A great CX relies on a great EX

Great customer experiences are more than just having relevant content and addressing pain points. It's about anticipating needs and making customers feel valued and understood. "Personalisation is not just about knowing your customers," as CX leader Chris Goede puts it. "It's about making them feel like you know them."

While organizations understand the importance of personalisation, many struggle with its execution. In a survey of 1,000 US consumers, 72% of respondents rated personalisation as "highly important." In another survey, 7% of banks reported that they personalise customer experiences across all delivery channels. [1]

Personalisation starts with knowing who your customer is, and one way to do this is with personas. Personas can help drive personalisation. Creating a website without defined personas is like writing a love letter and addressing it "To whom it may concern."

Once you start mapping out a persona's journey, creating micro-journeys allows for a greater degree of personalisation. Micro journeys allow us to serve up relevant content as users interact with the product. Built properly, the personalisation journey gets smarter over time. Seth Godin, author and marketing guru, says that the only sustainable competitive advantage is learning faster than your competitors.

In his book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion," Robert Cialdini identifies six principles of influence. One of these principles is social proof. Cialdini explains that people are influenced by the behaviour of others and have a tendency to conform to the actions of their friends, family or tribe. Personalisation helps us identify what tribe or social groups a customer may be part of, or aspire to be part of. Designs that focus on users' goals are more loved because they enable us to accomplish more and fit into our lives and identities.

Understanding the social or emotional job to be done adds another dimension to personalisation and further enhances the experience.

Like a lot of things in life, there can be “Too much of a good thing”. Personalisation, when used too much, can have an opposite effect. This phenomenon has been termed the "creepiness-convenience tradeoff." This refers to the risk of crossing boundaries and making users uncomfortable. Factors that can contribute to perceptions of creepiness are volume of personal data collected, perceived purpose of the personalisation, and the level of transparency and control offered. To ensure personalisation doesn’t stray into creepy territory, we need to be aware of these factors and monitor user comfort levels so we can maintain user trust and satisfaction.

As always, the best way to monitor these factors of personalisation is to talk to your customers.

Another factor to be aware of is how much employee experience can affect customer experience. Historically, organisations have prioritised customer experience over employee experience. However, unhappy employees aren’t going to create happy customers. A significant factor in employee experience is the usability of the technology employees must use. Often it can make an employee’s job harder than it needs to be. With outdated tech, employees will struggle to keep up with the pace and meet expectations.

Tiffani Bova, an employee experience evangelist, researched the perception of employee experience versus the reality. She found that only 32% of employees believed that their corporate technology is working effectively. Interestingly, the C-Suite executives polled perceived the effectiveness to be much higher, at 52%. This shows the disconnect that the C-Suite can have from the reality of the employees they manage. This disconnect emphasises the need for organisations to bridge the gap and prioritise employee experience, ensuring that technology empowers employees rather than hinder their productivity.

A great customer experience doesn't rely on just one thing. By carefully balancing personalisation, respect for users' boundaries, and prioritisation of employee experience, we can drive long-term success in the challenging landscapes in which we find ourselves.

Sources:
1. Digital Experience Management. E-Book. CI&T and Acquia
2. The Experience Advantage - Transforming Customer and Employee Experience for the Future of Work

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