Personalization in the CX sector helps meet customer expectations. As a result, it shouldn’t hurt your business but instead, provide improved customer experiences and create opportunities. However, personalization can backfire when customers feel you’ve overstepped boundaries or your operations are negatively impacted.
Balancing Act
We are at a crossroads where the desire for personalization is challenged by consumers who resent brands using their personal information to increase sales. Instead of feeling catered to, an increasing number of consumers are viewing personalized marketing as an infringement of their privacy.
While demand for personalization is increasing, where consumers expect personalization is changing. People like the idea of customized products for everything they purchase or having products recommended to them but are discouraged by overly personalized marketing that can create a “creep factor” for your brand.
Lack of Data Privacy
When your personalization reveals you know too much, customers feel like they are being watched. You overstep boundaries when you change messaging to reflect a very personal detail in someone’s life based on shopping habits, such as mentioning a pregnancy.
Data gathering can also make customers feel you are not respecting their privacy. They might misconstrue personalization as a breach of trust by getting too personal. Suspicions lie in how the data was accessed, which generates that lack of trust.
Ensuring you are using permission-based data collection helps maintain customer relationships and loyalty. You can allow customers who are uncomfortable with personalization to opt out of data collection. Surveys also help provide tailor-made personalization based on what customers consider acceptable.
Aspects of Personalization That Hurt Your Business
Personalization shouldn’t hurt your business, yet it often impacts your processes, including your supply chain. Offering personalized goods based on details such as color and features, for example, impacts your inventory management and warehousing process. You suddenly have individual items that need to be received, stored, picked, and packed differently.
Several aspects of personalization can potentially hurt your business, including:
- Using outdated or incorrect data
- Non-unified customer profiles that create disconnects
- Lack of effective customer segmentation
- Departments working in siloes create disparities in service and personalization efforts
- Falling behind on personalization technology or integration across your channels and systems
- Poor implementation of personalization that creates poor customer experiences
- Not remaining agile and scalable to meet the growing demands of personalization
These challenges demonstrate the importance of investing in personalization strategy and planning to ensure it doesn’t hurt your business. You need to find the right level of personalization to meet customer expectations without crossing lines that damage relationships and create mistrust. When done properly you can find opportunities to improve customer experiences.
Personalization shouldn’t hurt your business processes. Instead, CX leaders can develop overarching programs that break down siloes and encourage collaboration. This ensures all business functions have a positive effect on customer experiences and can pivot to meet the changing needs of personalization processes.
By reaching the right level of personalization, you expertly meet customer needs while keeping your company agile, scalable, and sustainable to keep pace with demand.
Anexa is committed to taking customer experience to the next level using the latest technology and proven CX strategies to help you improve your CX strategy. Contact Anexa today for more information on how to deliver an exceptional customer experience.