What could be better for customers and customer contact staff if your services match exactly with the characteristics and preferences of customers? Although customer service, customer experience and customer journeys are always about 'the customer', 'always customization' is still a thing of the future. In this edition of TechUpdate we explain the opportunities and obstacles. 

tech update is the Ziptone section on emerging technology relevant to customer engagement. We briefly explain what it is, how it works, why it is relevant, what the pitfalls are and we ask the reader's opinion: Hot or Not?

What is it

Personalized service means that you take into account the characteristics, needs, preferences and circumstances of the customer in the service process. That seems obvious, but in reality it is quite difficult because we have standardized and often automated service and customer contact processes. As a result, customer service departments take little or no account of the characteristics, preferences and circumstances of the customer. Hyper-personalization in customer contact is the opposite: making every effort (in addition to marketing and sales) to ensure that customer service matches the characteristics, preferences and circumstances of the customer as much as possible.

How it works

You can organize and realize personalized service in different ways and levels. The first condition is that you know who the customer is (identification). A second condition is that you can and may use additional, relevant information about the customer to tailor your services to the customer as much as possible. This information may relate to, among other things, contact history, location, purchasing behaviour, age, payment behaviour, personal preferences regarding, for example, contact channels, family composition – this is information that is usually stored in the CRM system.

Real-time customer conditions – You can take an extra step if you take into account the context of a customer contact and/or the real-time customer conditions: where it is located and/or in what situation. A customer with a business class ticket who is in danger of missing his flight has a different context than a customer who inquires at the bank about the possibilities of increasing a mortgage.

Respond proactively to the customer – A simple example of personalization is congratulating the customer as a company when he/she calls on his/her birthday; an example of a more complex implementation is offering extra support specifically at the beginning of the customer journey – the latter is something Coöperatie VGZ does with a special team that focuses on customers during the first 10 months. Another complex variant is linking a customer to a 'permanent' employee.

Active involvement of additional information – You can actively request part of the additional information required, for example with open-ended speech recognition or speech routing. Other data can be retrieved in real time from internal sources or through real-time sentiment analysis (how does the customer feel), IoT applications, video calls or augmented reality.

Use of predictive power and agent assist – AI can also be of added value here, for example by offering relevant conversation suggestions (which, based on data, exactly match the customer) to the employee. AI can also look beyond the customer itself. The profiles, interactions and history of other (possibly comparable) customers can also be included, for example by having AI make an assessment of how this customer can best be treated. Consider, for example, the situation in which AI estimates the risk of a customer calling to cancel a subscription, based on comparable customer profiles, and whether or not it is proactively routed to a retention team based on this assessment.

In addition to customer data, more and more information sources and signals are becoming available in the digital world that you can use as a customer service organization: think of location or consumption data, the way in which software is used, navigation within an app or a click on a web page that intent of a customer request can be better understood.

Why is it relevant

Personalized service is the next big thing in customer experience. Companies are often accused of not knowing their customers well or not taking into account what is important to the customer – in general, or at a specific moment. As a company you can show your added value by to offer service that really suits the customer and the moment that the customer needs that service or by surprising the customer. Much of this can be achieved by giving employees sufficient authority so that they can take the time to ask questions and then have the space to offer a tailor-made solution. You can also help the employee by offering Next Best Action or proactively offering information about local faults in the customer's residential area.

Just pay attention

1. Privacy awareness and privacy legislation. What applies to AI also applies to personalizing customer service and customer contact. The moment you use information that the customer does not know you have, risks arise: how did you get this information about me? Applications of AI must be honest, transparent (explainable), empathetic and reliable, and that also applies to (hyper) personalization. A good tip is to ask yourself for every possible action step whether you actually want to perform the action.

2. Data quality and availability. "The yesterday's database is not good enough,” said Rob Walker of CRM company Pega. You can use the very latest or most essential information in a response or dialogue. You must ensure that the sources you use are up to date. Customers and their circumstances are constantly changing.

3. The biggest challenge after the data issue is determination of the right actions. In order for personalized services to be as successful as possible, in many cases you will have to ask additional questions based on genuine interest. A better understanding of the customer's situation arises if you adopt an empathic attitude: put yourself in the customer's shoes. It also helps if employees have the space to realize creative solutions. (Hyper) personalization only comes into its own if you also make it human work.

4. Hyper-personalization in customer contact also means that you give the customer control where that meets the needs. However, self-service is rarely a matter of customization: all customers have the same options. Personalized customer contact implies that you should take a closer look at your self-service offer.

5. Personas are a step in the right direction, but ask yourself to what extent you fit into the straitjacket of a persona. Whoever helps his customer according to the pattern of a persona, must realize that a persona is a highly simplified version of reality and is not exactly in line with genuine interest and empathy. In addition, personas – just like customer journey maps – have a limited shelf life. The chance that you miss the mark with a persona is therefore quite high. When applying personas, you will also still have to come up with solutions for customers who cannot be grouped under a persona.

(Ziptone editors)

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