Giving customers what they want, when they want it, and how they want it is a fundamental principle of great customer service.
Finding ways of doing that has long been a source of ‘competitive advantage’ for many small and ‘local’ businesses over the years. They provide individual care for the customer and ‘personalise’ the experience to their needs and circumstances,. The result is that personalisation works, and more and more businesses are looking for ways of doing it.
Rather than rely on the ‘people’ side of it, we are seeing businesses embrace imagination and technology to do this, and here’s a great example from Panasonic. Their latest Viera TV has My Home Screen which puts all the things you love on your television – your favourite channels, websites, games and videos – in one place!
That’s convenient, but the best bit is that through voice control and face recognition technology, it knows it’s you and automatically loads your favourites! That means each member of your family has their own ‘preset’, personalised favourites on view at the touch of a button!
Here’s a short video showing you how it does it:
This is a great example of ‘Mass Personalisation’ – allowing individual customers to get what they want, when they want and how they want it.
We’re seeing lots and lots of examples of this… many of which are becoming a way of life.
For example …
Sky+ and BBC iPlayer (other systems are available)…. so you can watch your favourite programmes when you want and where you want.
iTunes where you can download the individual tracks you want rather than the whole album if you prefer.
The Times Online…. read your own newspaper (and do the Soduko!) without even getting out of bed!
TuneIn Radio…. listen to your local radio station wherever you are in the world
Udemy… undertake online training at a pace that suits you when you want and where you want on your iPad (Andy Hanselman Consulting online training programmes coming soon!)
‘Mass Personalisation’ is a brilliant way of being ‘Dramatically and Demonstrably Different‘ . By tailoring your ‘offer’ specifically to individual customers, whether it’s online or offline, it does a number of things:
It….
- Gives individual customers exactly what they want!
- Demonstrates to them that they come first!
- Makes it difficult for competitors to ‘get in’ if you’ve got that ‘recipe’ right!
The result is ‘delighted’ and ‘devoted’ customers who have raised expectations that others have to try and match (at least) just to get in there.
So, what can you do about this? For ‘personalisation’, think systems, think technology, think people! It could be either or all of these – Your challenge is to work out what works best for you and, more importantly, your customers!
