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When it comes to personalization people may think of customized products or using a customer’s name when addressing them. However, it goes far deeper than that. Personalization is about customizing products or services to suit an individual’s every preference.
By utilizing the right data technology to create a personalized customer experience that is frictionless, enjoyable, and invokes loyalty. Because it’s that simple. If you give each customer the exact experience they crave, then they have no choice but to keep choosing your brand every day.
You may feel that starting a CX personalization strategy can be daunting, and it can be if you don’t know where to start. Try taking a look at our easy 9-step guide on how to personalize customer experiences. Just 9 simple steps that can help you get started towards a path of personalized customer experiences.
Others may think well what ROI will I be getting by creating personalized customer service? Well, the numbers don’t lie. The ROI on customer experience investments is 300% according to research from Sitecore and Avanade. How about personalization you ask? According to research from Mckinsey, personalization most often drives 10 to 15 percent revenue lift (with company-specific lift spanning 5 to 25 percent, driven by sector and ability to execute).
In addition, a report from Epsilon stated that 80% of customers are more likely to make a purchase when businesses provide a personalized experience. Not convinced, let’s follow the best of the best when it comes to personalization and see if any of these brands are your favorites.
Amazon
We can’t talk about personalization without talking about the pioneer Amazon. Jeff Bezos started Amazon with a customer-centric mindset and always kept a seat empty at every meeting to symbolize the customer’s voice. He would ask team members to always think of what the customer would want in that instance and refer to the empty seat as a reminder. That is what has kept Amazon the best when it comes to e-commerce personalization. They utilize data analytics to offer product suggestions, bundle products that go together and offer style recommendations through Amazon Prime Wardrobe.
Amazon also uses AI to display personalized homepages to their millions of customers and product recommendations based on data. This is due to Amazon’s algorithm that gathers each customer’s purchase history/habits and other data to personalize recommendations so accurately that customers are often mind-blown. It’s one of the main reasons that keeps customers happy and makes it the number 2 company on the Fortune 500 list.
McDonald’s
McDonald’s uses an innovative Drive-Thru where it offers a personalized outdoor digital menu that changes according to the time of day, weather, trending orders, and capacity at the restaurant. It also rolled out self-serve kiosks and a global mobile app that offers a personalized loyalty program.
McDonald’s relies on AI and machine learning to get and work the data to tailor every experience and develop a unique loyalty program. Their purpose is to create feel-good moments and keep the experience seamless. These experiences keep McDonald’s as one of the most profitable franchises to own to this day.
Sephora
Sephora, the global beauty retailer is the number one company on the 3rd annual Retail Personalization Index and has managed to win 3 years in a row due to its personalization of experiences on every level and channel. Sephora has an omnichannel system and mobile app that make their personalized experiences possible.
Whether booking makeovers and consultations or using the “in-store companion,” their app does it all. The “in-store companion” feature helps users, find stores, check product availability, and reserve items. Even during a makeover or consultation makeup artists can input the products used or mentioned onto the user’s profile, so users can easily purchase them. The app also utilizes AR technology to help consumers virtually try on products and get recommendations based on preferences and beauty traits. Not to mention their loyalty program Beauty Insider that creates personalized experiences for all its users and offers VIB Rouge members extraordinary exclusive experiences.
Netflix
Netflix is an absolute boss when it comes to the personalization of its entertainment platform for each user. Netflix uses your watching behavior, data, and ratings to give you the most personalized experience. Throughout their history, they relied on different strategies and algorithms to keep customers engaged. This is all powered by smart AI, machine learning, and data analytics tools. These days they use the percentage match system. This gives each user a likability rate for each movie/show based on their previous likes and watching habits. They also use personalized movie art based on specific user data to show the side of the movie that would most appeal to the user.
This brings us to their play something button that is supposed to end indecisive scrolling. It takes your data and data of users with similar viewing habits to bring you some options that play immediately one after the other. Importantly, over 80% of what viewers watch on Netflix comes from their recommendations. Another reason why it’s the world’s most successful subscription company and has surpassed a record 221 million subscribers worldwide in Q4 2021.
Spotify
Spotify takes behavioral-based personalization to another level. They take data about the songs a user likes and has listened to the most as well as similar songs and curate a weekly playlist. Their “Discover Weekly” playlist is created through algorithms and AI, which keeps users tuned in every Monday. They also have their highly awaited end-of-year playlist called Spotify Wrapped that rounds up the user’s top listened to tracks and makes new suggestions based on it. Users can also easily share their playlists with friends and family, which opens up new customers to the app.
Additionally, they leverage the stats of Spotify Wrapped to create a marketing campaign that is insightful and strikes personal to many people. These campaigns create a buzz on social media and get people talking about the brand. Taking things to a personal level is one of the reasons why Spotify is the most-subscribed streaming service owning 31% of the global market and over 162 million subscribers worldwide.
These were our top picks of the best companies leveraging personalization to create the most personalized customer experiences. There are so many companies in various industries investing in data analytics, AI, machine learning, and omnichannel capabilities to stay ahead of the competition and keep customers loyal. All these capabilities are making way for hyper-personalization. E-commerce, retail, and tech may be in the lead, but many industries are personalizing experiences and creating opportunities to give each customer the experience they expect and love.
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