5 easy ways to personalize customer experiences

5 easy ways to personalize customer experiences

Personalized customer service is about reaching people where they are. In an age of e-commerce, this has become increasingly complex. Although there's no blanket solution, it’s nevertheless important now more than ever for businesses to adopt a more personalized approach toward customer interactions.

Today’s customers expect brands to understand their unique tastes and preferences. Twilio’s 2023 State of Customer Engagement Report found that 66% of consumers say they will quit a brand if their experience isn’t personalized. Unfortunately, an alarming personalization gap exists. While almost half (46%) of brands believe that they are doing an excellent job when it comes to customer personalization, only 15% of consumers agree.

A personalized customer experience allows you to deliver tailored messaging, offers, and products to each individual consumer. You can also show customers that you value them by using their preferred channels of communication. With omnichannel marketing experiences, customers can move conversations with a brand from one medium to another for more in-depth interactions. 

What are omnichannel experiences?

Omnichannel is an approach to sales, marketing, and customer support that provides customers with a unified brand experience, regardless of which channel they use. This means however and wherever an individual decides to do business with your brand, they have a consistent experience that picks up right where they left off. 

But in order to build omnichannel experiences, your business needs a unified view of the customer. You must have a way to collect and consolidate user data, analyze customer journeys, and take action on these insights to build seamless and personalized experiences for your users.

While omnichannel marketing is most frequently used in retail and e-commerce settings, any industry can benefit from having a holistic customer view. After all, every modern brand should aim to provide consistent experiences across all of its channels, whether that be in-store, online, over the phone, on social media, or via email and SMS.

How to deliver a more personalized customer experience at scale

If you’re left scratching your head over where to get started, don’t fret. Here are five steps you can take today to start building omnichannel customer experiences: 

1. Create customer profiles

Take the time to understand your users by gathering customer data using a customer data platform (CDP). This can help you build more in-depth profiles about your customers so you can better understand their wants, needs, and interests and share more relevant content with them. 

From there, talk with other internal teams about the types of customers they deal with on a regular basis. What are their pain points? What do they think your business does well? What is their role in the decision making process? These conversations can help your business create customer profiles that your entire business can reference to develop a deeper understanding of your typical customers’ needs and how your business can best serve them.

2. Provide more choices

In today's interconnected world, customers expect to be able to access convenient services no matter the channel. Whether by phone, email, social media, or live chat, customers expect to reach your business whenever and wherever they need it. If you're not providing an omnichannel service experience, you could start losing customers. Consider asking customers which channels they use regularly and then meet them there. 

3. Create a better self-service experience

Self-service allows customers to help themselves by enabling them to find the answers they need quickly, easily and on their own terms. Suitable self-service materials include FAQs, explainer videos, and step-by-step instructions to address common problems. This can help reduce frustration around high call wait times and slow chat response times. 

4. Develop a strong customer relations system

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are multifaceted. They can provide a suite of interactive voice response (IVR) options, real-time data, and call and purchase history. A well-implemented CRM system can even empower you to deliver more personalized greetings and responses.

5. Utilize customer feedback

Customer feedback is a great way to listen and learn from your customers. Collecting feedback gives your business a unique opportunity to hear what your customers think you could be doing better. This means you can optimize customer service to ensure it's as personalized as possible.