Using personalized customer-experience to improve customer retention is a trend for successful businesses today. In this digital age of fast-paced delivery and competitive stakes for reaching prospects, customer retention is hinged on two factors: personalized customer-experience and premium product/service delivery. Both are prerequisite for scaling the stiff competition that is prevalent in today’s digital world.
A 2016 Adobe and eConsultancy report revealed that customer-experience based on targeting and personalization ranked highest in the area of focus for organizations in 2016. This shows that a bespoke customer-experience is important to the success of businesses. This helps with your business’ customer retention practices.
Why is Customer Retention important?
The need to provide a personalized service delivery is further emphasized by the transference of decision-making power from the organization to the customers. This fostered the need for audience analysis in business. The take-over of mobile devices in the digital world of business ushered in a new age of smart customers. Thus, the prevalence of digital trends made the consumer king. It is no longer business as usual; the consumer now determines what sells, how and where organizations interact with them and finally determine the trends of the business market.
Given this reshuffling of producer/consumer relation; the empowered consumer’s demand for product/service satisfaction has skyrocketed. The continued relevance of businesses in the market is now hinged on meeting those demands. Below, I will share some essential contributing factors for customer-experience and quality product/service delivery.
Surge in Mobile Device Use and Customer Retention
With the rise of mobile devices, customer-experience with products and services has changed drastically. More ‘me time’ is being spent on the mobile than any other device in the digital world. This necessitated a pool of smart customers who do everything from search for information to consummating trade via mobiles devices. This customer sentiment characterizes the modern day business relation. Thus, it is no longer effective for businesses to target customers using the tradition ‘one shot kill all’ style of mass reach. Mobile devices have created the need for businesses to come up with a new approach to personalizing the art of reaching out to prospects.
Each customer is a different strand in the pool of prospects that exist. With the increase in mobile device use, organizations can now expect to track the preferences of each individual in the bid to serve them better. A Quantcast report revealed that a third of the world’s population shop using mobile devices and on average, research purchase five times a day on the same platform. In a nutshell, to deliver premium personalized customer-experience, mobile is a hot spot.
Nihal, Founding General Partner at ENIAC ventures summed it up, “The mobile device has become our communication hub, our diary, our entertainment portal, our primary source of media consumption, our wallet and our gateway to real-time information tailored to our needs.” As a wake-up call, organizations now need to look more to mobile devices and how their prospects use them to deliver more personalized customer-experience.
Social Media
Aside from mobile devices being a great avenue for creating a personalized customer-experience, the many social media platforms serves as viable tools for building a close relationship with customers.
Social media platforms are laden with information about prospects and customers. Brimming with updates by the minutes, the social media channels forms a good reservoir of information that organizations can pull from to get more up-close and personal with prospects. Everybody loves the special feeling that comes with a bespoke service delivery. It is high time organizations tapped into this reality for more engagement at a higher level because a customer that feels specially treated will come back for more and probably tell a friend or two about that experience.
The trait that ranked second on the focus list of businesses in the eConsultancy report is premium product/service delivery. Personalized customer-experience is good, but backing it up with quality service just makes it better. So, it is imperative that businesses follow-up personalized service delivery with quality product/service.
Inculcate Premium Quality into your Company Culture
The first time that a prospect patronizes you is most likely based on their risk decision to get quality service/product from you.
You have that singular shot to make a good impression that will keep them coming for more. This can be achieved via two means: bespoke customer service/attendance and high quality product delivery.
If this culture of quality service delivery is introduced, as hinted by the eConsultancy report, you can be rest assured that your customers/clients will be seamlessly attracted and retained to you for patronage.
What is more, they will go out and put in good words for you with their friends and colleagues. Nothing beats the publicity that a satisfied customer shares with their friends. You really want to tap into this to create that loyal following for your brand.
Don’t forget that we are talking about ‘personalized’ customer experience for customer retention here. Rendering quality service is just one rung in the ladder of creating a personalized customer experience. The product / service must be delivered in such a way that the consumer gets the idea that each unit is specifically designed for them.
That is personalized customer experience, and there is no telling how much you will get your customers loyally glued to you. With the help of digital media, it is very easy to treat each customer specially. The social media is there to aggregate personal details on prospects, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) applications that round up professional details on prospects (in case of B2B marketing) that may patronize you etc.
These are some of the many ways that you can follow to deliver consistently personalized customer experience for your customer/client which will invariably get them retained for loyal patronage.
In conclusion
Using personalized customer experience for customer retention goes with the huge benefits a consciously driven personalized customer service can avail your business. Using this knowledge, you can be rest-assured that your customers/clients will keep coming back and will put out a good word or two for you with their friends and colleagues.
This is a guest post by Tobi Adono. He is a Digital Marketing Lead at Big Field Digital. Follow him on Twitter via @spectrumblaq and connect with him.
