Personalization in commerce has been around since the first shopkeepers began greeting customers by name and remembering their regular orders. In the business world, modern personalization can be traced back to the 1980s. Now, with more data than ever before, we should have personalization in the bag.
So why is effective personalization still one of Customer Experience’s recurring problems?
The problems behind personalization problems
Persistent CX problems often reflect issues in the organization at large. These could include data quality, completeness, or availability; communication issues between departments and teams; and the business’ overall culture and organization. Let’s examine each of these separately.
Data completeness and availability
Data – particularly customer data – is essential for effective personalization. But such data is often scattered throughout the company. Some of it may be machine-readable; some of it may be distinctly human, like a sales rep’s impressions of their clients’ levels of interest and emotional states. But whenever we don’t have access to complete data, personalization efforts tend to miss the mark. And this leaves customers feeling disconnected from your brand.
Although we have data, simply having it isn’t enough. If information is locked away in various teams or departments, it’s of little help. This includes hard data like facts and figures as well as the information we humans store in our heads.
Company organization
Good personalization requires collaboration between teams and departments. When we think of it from this angle, we can see that personalization often reflects organizational structure and culture.
In some cases, companies with personalization issues have a complex or rigid organizational structure that doesn’t really support innovation and growth. And there may also be a reluctance to invest in new ideas. This means that changes take a long time to happen, which leads to teams and departments wrestling with slow and inefficient processes.
How does this affect personalization? True personalization is a moving target; the level of differentiation and attention customers expect is shaped by technologies and trends that are constantly being developed. If an organization is too slow to keep up with these expectations, its personalization efforts are going to feel dated and insufficient.
Communication issues
Interdepartmental communication often mirrors organizational structure; if a company has a complicated hierarchy, it can take more time for information to flow from one team to another. But it’s not a case of the structure itself causing the complication; it’s a reflection of the attitudes and culture in the organization. We’ve seen flat organizations with multiple bottlenecks and huge organizations with efficient and streamlined processes. The determining factor isn’t size or complexity, but the willingness to adapt where necessary.
The short version of all this is that poor communication, scattered data, and overly rigid company cultures can all cost time and effort. That extra time and effort affects personalization because it slows the process down and makes information less available.
We’re not trying to shame companies with personalization struggles or with firmly delineated structures. But it should get us thinking about how we communicate inside and outside of our company – with clients, partners, and colleagues. If there’s a problem with understanding and communicating with the customer, what about the people within the company? Poor internal and external communication can really reduce the effectiveness of personalization efforts.
Are your personalization efforts as good as you think they are?
Let’s pause here and do a quick check. How can you tell if your personalization efforts are working?
Your first instinct might be to go straight to sales figures, but these only show the end results. We recommend starting with metrics that signal interest, including:
- Open rates on emails and newsletters
- Click rates (i.e. how many people clicked on any link/item)
- Click-through rates (i.e. how many people clicked on a CTE)
- Time per website/app visit
- Time per webpage/screen visit
- Churn rates before and after personalization
- Abandonment rates before and after personalization
These will give you some hard facts about your company’s personalization efforts. You can find more info in our CX Metrics series.
How you improve your personalization in various areas will depend on a lot of factors, so let’s zoom out and focus back on the underlying issues behind CX’s recurring personalization problem.
Can CX’s personalization problem be fixed?
What can you do to improve personalization in your organization? You may not be able to start tinkering with organizational structure or single-handedly fixing interdepartmental communication. But what you can do is take small, proactive steps to improve the situation.
If you haven’t mapped the customer journey, that’s a good place to start. If your customer data is scattered throughout the organization, try building relationships with other departments. Using active listening and showing the value of personalization (and CX as a whole) can help. This strategy can also help you get buy-in for new ideas.
And if you need some help figuring out persistent CX problems like personalization, CX by Design is here for you. Contact us today for a free 30-minute consultation.
