The question of “How do you personalize” is equally important regardless of what industry or function you are in.
Yes, I believe it is critical that every person, every department and every organization learns how to create personalized, authentic, and friendly interactions.
We need to think about how these interactions are going to play out at different touch points and different channels in the customer experience journey.
As I have stressed repetitively, I believe that the winners of the future will be 1) those organizations that enable their front line with skills that will help them excel and 2), where leaders spend their time removing obstacles to personalize sales and service interactions.
I’m sure all of you have had experiences as a customer where the person, department or organization was the furthest thing from a personalized, authentic and friendly experience.
Here are a couple of funny anecdotes of how you can respond to these interactions:
I went into a high end kitchen store to buy a new frying pan. I walked in the store, quickly found exactly what I wanted and walked up to the cashier.
The cashier said, “Hello. Is this all for you today?”
I said, “Yep.”
She said, “That’s a great frying pan. Before I check you out can I please get your name, phone number, email and zip code?”
I said, “Why? Are you planning on staying in touch with this frying pan?”
These type of interactions are not for the benefit of the customer. These type of interactions only irritate most customers. But someone in management told the cashiers to get this information so they can market to their customers more effectively
This interaction could have been highly personalized, authentic and friendly in the same amount of time!
P.S
If you ever want to have a chuckle, here’s another way you can have fun with the new virtual world we all live in.
Regardless of your preferred online shopping network, whether it be HSN or QVC, try this interaction on them and see what type of response you get.
For fun, call the 800 number and when the friendly operator asks, “Hi. Which item would you like to order?”
Just say, “Oh, no thank you. I was just browsing!”
See what type of response you get.
Republished with author’s permission from original post.
