5 Strategies for Personalizing the Customer Experience

Pretend you’re at a supermarket in your area, your usual spot for the last year or so. You’ve selected all your items, head to checkout and the cashier says, “Good morning, George. How’s your day going?”

Now, if you’re like me, you’re either smiling from ear to ear or slightly creeped out (but in a good way). And, even if you’re not like me, that gesture has more or less cemented your commitment to buying from that supermarket for the foreseeable future.

In essence, the business has created a special perception and impression of value with you as their customer. This is what personalizing the customer experience is all about. Customer experience should never be the same between companies, even if they sell the same product or service. As long as brands and their contact center leaders want to stand out in their identity and reputation, they must start with personalizing customer experiences.

How do we do this? Let’s go over five important strategies to set your contact center up for success:

Take Advantage of Customer Data

Every business has access to customer data. While it’s important to value and secure it, it’s also crucial to use it toward growing their experience with your brand. Personalization starts with data, so get creative with custom interactions and automated solutions tailored for each customer. Be transparent and responsible with how your customer data is utilized.

Make Loyalty Programs a Big Deal

A report by KPMG says 78% of Millennials would switch to a company that offers a better loyalty program. Customer loyalty will remain key to customer experience and business growth, especially in today's competitive market. Setting up personalized loyalty programs that appreciate and reward your customers will improve engagement, boost retention and customer advocacy.

Provide Omnichannel Support

This is the intentional effort to make it easy for customers to do business with you. You want to create a frictionless customer  experience journey. This is the role of an omnichannel strategy; it’s giving the keys to the customer with a focus on specialization (not just service). It’s the customer seeing past a channel with every interaction, but on the brand your business represents.

Elevate your Employee Experience

For a contact center, your members are the face of your team. They advocate for the brand at every level and how it relates to customers. Have you ever judged an entire business just off an interaction with one person? Exactly! This is the power of an employee. As a team, it’s important to equip everyone with the right tools and training to identify customer needs and provide personalized engagement that exceeds expectations.

Value Customer Feedback

Personalizing customer experiences is not just using customer data, creating loyalty, setting up omnichannel or even equipping your team. All of this is incomplete if you don’t hear straight from your customers. As a contact center, your team should seek feedback from customers through reviews, surveys and interviews.