Excellent customer service is important to offer an excellent customer experience. Imagine if your company provides personalized customer service. The result? It will make your customers feel valued as you and your team value enough to learn about them.
One of the important aspects of personalization is the capability to execute data-driven, real-time customer marketing. In short, marketers who can provide highly relevant messages to customers at the right time of right relevance will excite those customers, produce more loyalty, and produce more indirect and direct revenue.
You might have noticed it, but batch campaigns are one of the commonly used retention marketing. a marketer will pick a list of customers to get a specific campaign and send it to everyone in just one shot.
Those types of campaigns are highly relevant, particularly if the message is matched to the customers getting it. However, realize how significant it would be to present a message instantly after a specific customer action, a set of scenarios or actions.
Conventional brands and retailers have been implementing a basic model of real-time marketing for many years through in-store marketing. For instance, a huge sign saying, “Buy one item, get the second at 50% OFF” every time a customer enters the department store.
There’s a good possibility that such a message will motivate the shopper to purchase two products rather than one as he or she is already in that department.
You see, in the digital world we are living today, that offer or message could be personalized to individual shoppers based on their:
- risk of churn
- predicted future value
- customer lifecycle stage
- campaign response history
- specific purchase history
You might be thinking how you can do that. We are referring to specific triggers, which could result in highly personalized messaging instead of using static signs in a store.
For instance, a high roller on a gaming website recently had a massive loss. Retention marketers at that gaming site understand that a substantial number of similar players suffering the same loss will churn. The marketers can serve a real-time, personalized message, informing the player that the site is refunding them a fraction of their loss. The player then continues to play repeatedly after they are pleased and relieved.
You see, that’s where the future of customer marketing is going, and it’s here now! A few years ago, accomplishing that level of real-time personalization was complicated and challenging. However, the recent advancements make this upfront. Who knows? Maybe customer-focused businesses will utilize real-time personalized customer messaging within one to two years. If not, their competition will surely beat them.
Introducing Real-Time Personalized Messaging: What You Should Know
In this section, we will highlight the benefits and differences of real-time, triggered-based marketing compared to standard “batch” customer marketing.
Batch Marketing
This type of marketing is composed of a mix of time, channel, message, and customer. For instance, a retailer of sporting goods starts a campaign that is intended for skiing aficionados (customer). They offer a 10% OFF the line of Icelantic skis (the message), delivered them through SMS and email (the channels), on Friday at 1 PM (the time). These messages are usually sent through a bulk messaging platform.
Real-Time Personalized Messaging
On the other hand, this marketing follows the basic formula. The only difference is that it changes time with a real-time trigger. Let’s consider the gaming example we mentioned earlier.
The real-time trigger was the massive loss the site experienced. In the good sporting example, the trigger could be the recurrence on the site of a mixed shopper who had bought ski devices and tools recently.
Below are some of the good examples of real-time triggers that will help you better understand this concept:
the account balance of a long-time high roller who’s not anticipated to roil only fell under 100 USD
- a new player invited four friends to play game
- a player lost a specific game three times in a row
- a shopper consumed over 75 USD in a specific product category for the very first time
- a shopper viewed four items in smartphone accessories but didn’t add anything to the cart
- a VIP client visited a site for the first time in over four months
- a shopper visits the electronics department
You might still not realize it, but the capability of a personalized, real-time messaging is substantial and massive. The customer is already in the store. Hence, the marketer has a good idea of what the shopper wishes at the exact time. That’s better rather than concentrating on marketing efforts to get the customer into the store.
Indeed, that degree of personalization needs a forcefully data-driven approach. That will enable every customer to get the most appealing and relevant offer possible.
Importance of Personalization in Customer Service
Personalization in customer service is the journey to building confidence and trust with customers that, in turn, results from repeating brand advocacy, loyalty, and business from them.
Encompass bespoke messages and content for customers
It becomes complicated for customers to pick with so many options and an overpowering volume of information accessible to them today. The lucid and precise content and messages hit home better with customers to cut through the confusion.
Those messages also guarantee that information relays to customers and are readily accessible. Usefulness, reliability, and speed are three major factors for customers when selecting who they remain associated with and for how long.
Personalized customer service enables companies to highlight their expertise about the preferences of the customer, their recent buying actions, history, as well as their relationships with the competitors of the company.
In turn, customers respond by sharing details about them willingly. That tells an organization that a customer feels connected and engaged with it and would be satisfied to contribute to its overall success.
Shows your company care about customers
Remember that customers always take notes when they walk through the door and get personalized service. Seventy percent of customers think that customer service is an indication of how a business appreciates them.
It sets a standard of value that your customers come to expect and appreciate by providing personalized service continuously.
It sets the company apart
These days, shoppers have a plethora of options. Personalized service could set the business apart from the crowd. Keep in mind that your competitors might be larger than you or provide slightly better prices than you. You cannot control such factors. However, there are things you can do.
You can organize the type of services you provide. A superior level of customer service for most customers is enough to influence their decision to buy with you over the business.
Fifty-five percent of customers are eager to pay more for an item if they got better customer service after and during a purchase. Knowing the importance of a personalized service is necessary, but so is offering it.
It contributes to your company’s bottom line
You cannot undervalue the importance of customer service. Did you know that sixty-six percent of consumers think customer service is the major spending motivator? It also proves that businesses prioritizing customer experience produce sixty percent higher revenues compared to their competition.
It supports the constant improvement
Keeping a record of the shopping histories of customers and then executing an innovative analytical strategy according to that data allows you to lay the foundation for constant improvement for your bigger customer experience offers. That’s especially true if you take the needed steps to provide personalized customer service.
Monitoring customer data, then assessing it to explore necessary preferences and patterns, not simply boosts every engagement with every customer. It also supports agents to engage more efficiently. The outcome is more conversions and an improved shot at sustainable growth. You will build up even more data to enhance that messaging more with every passing year, quarter, or even month.
Different Customer Services Channels to Utilize
Did you know that your customer service channels are a critical aspect of a business? They’re the cross-section at the business, and prospective customers meet in a 2-way communication. Further, it’s where customers and prospects come to ask questions, seek advice, and to complain.
Each of those opportunities motivates specific actions while creating an impression, which will get them to go back in the long run.
Remember as well that your real-time customer service channels will be personalized to some level. After all, they will respond to the requirements of an individual customer. Nonetheless, they can and must go one step ahead by utilizing the information accessible on the behavior and preferences of that consumer to help and expect their requirements.
Below are the essential customer service channels you can utilize:
Messaging Services or Apps
A new and emerging type of customer communication that brands can use is consumer-specific messaging including WhatsApp, Kik, and Facebook Messenger. Retail companies trying to use this can be perceived as a mirror of the raised and growing use of mobile in the retail journey.
Representatives of the company could staff those. However, they are also using chatbots. These are technologies operated by AI to fully automate customer interactions. That might feel at chances with the personal nature of customer service. However, the study has proven that forty percent of worldwide consumers like self-service over human contact for their engagements with organizations.
On-Site Chat
Throughout the years, live chat has become a typical feature of a most personalized ecommerce store. It enables users to keep their communications onsite. Hence, it does not obstruct their user journey. Did you know that sixty-three percent of online shoppers said they tend to go back to a personalized site offering this kind of feature?
Similarly, the issue is that most organizations utilize that chance to be responsive instead of taking the time to customize the service.
Here are common ways to use this customer service channel:
Retrieve key customer details through CRM data
CRM data is the most typical way of personalization used to accomplish basic levels of customer service. Often, companies utilize the name of the shopper to access their core information, like an address. It might appear like trivial information, but it’s often the trivial details, which make up a satisfied bigger picture. That will motivate customers to go back.
Provide bespoke product suggestions relevant to the items they have recently purchased or browsed
Doing this strategy allows you to provide a more enjoyable and customized experience that will naturally boost the possibilities of their return. That could be accomplished through CRM as well by locating the relevant data and respond properly.
Do you like to remove the guesswork out of the procedure? Then it can be performed with personalization software that will assess the data and automate the suggestions.
Use order/support history to handle any inquiries or concerns
This strategy involves seeking details like the item they purchased, the state of the order, or any issues the customer has reported regarding their purchase. The process becomes simpler, more satisfying, and smoother for the shopper by using that data to pre-empt their requirements.
They don’t need to spend insignificant amounts of time discussing their problem. That’s especially true if they need to talk to numerous customer service representatives.
Telephone
Apart from the two mentioned earlier, the telephone is one of the most conventional and outdated ways of engaging with customers. However, sixty-one percent of shoppers still wish to have the option to call the company through telephone even though other mods are prosperous.
A telephone is a customer service channel that allows one-to-one real-time conversation. It can lend itself to personalized engagements. Nevertheless, most organizations do not top into its potential. As an alternative, they concentrate on key metrics like the volume of calls and the concerns resolved.
That could be fixed by ensuring the call representatives have access to call center notes, surveys, customer reviews, and email logs, among others. That will offer them relevant insight into their preferences and requirements, letting them customize the interaction consequently.
The Challenge with Real-Time Marketing
Keep in mind that accomplishing this level of data-driven personalized marketing needs different aspects.
Customer Selection
It involves the active selection of customers to be qualified for a real-time campaign, according to high-resolution, behavior-based micro-segmentation.
Trigger Detection
Take note that real-time gathering of data is about relevant customer activity. It occurs together with an analysis engine to measure when the trigger takes place.
Channel and Message
It is the incentive or offer together with the mechanism to serve—for instance, mobile push notification, in-game message, or website pop-up.
Optimization and Campaign Evaluation
It is the system to measure the real monetary uplift of every customer-trigger-message-channel combination. Bear in mind that it needs the use of control and test groups so the real uplift of the real-time campaign could be precisely assessed and optimized for upcoming campaigns.
Bottom Line
As you can see, the advantages of providing personalized services are massive, and so are the impacts of overlooking this necessary trend. Personalized customer services help your company stand out. You and your team can provide the type of service that customers value and respond to by using the insights and methods mentioned in this post.
How do you provide personalized services? What efforts do you make to provide personalized care? Share your insights with us by leaving your comments below!
