The Personalization Mandate - Why (And How) Can Enterprises Exceed Customer Expectations? 

A successful enterprise understands the value of making customers feel special. 

Customers expect enterprises to understand their preferences and deliver tailored experiences. In fact, research shows that  66%  of customers expect enterprises to understand their unique needs, and 52% of them expect personalized offers.  

And it's not just the customers who benefit from personalization. 

Personalized experiences help enterprises in other areas too. Take the example of customer service teams.  33%  of customers feel frustrated when they have to wait on hold or have to repeat the problem to multiple representatives. Personalization aids the customer service team in serving the customers better. They can refer to customers' past purchases, complaints, etc., and address their concerns effectively. Efficient and consistent customer service could also help retain customers and improve brand loyalty. 

Similarly, marketing teams can send personalized messages to customers, improve conversions, generate leads, and increase customer engagement and retention. Sales teams can use personalization to improve their pitches, follow-up calls, and emails and turn unknown visitors into leads. Personalized communication with prospects humanizes the sales pitch and increases the chances of closing deals faster. 

There's no doubt that personalization can significantly influence the business and bring more profits. However, enterprises must overcome a few challenges to make personalization more effective.  

This article will cover those challenges and discuss ways to build a customer-centric brand in 2023. 

Personalization Challenges That Enterprises Face and How to Overcome Them? 

1. Inability to Make Sense of Data 

Challenge: The global data volume is exponentially increasing each year. Research shows that the world will generate up to  175 Zettabytes  of data by 2025. While data is available to enterprises easily, its sheer volume overwhelms them. Making sense of that data becomes challenging. Additionally, not all data is accurate or available in an intelligible form. It has to be cleansed and standardized to make it usable. All these challenges create a roadblock for enterprises to provide a personalized experience to customers. They do not have accurate and in-depth information about the customer, which is necessary for personalization.  

Solution: Too much data or poor-quality data could prove detrimental to personalization initiatives. Automation tools can standardize the data and eliminate duplicate or incomplete records and information. Enterprises must also invest in tools that can unify the customer's data from various sources and provide a 360-degree view. It will help enterprises understand the customers better and build a more personalized experience for them.  

2. Issues with Data Collection and Access 

Challenge: Gathering and accessing data becomes challenging when different departments work in silos and use disparate systems to collect and store data. None of them would have the same or complete information about the customer. This difference could impact the personalization efforts and lead to inconsistency in customer experience. The problem could become more complex as enterprises add more touchpoints to interact with customers. 

Solution: The only way to overcome this challenge is to break the silos and allow free data exchange between different departments. Collect all the data in a centralized location, and provide all teams adequate access to view the data and use it for personalization.  

3. No Alignment Between Teams 

Challenges: When we talk about silos, we also focus on the lack of alignment between teams that comes about as a result.  42%  of marketers blame a lack of organizational alignment for personalization challenges. They feel it leads to a disjointed experience for customers. Customers desire consistent experience across all channels, and that's possible only when every department works collaboratively and shares common personalization goals. The data must flow seamlessly between all departments to make personalization consistent and efficient.  

Enterprises also face issues, such as a lack of skilled resources to implement and deliver personalization strategies. For example, 43% of marketers find a lack of knowledge about technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) as a roadblock to implementing personalization strategies. Without the proper knowledge and skills, enterprises cannot unlock the full potential of personalization.  

Solution: Enterprises must start by building a personalization program and identifying key stakeholders who can champion and lead it. They must reach a consensus on personalization goals and strategies and ensure they're implemented across all departments to provide customers with a consistent experience. Besides that, enterprises must train the teams on the importance of personalization and provide them with knowledge, resources, and training to implement personalization strategies at scale.  

4. Wrong Technology Stack 

Challenge: The success of personalization depends on the choice of technology stacks. The tools should integrate with each other, allow smooth data exchange, and enable the decision-makers to make the correct decisions. However, most tools function differently and are not compatible with each other. It stops enterprises from achieving their personalization goals. Most often, they have difficulty choosing the right technology stack.  

Solution: To begin with, enterprises must do a thorough personalization maturity assessment to understand if they are ready for it. For example, they can start with  no-code or low-code platforms  to personalize communication. They can further use sophisticated AI-based personalization tools to micro-segment customers and hyper-personalize the experiences. Additionally, they must define the goal and scope for personalization, determine the budget, and check if they have the capabilities and resources to implement it. The right technology stack will bring significant improvement in personalization strategy.  

5. Inability to Measure and Scale 

Challenge: Personalization is not a one-time activity. It is an ongoing process that needs continuous improvement. Unfortunately, most enterprises find measuring personalization to be a daunting task. They have to monitor and track the different metrics and find out if it's helping them achieve their personalization goals and gauge if they are ready to personalize at scale. All personalization efforts would fail or become redundant if not measured.  

Solution: Start by defining the North Star metric and other key metrics that will make a difference to the personalization strategy. These metrics could be churn rate, customer lifetime value (CLV), average order value (AOV), conversion rates, etc. Next is to monitor these metrics regularly to find the changes post-personalization. Performing A/B tests and measuring the results is another way to understand what works. Once the enterprise meets the metrics, it can consider scaling personalization to the next level. AI,  analytics,  and no-code or low-code tools can come in handy in personalizing experiences at scale.  

How Can Enterprises Make Personalization Effective and Usable For Customer Experience? 

McKinsey's research shows that real-time personalization can improve sales by  10%  and increase the ROI by five to eight times the market spend. So, given the benefits of personalization, it's time that enterprises seriously consider adopting it and moving away from mass demographic segmentation.  

Enterprises can use now-code/low-code, AI-based, and analytics-driven technologies to implement personalization at scale. For example, a marketer can use  AI and analytics  to create re-engagement campaigns. They can identify and segment customers who have not purchased anything for more than three months and send them personalized and relevant emails to nudge them to re-engage with the brand. The sales team can use AI to find prospects with a high propensity to convert and nurture them into becoming customers. The best part is enterprises don't have to spend hours setting campaigns or nurturing leads.  Low-code tools  take care of those tasks.  

With a robust strategy, a shared commitment towards personalization, and the right stack of technologies, enterprises can exceed customer expectations and build a customer-centric brand in 2023.  Connect with us  to learn more about successfully implementing the right technology stack to drive personalization initiatives.