Personalization is the critical role of CX and leaves a lasting impression on consumers. You may already be using certain personalization tactics in your eCommerce support, but the psychology behind its significance is interesting.
The Cocktail Party Effect was discovered in the 1950s by a British Cognitive scientist named Colin Cherry. Upon researching the dynamics of a noisy room, Cherry discovered that the human brain separates intersecting conversations into different auditory streams. Our brains decide what information to pay attention to based on what is relevant. Simply saying a customer’s name triggers parts of their brain to tune in. Alternatively, if content and messages do not feel relevant, it will cause customers to check out or ignore them.
Personalizing customer support allows you to connect with your customers on a deeper level. Keep reading for ways you can improve CX with simple personalization methods.
What is personalizing the customer experience?
Personalized service is more than acknowledging customers with a “hello” when they enter a business or sending a generic response when they reach out to agents. It entails tailoring each interaction and connecting with customers as human beings by offering unparalleled, meaningful service.
Instead of using a one-size-fits-all approach, personalization is being flexible and adjusting support to better understand and solve a customer’s dilemma. It’s a more in-tune comprehension that each customer is unique and requires their own individualized attention.
The importance of personalization
Personalizing customer service benefits both consumers and businesses in several ways. Let’s run through a few of them.
The benefits for consumers include:
- An accelerated, convenient experience
- Feeling cared about by a company they’re supporting
- Increased satisfaction
- Exceeded expectations
- Engagement with segmented marketing messages that connect with their interests
The benefits for companies include:
- Boosting revenue
- Magnifying customer retention and loyalty
- Establishing and increasing trust
- Standing out from competitors
- Generating word-of-mouth
According to Netomi,
93% of companies experience an increase in conversion rates from personalization.
Catering support to fit the preferences of each customer leverages your brand, provides a more satisfactory experience that sticks, and makes customers feel valued. Here are a few simple ways that you can add personalization to give customer support that extra zing.
How to personalize your customer support for better CX
1. Consider social style
The Social Styles Model is the result of two American psychologists, Roger Reid and John Merrill, who undertook research for a major insurance company. Their goal was to identify relationships between different behavioral markers and leadership potential to foster a culture of highly successful management.
According to Reid and Merrill, people can fall under one of four personality types: amiable, expressive, analytical, or driver, with one of these four categories always being dominant in defining behavior. According to TRACOM, there are different ways to determine which category a customer falls into and how to moderate your behavior for the sake of making the customer more comfortable.
- People with amiable styles are friendly, supportive, and relationship-driven. They openly express their feelings to others and come across as less demanding. Being more agreeable, they are often seen as easygoing. Their need: Personal security. Their orientation: Relationships.
- People with expressive styles are emotional and enthusiastic. They can appear to react impulsively and can be described as talkative, personable, and sometimes opinionated. Their need: Personal Approval. Their orientation: Spontaneity.
- People with analytic styles are thoughtful, reserved, and slow-paced. They can be described as quiet or logical, and they may not reach out unless they need to. Their need: To be right. Their orientation: Thinking.
- People with driver styles are fast-paced, controlling, and decisive. They are seen by others as forceful, direct, and determined, and are known to initiate conversations. Their need: Results. Their orientation: Action.
With the help of the Social Styles Model, agents may adapt their behavior to better suit a customer’s needs, and tailor each interaction from a place of understanding, personalized support, and empathy.
2. Use data responsibly and discerningly
Using customer data analytics, keep track of a customer’s preferences to learn more about them and their interests or habits. Knowing your customer’s name, transaction history, and expectations has a direct influence on purchase behavior. Organizing this data for agents’ readability makes it painless for them to offer solutions and answer questions more quickly. Merkle’s 2022 Consumer Experience Sentiment Report found that…
More than half of Gen Z and Millennial consumers are comfortable sharing ‘demographic, psychographic, and shopping behavior data’ in exchange for a personalized experience.
With a customer-centric mentality, it will keep you on the right track to using data ethically for overall better CX.
3. Segment your audience
Segmenting is important in planning and preparing certain messages. Audience segmentation subgroups can be based on demographics such as geographic location, gender identity, age, ethnicity, income, or level of formal education. You can also get detailed by segmenting groups based on behavior, engagement levels, the type of device they typically use, or their journey progress. Best practices when segmenting are to constantly aim for improvement and to keep your audience widely defined.
Once you have your audience segments, personalize the delivery of each message to better interest consumers and offer them new products or deals depending on what they respond well to. Instead of receiving impersonal marketing messages, you can deliver custom-made support and campaigns that customers respond well to.
4. Offer recommendations to segmented lists
Streaming brands such as Netflix personalize their programming by recommending new shows or movies to watch based on viewer behavior. This is impeccable for keeping customers engaged and excited about checking out what is new for them. Your customers will love receiving messages that are crafted specifically for them.
5. Identify and prioritize high-value support tickets
Part of a great customer experience is getting support when you need it. For businesses that receive tens of hundreds of support tickets daily, should you answer the most recent ticket in the queue or the most urgent? One of the most common ways to prioritize queries based on immediate importance depends on a customer’s pricing plan.
Automate this process by creating a custom source. This lessens the manual, repetitive effort of support agents to identify a customer’s plan for each incoming support ticket and allows them to provide more efficient support.
In the meantime, having an automated response with articles that answer common questions customers have when reaching out allows them to utilize your knowledge base and empowers them to solve the problem themselves. For more on email support, check out our guide to keeping customers supported between support emails.
6. Lean into omnichannel personalization
Omnichannel personalization is a data-driven marketing effort that places customers at the center. It may take some time to sync various channels, but it results in seamless CX. Consider the following example. You gather customer information from in-store and online purchases. Based on this data, you develop a loyalty program and use your CRM to increase sales. Omnichannel support enables you to cater to diverse audiences for a more cohesive, integrated experience.
Personalize support with Influx
Trained in your brand voice, we can provide an extra layer of support that helps you scale globally. We are here to help you exceed your goals with world-class support. Learn more today.
