In the article I wrote to kick off this series called ‘The Seven Deadly Sins of Customer Motivation’ I reviewed several major pitfalls that often plague companies with their data management capabilities. This typically results in hindering the ability to understand and ultimately motivate their customers, which can deteriorate loyalty and hurt the bottom line. This piece looks in-depth at the sin of impersonalisation.
Perhaps the ‘holy grail’ for most brands is achieving the marketing buzzword ‘evangelism.’ Evangelism, in the business sense, is evolving the casual customer into a loyal fanatic of a product or brand so they preach its benefits and entice others to try it. The conversion of an evangelist is largely accomplished by delivering exceptional experiences and fantastic engagements which increasingly elevates customer loyalty. However, very few brands achieve this level of customer motivation consistently. This is largely because many brands commit some level of one of the following Seven Deadly Sins of Customer Motivation.
1. Intimidation – Allowing the sheer complexity of data to hinder the organization
2. Ignorance – The lack of visibility of all the internal and external datasets
3. Fragmentation – A failure to bring these dispersed datasets together
4. Assumption – Ignoring the precise insight of the data in lieu of assumptions
5. Improvisation – Developing ‘wing it’ strategies that boil down to ‘one-size-fits-all’
6. Impersonalisation – The failure to deliver tailored experiences and engagements
7. Procrastination – Delaying these steps to understand and motivate the customer
These ‘sins’ are further exacerbated by the ‘Age of COVID.’ This has increased the complexity of customer decisions, behaviours, engagements and preferences. Therefore, avoiding these ‘sins’ is more critical to gaining holistic customer understanding to engage and motivate them, while focusing on evolving their loyalty into evangelism. With a sound plan, strong partner and proven platform, businesses can incorporate intelligence solutions that help them connect with customers and increase revenue.
Let’s take a closer look at the sin of impersonalisation and how it hinders championing customers.
The sin of impersonalisation
According to Gladly’s 2020 Customer Expectations Report, 84% of consumers say they spend more with brands that provide personalised customer service and 77% say they’re more likely to recommend a brand to friends and family if personalised experiences are provided. Consumers know that they leave an array of digital footprints with their engagements and activities with a brand. From searches and clicks, to reviews and surveys, to purchases and downloads, individuals know they’re providing the average company a wealth of information about their interactions and interests.
As such, these consumers believe that providing this information should be leveraged into intelligence to deliver them personalised engagements and tailored experiences. The failure to give customer’s unique experiences and engagements based on their actions and behaviours is the basis for the impersonalisation sin.
Consumers generally value personalisation from brands since as it conveys that they have greater importance to the company whilst delivering an enhanced overall experience. So, avoiding the impersonalisation sin is critical to brands, and makes embracing data-driven customer understanding even more important.
Changes, speed and complexity in the market today mean it can become very easy for brands to get lost in trying to keep pace with the constant evolution. This can often result in a ‘one-size-fits-all’ experience, where the brand delivers the same experience to every customer no matter who they are, how they interact, what they prefer and when they engage.
The organisations that fall into this sin often bypass the evidence-based insight of data-driven intelligence. This impersonalisation often results in the sin of intimidation where reigning in the data simply seems too daunting of a task. Unfortunately, delivering impersonal interactions leads to uninspired experiences. These then erode affinity for the brand, causing loyalty to all but evaporate.
Today, particularly in the ‘Age of COVID,’ the customer’s evolution is occurring at an exponential rate impacting their attitudes, behaviours, interactions and preferences, so cultivating affinity and loyalty based on impersonalisation is practically impossible. This evolving customer complexity demands data-driven intelligence to guide business’s understanding and interactions to develop strong customer connections to effectively motivate them.
As Lexi Airey, CEO of Gateway Bank – Australia explains:
“We are a small bank, and often our segmentation of data quite literally ends up with a segment of one. Often personalisation refers to appropriate next best offers sent by email, but we often use our data to find out where we can offer the human touch and helping hand. For example, identifying customers most likely to be affected by the recent bushfires and drought. Often (pre-COVID) people don’t want to tell their bank they are struggling so we contacted them to say we are here for them and they shouldn’t be afraid to reach out.”
In other words, while there can be ease in impersonalisation it can also be dangerous if the brand isn’t effectively listening to and understanding the customer. Data intelligence provides valuable insight that validates expectations to effectively advise decisions and guide strategies and ultimately, deliver engagements tailored to the customer to effectively motivate them.
Absolving the sin of impersonalisation
The key to absolving the sin of impersonalisation is customer-centricity, that’s a focus on the customer that drives a desire across the organisation to create a connection. This connection through personalisation in aligning dimensions like communications, recommendations and offers elevates the interactions of the customer and brand. Furthermore, it conveys an attention to detail that the company has for the individual, and hence an elevated importance.
According to Euan Sutherland, Group CEO of Saga plc:
“The backbone of Saga’s relationships with our customers is built on personalisation. This is becoming increasingly critical for every business in order to foster relationships, cultivate loyalty and even develop evangelism. The ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach doesn’t work with today’s sophisticated consumers and complex markets. And to devise a personalized approach to engagements and experiences relies on data and intelligence so that you know what the customer wants and expects.”
Eliminating the sin of impersonalisation also ends the need for the sin of intimidation. Advising one’s decisions, strategy and innovation with a foundation of evidence delivers a methodical, pragmatic approach to delivering engagements and designing experiences that align with the needs of the customer in order to elevate their affinity and build their loyalty, putting them on a path towards evangelism for your brand.
As Mark Langsfeld, CEO of mTab explains:
“It really comes down to delivering not just on what the customer wants, but what they expect. Consumers are savvy and they are willing to become loyal if a brand understands what they want through the intelligence they provide. Technology and data are playing a growing role in this, so the companies that focus on delivering intelligent experiences and data-driven interactions are the ones that are cultivating loyalty and creating evangelists.”
The bottom line is that committing to understanding the customer helps the brand make a giant leap towards it becoming customer-centric. Taking an approach that relies on rudimentary engagements and ineffective impersonalisation basically resigns the company to a position where it appears that it doesn’t care about customer experience. Those companies that understand and embrace the ever-changing complexity of customers in how they engage and what they want and commit to understanding it through intelligent data-driven evidence are the ones that gain success by aligning their strategies, engagements and innovation with the customer to deliver them exceptional experiences.
For other articles in this series please click here (ed.)
