dialogue and exchange with the customer. Data plays a central role here, as collecting, structuring, analysing, and using information about demographics, interests, and behaviours helps us design campaigns, content, and experiences so that they truly resonate with our target audiences.

Why is Personalisation Along the Customer Journey Important?

The importance of personalisation becomes clear at the latest when you are greeted in your favourite restaurant with your established drink order. It is about being seen and understood – and it is no different in a digitalised world. Those who spend a lot of time online appreciate receiving tailored recommendations and offers. This can be shoes, but also personalised content, or a reminder about an abandoned purchase process.
The online world around us has led consumers to have high expectations for the customer experience: it should always be fast, relevant, and simple. In other words, we are accustomed to getting what we want, when and where we want it – and companies that enable these personalised experiences have a clear competitive advantage.
For personalised customer experiences to work, companies, and especially marketing departments, must gain a 360° view of their customers. Only then can the necessary emotions be evoked and relevance built.

What is a 360° Customer View and What is it Good For?

As the name suggests, a 360° customer view involves a comprehensive understanding of the customer. This means that as a company, you always have a clear picture of which touchpoints the customer has used on which channel, at what time, for what purpose, and with what result. In the best case, this picture is available in real time with a single click, as we described in our article on the Golden Record. A 360° customer view is a holistic and up-to-date perspective on every customer of a company. This data-driven approach enables companies to understand and respond to each individual customer relationship. Such a data and customer centric approach offers many advantages for the company:

• Customer needs and trends are identified early
• Customer loyalty and brand loyalty are strengthened
• Predictions about customer behaviour can be made
• Cost reduction and higher efficiency in customer acquisition and marketing occur
• Better product development
• Improved customer service
• Increased revenue through higher conversion rates and more up-selling and cross-selling opportunities
• Improved customer communication has a long-term positive effect on the brand image

How to Achieve a 360° Customer View?

The question of how to achieve a 360° customer view has already been hinted at above: Only a Golden Record leads us to a valid Golden Profile. To create a 360° customer profile, not only master data but also real time movement data must be used. We need: – master data – descriptive data (demographic information, needs, etc.) – customer related movement data (orders, payments, click behaviour, etc.)

Many small and medium-sized enterprises face challenges with such a coordinated “golden customer profile,” as a synchronised and unified database across different touchpoints is anything but easy to build. On the way to this goal, marketing automation software can be a sensible and helpful solution. There are various providers on the market, from free open source solutions to expensive complete packages. Which automation software is suitable for which marketing cannot be stated generally, as this evaluation depends on many different factors. It is best to start with an internal analysis of touchpoints, communication channels, and customer data, and then derive requirements for the respective company based on this.

Ways and Tactics to Personalise the Customer Experience

The control centre for every personalised customer journey is certainly the internal marketing automation software, or, if this does not yet exist, one's own Content Management System. Most modern systems today offer at least one type of rule based personalisation. The absence of such an integrated and easily usable personalisation option should be a clear exclusion criterion when selecting a platform.

WHAT CAN RULE BASED PERSONALISATIONS BE AND WHAT DATA DO THEY REFER TO?

The simplest data we can use to customise customer experiences are classic environmental data.

• Time and Date: A simple “Good Morning” in the app or a Merry Christmas on the website are already a first step towards personalising customer experiences, based on publicly available information.
• Location: The appropriate country and language selection or a preset shipping option for a specific IP address is also a personalised customer experience.
• Weather: The weather can also be a relevant factor for the customer experience for some companies. Think of tourism regions, transport companies, but also in retail, the integration of weather data now allows for more accurate sales forecasting.
• Mobile or Desktop: Displaying content depending on the receiving device also belongs to personalisation.

In addition to these general standard data, we can – with consent – also use behavioural and usage data as triggers for personalising the customer experience. Here are a few examples:

• First or Repeat Visit: Depending on whether visitors are visiting our website for the first time or repeatedly, the content shown can be adapted accordingly.
• Retargeting: The broad and diverse field of retargeting can be wonderfully viewed under the aspect of personalisation. Utilise its potential!
• Click Behaviour: For example, what click behaviour do our newsletter subscribers show? Have you ever thought about sending different emails depending on click behaviour?
• Referrals: Where does the visitor come from? Is it an Ads campaign, a partner program, or a social media posting? Refer to it.
• Relevant Recommendations: Who doesn't know it? “Customers who bought this product are also interested in…”. What works for technology, clothing, and books can also be applied to content.

In addition to these manually set personalisation rules, a new approach is gaining increasing attention: AI based personalisation. The more complex projects become and the more diverse the target groups, the faster marketing reaches its operational limits with manual regulations. Here, artificial intelligence can make a promising contribution. Some automation tools have already integrated AI into their solutions, so it's worth being curious here.

Excellent Customer Service as a Central Customer Experience

Aside from all the automation and artificial intelligence, there is one point that many companies overlook when it comes to the perfect customer experience, but which every (potential) customer monitors with eagle eyes – customer service across all channels.

Dealing with questions, input, criticism, and complaints is a central point in designing personalised customer experiences. How do you, for example, deal with customer voices and testimonials? How long does it take for complaints via the ticketing system to be processed by you?

A 360° customer view, coupled with marketing automation and supported by artificial intelligence, are important levers, but not everything, when it comes to personalising customer experiences. Often, the feedback from customers is forgotten to be empathetically integrated back into the customer journey. This blind spot may have far-reaching negative consequences for the company, but conversely, it is very easy to remedy.

In our digital world, the 360° customer view is an important benchmark for companies. But we must simultaneously realise that customer data, even if well prepared and synchronised, is only data and not the customer themselves. Therefore, an empathetic understanding of the person behind the dataset remains crucial for successfully implementing personalised customer experiences.