Posted by Personalized customer service is a technique that emphasizes the treatment of customers as individuals. In an impersonal and technologically minded world like ours, personal touches that remind the customer your business cares about them are vital. This is possible thanks to customer data collection, which allows agents to tailor conversations to each unique individual.
Since each customer is different, there’s no clear-cut way to provide the best-personalized customer service. Nevertheless, in this article, we hope to give you 6 tips to help you win over your customers’ hearts and wallets.
Benefits of Personalized Customer Service
The primary benefit of personalizing your customer service is a better customer experience. But that’s not to say customers are the only ones to enjoy its benefits. If you implement it well, personalized customer service could be the determining factor that gives you an edge over your competition.
Your customers want to be treated like human beings, not numbers. So it should come as no surprise that, according to Forbes, 84% of consumers say that the customer service experience they receive is a deciding factor in making a purchase.
Here are some more benefits of personalized customer service:
- Customer Trust — Personalization builds trust between your company and your customers. Showing your customers that they can trust you boosts their relationship with your company and shows them that you care about them and their experience.
- Customer Loyalty — When a customer trusts your brand, they don’t need any other options. Trust builds loyalty, and this loyalty keeps your customers coming back.
- Increased Sales — If your customers are loyal and satisfied, they will have no problem continually buying from you. What’s more, happy customers who had positive experiences tend to share their experience with up to 11 different people. A reputation of personalized customer service and positive experiences will generate new customers.
- Better Data — The more a customer buys from you, the more you learn about them for the future. Personalization relies heavily on the efficient collection, analysis, and implementation of data.
The benefits speak for themselves. Personalized customer service is quickly becoming the norm, and for a good reason. It can push your company to the next level in terms of customer service and positive customer experiences, so you should make it a priority if you haven’t yet.
6 Tips to Provide Personalized Customer Service
1. Call customers by their name
Using a customer’s name is an easy way of personalizing any message, email, or phone call. Applications like MailChimp make this kind of personalization effortless but make a noticeable difference. By addressing your customers by name, you’re communicating that you value them as people, not just sources of revenue. The implementation of tried-and-true customer service techniques could be the difference between the success and failure of your business — so be sure to make them a part of your strategy!
2. Loyalty programs
Everyone loves discounts. Offering discounts through loyalty programs is the easiest and smartest way to keep your customers coming back.
Statistics show that customers will not only continue buying from your business because of loyalty programs, but a majority will buy even more frequently.
Additionally, it’s a nice way of saying “Thank you” to your customers for their continued purchases. Examples of loyalty programs include offering your customers a 20% discount for every 5 purchases they make.
The revenue generated will quickly pay for the discount, and the satisfaction gained will keep your customers loyal.
3. Listen to and apply feedback
People want to be heard, and customers love giving feedback. By proactively asking for it, you can show your clients you value their opinions. Plus, you never know. They might just have some good ideas and help you improve your business in the long run.
4. Leverage customer data
As we’ve already mentioned, collecting and analyzing data is a vital aspect of personalized customer service. Leveraging this data, however, is where the magic really happens. .
Something as simple as knowing your customer’s birthday can be used as the perfect opportunity to send a personalized message or even offer a small discount. Who doesn’t like being wished happy birthday!?
While generic emails can be seen as annoying and off-putting, personalized emails on average achieve six times higher conversion rates.
Leveraging data in this way is the difference between seemingly useless information and increased revenue. All data is important and lucrative!
5. Personalized website experience
Personalizing a customer’s experience when interacting with your website can provide them with the extra personal touch that makes their experience more comfortable.
Brands like Netflix, Amazon, and YouTube have long been using this technique to their advantage and have seen massive success from it.
A personalized website experience is a great tool, whether it’s complex, like showing related items based on a customer’s purchase history or just as simple as “hello” followed by their name.
This method of personalization shows the customer that regardless of the medium they use to interact with your company, they are receiving an experience hand-crafted for them only.
6. Humanize & modernize your brand
Last but certainly not least, we have the humanization and modernization of your brand. Personalizing your customer service should be focused on your customers but should also apply to your customer service agents.
Allowing agents some freedom in personalizing responses and approachability allows for them to use their discretion on the best ways to interact with certain customers.
The customer is always aware that they are talking to a representative of your company, but an agent’s responses can make them feel like the person they are talking to really understands them on a human level.
Here are additional ways you can humanize and modernize your brand:
- Names and Photos of Agents — Putting a face to the voice from the phone allows customers to see real humans who represent your brand. This increases the feelings of personal connection between your customers and your company. Your agent knows your customer, and now, your customer knows a bit about your agent too.
- Use Informal Language — Many brands today are ditching the buttoned-up ways of communicating and opting to talk in a more relatable manner instead. Using informal but appropriate language allows customer interactions to feel more relaxed. This feeling creates a more personalized and comfortable experience for most customers.
- Use Emojis — If the customer seems to be in a good mood or just happy with your customer service, emojis can be a fun way to connect with your customers. It may sound like a silly tip, but emojis are a powerful tool in 21st-century conversations and can improve personalization and conversation atmosphere.
How to deliver personalized customer service effectively
To actually reap the benefits of personalized customer service, you must make sure that you are effectively delivering your personalization efforts. Here are a few ways to make sure your personalization has the intended effect:
1. Understand your audience
If you don’t understand your audience, you will not be able to personalize in a way that speaks to them.
Once again, be sure to analyze the data you’ve compiled from your customers and use it to create a buyer’s persona that can be consistently found in your customer base.
Hyper-individualized personalization for every customer is a nice idea but is very hard to achieve in large quantities. However, you can predict your customers’ preferences by analyzing data patterns and segmenting your customer base.
Segmenting should be the first priority. From there, you can begin to personalize further based on what you know about your customers.
2. Be fully omnichannel
Being fully omnichannel means that you are fully aware of all of a customer’s interactions across your company’s various mediums.
A customer’s interaction with your website, phone, or email should be all recorded and available to any agent who communicates with them.
This way, a customer who explained an issue over email does not have to fully repeat themselves to a different agent they are speaking with over the phone.
3. Take advantage of rising tech
The use of the newest and most advanced tech available should be a high priority for your company in terms of personalization.
AI is rapidly expanding the ways in which you can connect with your customers and should be used to improve your customer service personalization.
New technology is absolutely crucial in the gathering and analysis of data, as well as in areas like personalizing website experiences.
Adopting new tech is a great way to stay ahead of your competitors as well.
4. Provide choices (but don’t overdo it)
People like having options when it comes to things like pricing plans or services.
It is important to give customers different choices when interacting with your company because their needs, and one size does not fit all.
That being said, don’t make it impossible for your customers to decide by overloading them with options. Three to four choices show flexibility, five to ten just overwhelm.
5. Respect privacy
Personalized customer service relies on data and is only possible when customers agree to share their data with you.
While customers today are more cautious about when and where their data is collected, they are still very willing to share their data when asked.
Be sure to always ask permission to use a customer’s data and to respect their decision if they say no. Violating the privacy of a customer can not only be illegal but can also have detrimental effects on the reputation of your brand.
The Bottom Line
Data and its many uses are pivotal in the personalization of customer service and can be the difference between a loyal customer and a one-time buyer. Leveraging data to provide a personalized experience for your customers should be at the top of your company’s priorities when it comes to personalization.
This article has shown that personalizing customer service is important for both you and your customers.
If you follow the tips and tricks you’ve learned here, you can start personalizing customer service for your brand in ways that everyone will notice.