Personalisation is about delivering the exception, not the rule

Laurent Christen

June 8, 2020

The 2020 Customer Experience Benchmarking Report published by NTT highlights a key element of being successful with Customer Experience, which is “Personalisation is about delivering the Exception, not the Rule”. To show that companies value their customers, they have to present personalised offers based on what they value.

Stephen Wardle (Dimension Data MEA) and myself (CEO e2y, an NTT company) joined NTT host Manny Naykene for a wonderful chat on the TechConnect podcast of NTT Limited. This article provides some insights on the conversation and help to increase customer experience.

In 2020, consumers are challenged to buy products given the state of retail. A key element to deliver the exception is to work on the product diversity. First of all, retailers and manufacturers are not able to sell some products in their own stores anymore. Second of all, they may not have enough parts or row material to produce all of their products (for B2B companies). Their product diversity is reduced, which has a big impact on their sales and of course their customer experience.

The silver bullet here is to sell using a marketplace concept.

A marketplace allows retailers to sell products online or through in-store pick-up (or curbside delivery) without having to hold stock. They sell through so-called third-party sellers.

It is also a powerful way to go for what we call a product range extension which is about increasing the product assortment and even adding new product categories that a retailer does not want to stock – and have the burden of the cost of goods

Story-driven means that companies try to understand the emotions and the rationale for customers to buy your products and solutions. You need to understand the motivations and anxieties of the buyers. In the podcast we took the example of the typical LEGO buyer, which is the uncle (who has a certain buying power and a low affinity to costs as he wants to please his god children).

Journey-based is about painting a picture of the customer landscape. You need to drive the processes but also identifying opportunities for your customers. Fix what is blocking your customer from buying your products. I talked about what board members should do in relation to customer experience in a previous post.

As a company, you cannot wait to wait weeks or months to fix a broken customer experience.

You need to be able to apply a “patch” on a issue. Fix the root cause as well so that the problem does not occur again and again. Apply the 2020 technologies to your development efforts like headless, micro-services, AI (artificial intelligence), mobile-first. Acquire these skills and techniques as a company. In 2020, companies have to be able to improve their experience within hours and not days.

Companies have to be agile. It’s a big buzzword but it has its importance to deliver the basics of a great customer experience.

Needless to say that skills and techniques are not enough. Companies must rely on great technologies like SAP Customer Experience solutions and Mirakl marketplace solution (and great companies to implement them). A little bit of advertisement.