Mastering Hyperpersonalization: Making Customers Feel Unique

The rise of consumer expectations

As technology, tools, services, and features proliferate globally – thanks to the internet, the mass movement of people, and the power of digital marketing – savvy customers are starting to expect a certain level of quality and service from all providers they engage with. This, of course, comes in addition to the expectation of having access to technologically advanced tech, apps, and augmented experiences. Once a certain technological innovation, product, or service is offered by an industry pioneer for the first time, it can quickly become the golden standard, by which all other players need to adhere, in order to compete.

Hyperpersonalization: definition and advantages

AI can help uncover customer behavior patterns and trends before the competition has managed to conceive and implement them. Hyperpersonalization is the process of responding to those trends by customizing product and service offerings and the way they are communicated and sold to the customer. The more customized to a certain buyer profile offers are, the more likely they are to resonate with the buyer at that specific point in their life or business path. This rule very much applies to both B2C and B2B customers. In this way, machine learning algorithms can provide a first-mover, competitive advantage that’s hard to replicate by laggards.  

Industries that benefit from hyperpersonalization

Many businesses today have improved their product quality and level of service offered, as compared to just a few years ago. Some have done so willingly, while others have done it to keep up with the competition and not get left behind in an increasingly competitive global business climate. Still, consumers have become more demanding and less willing to compromise with quality. While cost is still the differentiating factor in many industries, the discerning consumer of today is no longer looking for the cheapest product but for the best quality/price ratio, or value for money. Hyperpersonalization can help justify higher costs to a large degree, and when done right, can turn into a true differentiating factor.

Industrial personalization

Industrial-scale customization is still in its infancy, however, it is expected to reach maturity in the next decade as manufacturers and producers turn away from mass production and embrace one-off order fulfillment and just-in-time manufacturing methods that ensure every item that leaves the conveyor belt already has a paying customer waiting for it. Practically every sector where non-commoditized products and services are provided, can benefit from hyperpersonalizing their manufacturing practices, thus ensuring higher customer loyalty while increasing profitability, too.

The right type of customer engagement

For hyperpersonalization to truly work, it needs to permeate your entire organizational culture and the way you do business, spanning but not limited to the following aspects:

1. The right time: true hyperpersonalization means that customers and prospects receive communications, news, and offers when they are ready to try your products or services – not when your marketing department has come around to sharing info about them. Know your customers so well that you know when they need what.
2. The right message: in addition to getting the ‘when’ right, the ‘what’ is no less critical. Being able to offer personalized offers and services that meet the specific needs of each customer is invaluable. This can be realized with the help of advanced artificial intelligence algorithms that predict future purchase patterns and behaviors based on historical info.
3. The right follow-up: no matter how tempting your offers may be, customers aren’t always ready to act on them, even if they come at the right time and sound tempting. Artificial intelligence tech can help you keep up with your customer and prospect base and continue to offer hyperpersonalized offers, no matter how engaged they have been lately. Of course, doing so in a not-overly-intrusive manner is the key to success here.

What can be customized with the help of AI?

The good news is, hyperpersonalization can be applied to any customer touchpoint, including but not limited to:

1. Product: going forward, companies will need to go the extra mile to customize as many product features as possible before shipping a product.
2. Packaging: going as far as personalizing product packaging has proven beneficial in terms of customer satisfaction and loyalty.
3. Service: although services are easier to customize by default, businesses still need to put in the effort of understanding customer needs before providing any service, whether standard or custom.
4. Customer service: customer service continues to evolve, as companies understand the need to consider the customer profile, recent transactions, and all other info to ensure a high level of understanding and satisfaction during the fulfillment of requests or reclamations.
5. Communications: these, too, need to be tailored to the specific customer context, beyond the simple personalization by name and title. Customers today are inundated with ads and irrelevant messaging. How will you make your marketing materials and collateral stand out? Offering personalized products or services for each specific addressee is a good start.

Unsure where to start with hyperpersonalization? Having the right technological tools can help you make the leap. Contact the Pegus team today for a no-obligation discussion on the solutions most suitable to your business.

Copywriter inadanova.com