26 Tips to Personalise Customer Experience Related Articles 21 Great Ways to Personalise Your Customer Interactions Using Personality Profiles to Personalise Customer Interactions How to Personalise Customer Interactions Definition: Contact Centre Jargon and Terminologies 18,757 Filed under - Hints and Tips, CX, Personalization Looking for some quick ideas to personalise customer experience? Here are 26 quick-fire tips that have been submitted by our readers. 1. Make transactions different My Nationwide ATM recently asked me if I wanted my usual £50 or £100. There was no other choice. I thought that was great personalisation. Thanks to Dave 2. Look at potential value Personalisation shouldn’t just be based on a customer’s current value but should also take potential value into account. 3. Refer to earlier contacts Personalising can be created by referring to an earlier contact from the customer. For example: you called last week about not having internet. Is this problem now solved? Thanks to Miranda 4. Make customer experience into a regular process Follow this process for improving customer experience Define your vision for customer experience Ask your customers what they want/good and bad bits of current approach Identify relevant channels Know where your customer wants to be heard Ensure that replies are in context Reuse “new” answers to benefit all relevant parts of customer base 5. Become technology agnostic Be technology agnostic and “ignore” the current process. Instead you should focus on what you’d want to do if you could start from scratch. Thanks to Scott 6. Random acts of kindness Empower staff to use random acts of kindness. For example – resolving an enquiry using information gathered to find an incentive personal to that customer. You could send a story book for a customer’s family whose present was delivered late. Just giving presents as an apology in place of a regular gift voucher can work well. Thanks to Sandra 7. Ask your customers for suggestions Ask your customers for feedback and get suggestions for further improvement after you have served them. I guess that’s a good example of personalisation. Thanks to Rahul 8. Invest in your staff Invest in your staff. The staff have to believe in the product/brand and care for the customer, if you want customer service to be at the top level. 9. Share the ideas of front-line teams Really engage the front-line teams to share their ideas. They are the ones taking the calls and talking to our customers. They have ideas on how to engage the customer with a personalised experience. Thanks to Sarah 10. Regular mystery shopping We regularly do mystery shops within our contact centre to ensure that we experience the customer journey. Thanks to Kim 11. Recognise what your customers want You need to make sure that the customers feel that they are unique, by listening and recognising what they want. Thanks to Annemiek 12. Personalised greetings Unique greetings – using dynamic routing we are able to answer the calls by saying “Good morning ‘Name’ how can I help you?” This is proving that our data is up to speed. It’s incredibly effective. Thanks to Richard 13. Use the IVR to identify the customer Use IVR options to identify the customer and not to direct the call to a generic area. Doing so allows the agent receiving the call to have the system bring up relevant customer information at the onset of the call and provides a more direct, personal feel – beginning with greeting the customer using their name. Thanks to Third 14. Try handwritten cards We sell costumes, so our customers generally are attending events that they are excited about. When they mention an event they are planning to attend, our representatives will pass along handwritten cards wishing them a happy birthday, a good time at the 70’s party, and so on, which is then sent along with their package. Thanks to Tyler 15. Train advisors on understanding customer emotions We have training for employees about understanding customers’ emotions and how to handle them. It is important that the employee feels committed to solving the problem and so it helps the customer in the best way. Thanks to Miranda 16. Create a Customer Advocate Team We have recently created a Customer Advocate Team (CAT) to call customers back and have established a Customer Satisfaction Team to deal with outstanding customer issues head-on. Thanks to Raquel 17. Have a HOT alert team We have a HOT alert team that contacts the customers immediately if there is any negative feedback from CSI comments. Thanks to Lorraine 18. Keep IVR to a minimum Decrease IVR to a absolute minimum and let the agent do all the personalisation, without a script. We are minimising the IVR to 2 options or fewer. Often customers experience an IVR as obstructive and annoying. Therefore reduce the IVR to a minimum. Thanks to Hjalte 19. Remove the IVR My company has never had IVR and our customers have always said how much better it is without it. Thanks to Vicky 20. Work on the advisors Some advisors don’t like to receive a personal service, so struggle to see the buy-in of giving that personal service to our customers. Thanks to Lisa 21. Make sure you don’t penalise agents with higher AHT One thing to watch out for is that employees think their AHT gets higher when they are personalising. Thanks to Miranda 22. Nice and slowly does it We prefer being slower and delivering a better customer experience to speeding up service. Our channel strategy is designed in such a way that for difficult questions we prefer customers to call – although this could lead to a long call. We are taking the slower approach, as we believe it is vital for a customer to know the product is right for them and they are getting what they need. This in turn helps first call resolution. Thanks to Hjalte 23. Mix customer experience with the employee experience Our strategy is to mix customer experience with the employee experience. If the ambience or work atmosphere is not an experience itself, agents will have a low intent to deliver an experience to another. Therefore increase the employee experience and they will be more willing to deliver the wow experience to customers. Another good opportunity to increase customer experience is to start using software that removes specific tasks from agents. In this manner the agent will have more time to really listen to the customer. Thanks to Hjalte 24. Throw away the scripts We have created a training programme that focuses on interacting with our customers, adapting to our customers and enabling our staff to tailor the call to the customer. This moves it all away from the traditional scripted calls. Thanks to Francesca 25. Remember your own best experiences Ask your team to remember their own best experiences as customers – when was I wowed or decided to come back as a customer due to excellent or consistent service & experience. Your customers are likely to be just like yourself, so treat them as you want to be treated – through personal, engaged service. Thanks to Malou 26. Create a customer-focused vision statement We have created a vision statement focused on the customer which the front-line staff work towards and will be measured against as an end-of-year goal. Thanks to Sarah For more ideas for personalising customer experience, read our article: 6 Ideas for a Great Personalized Customer Experience Author: Jo Robinson Published On: 20th Mar 2013 - Last modified: 17th Jul 2020 Read more about - Hints and Tips, CX, Personalization Recommended Articles 21 Great Ways to Personalise Your Customer Interactions Using Personality Profiles to Personalise Customer Interactions How to Personalise Customer Interactions Contact Centre Jargon and Terminologies Related Reports eBook: Five Trendsetters in CX Innovation White Paper: How to Drive Business Improvements with Customer Insights Report: Customer Experience Horizons eBook: How Customers Can Lead Your Business Transformation in 2024 3 Comments 21. Make sure you don’t penalise agents with higher AHT – Depending on nature of the account a justifiable AHT should still be maintained whether outbound or inbound (specially inbound). EJ San Juan 21 Mar at 07:19 Make the customer feel like you are working together to resolve the issue or concern. By using “we” and “let’s”. Michelle 9 May at 13:48 I work in finance and people are often moving money for life events or experiencing life events. If someone mentions she is borrowing for her daughter’s tuition, congratulation her on her collegiate. If someone needs funds due to a hardship, wish them well and show genuine empathy. It could be us one day. Chrystine Collins-Blums 15 Aug at 08:01 Contact Centre Reports, Surveys and White Papers Get the latest exciting call centre reports, specialist whitepapers and interesting case-studies. Choose the content that you want to receive. Contact Centre Reports, Surveys and White Papers Invites to exclusive Webinars & Events Weekly Newsletter