There are so many statistics on how to get closer to your customers. Every day your Inbox has something about a new study proving the power of this or that so your customers will feel the love.
So many studies focus on the power of personalization.
The reason personalization is the “flavour of the month” is simple: many companies have gone digital and are proving that “personalization is the single most important capability for future communications efforts”.
It truly does lead to stronger engagement, more sales, and higher customer satisfaction. In fact a Forbes study says consumers are 4x more inclined to purchase from a company if it offers a personalized experience.
Personalization lands these kind of results because it’s not about tricks or shady tactics — it’s about getting back to the basics by being timely, valuable, and most of all…personal.
I'm going to take a guess that you don't need more statistical evidence. What I am going to do is highlight an aspect of personalization that will make your customers happy and earn you some genuine praise. It's a very specific use-case or business process that virtually every company on the planet is guilty of getting totally wrong. And it's a big contributor to higher rates of churn and non-renewals.
Now at this point you could jump ahead and find out what I'm going to recommend is one of the most powerful forms of personalization. The background to my proposition however is also worth understanding.
The premise as to why I feel it's incredibly valuable is based on the very simple fact that you should never make your customer do work unnecessarily. OK, I know that at the start of the business relationship there is some work for the customer, like the usual personal information, maybe even detailed stuff like assets/liabilities lists etc.
My rule is: You should absolutely NEVER ask your customer to work any harder than necessary.
That's a great mantra to issue company-wide.
So, cutting to the chase - the thing that we are all guilty of is asking a customer to provide information on a form that we already hold. It's a classic mistake and one that, almost more than any other thing, infuriates your customer. Think about whether you do this and I'll be amazed if you say, "never".
It's probably more prevalent in industries like Financial Services and Government, particularly when an existing customer applies for a new product.
Simple fact is you hold all kinds of data on your customer because you captured it when they signed up. Now there's a new product being purchased or contracted and you send the standard new-customer form - you know the one that assumes they are completely new and asks the customer to re-enter at least 80% of the information you already hold. It's just plain bone laziness on your part. When you do take the lazy approach, you hand your customer a reason to "Defer" rather than "Decide" to buy.
My proposal is to never, ever ask your customer to do more work than they have to. On this new product form your going to email, go ahead and pre-fill what you know and ONLY ask for the new data you don't hold but that you now need to approve the new purchase or contract.
Believe me, your customers will love you for it.
Make it a company policy and find the technology to make it a reality, then watch your NPS, Customer-Sat and revenue numbers rise.
Happy personalizing.
About the Author:
Greg Twemlow is a Sydney-based Social Enterprise Founder | Startup Mentor | CEO | Writer | Speaker | Founder of Creativitee | Host of https://medium.com/consilio