The Guide to Personalized Customer Service

Imagine this: Company A addresses you with “Hi [ticket number],” and then there’s company B that addresses you with “Hi [your name].” Which company would you find more likable? The answer should be pretty obvious.

This is a simple example of the charm of personalization in customer service. Humans are tired of feeling like they are talking to bots when they reach out to a company. Humans want a personal touch. They want personalized experiences throughout their buying journey. In short, delivering good customer service is fine, but providing personalized customer service is better!

In fact, 80% of customers prefer to buy from a brand that offers personalized customer experiences. And we’re here to help you with delivering personalized customer service. 

This article is your complete guide to delivering personalized customer service to your valuable customers and comes with examples. Now, let’s get you started!

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What is personalized customer service?

Customer service personalization is about using an individualized approach and providing custom-made solutions to customer queries. In short, it is about understanding that no two customers are alike, so their experiences shouldn’t be the same.

Personalizing customer service helps you to look at your customers as individuals with different behaviors, attributes, and preferences that are unique to them. 71% of customers dislike brands that divide them into customer types or segments rather than treating them like individuals—this number shows how valuable personalization is. 

Read More: 11 Ways to Deliver Personable Customer Service

Companies can offer personalization in customer service by leveraging user data and taking references from past interactions. For example, calling the customer by their name or taking out their order automatically with the help of their email or phone number are some examples of top-notch customized customer service. 

Personable vs. personalized customer service

Personable and personalized customer service may sound similar, but they differ. 

Personalized customer service involves creating personas for customers and categorizing them into segments. For example, Reebok sells running, cricket, general training, and basketball shoes. Each customer interested in a particular type of shoe is considered a persona. So, Reebok won’t try to sell running shoes to a customer who always buys basketball shoes. Personalized customer service is directed based on personas. 

On the other hand, personable service involves talking to an individual customer instead of communicating with a group of customers. The entire experience is unique to an individual where customers expect you to know their name, purchase history, and previous conversations with the brand. 

To make it simpler for you, we have compiled the differences below:

The importance of personalized customer service

Personalized customer service experience not only helps to retain existing customers but also fulfills the goals of your business. It helps build brand authority and create a good image of the company in the market that helps to attract new customers. 

Almost 8 out of 10 consumers trust brands that treat them like a person instead of just a sales order. So, let’s dive into the advantages of personalized customer service. 

Better customer experience

Personalized customer service ultimately leads to better customer experiences. This is because offering customized experiences can make customers feel special and satisfied. They are less likely to have complaints, and they might end up referring your company to new customers. 

Establish meaningful communication

Customers expect a lot of value from service agents. They want to get as many insights as possible on their issues from a single conversation. So, service agents who deeply dive into the topic and offer a resolution specific to the problem impress the customers like none other. It can have a positive impact on the impression of your brand. 

Massive customer retention

Personalization wins the loyalty of your customers, leading them to become loyal brand advocates for your brand ultimately. Customers prefer to trust humans representing a brand than the values and ideas of a brand. So, when they can directly speak to a customer service agent who takes time to analyze their issue, they feel heard, which ignites compassion and trust in them—which helps build brand loyalty. 

Better conversion rate

Brands offering personalized customer service have higher chances of converting customers who are unsure about their products or are merely visiting or browsing their website out of curiosity. 90% of U.S. consumers find personalized marketing very appealing. It has the power to persuade customers that are sitting on the fence undecided.

Consistent Sales

Personalizing customer service keeps the customers happy and helps your company. Customers who are happy with your brand would bring the return and repeated business for you too. The fact that 93% of customers are likely to repeat purchases with a company offering personalized customer service is enough proof of this. 

Helps to improve your existing strategy

The best part about offering customer service personalization is that you will get a clear idea of what the customers expect from the initial conversations with you and your business. You might be an expert in your business, but getting the perspective of people who purchase your services and products is gold.

So, you can always tweak your strategies and offer your customers what they anticipate out of you. Doing this will again help you impress your customers and retain them. 

The advantages of personalized customer service can be gained by repeatedly delivering great experiences and meeting client expectations. Making this a practice from the beginning will help your business grow. 

How to provide personalized customer service?

You know the advantages and impact of personalized customer service experience, and now we tell you how to provide personalized customer service. Let’s begin! 

Understand your audience

It is almost impossible to personalize customer experiences effectively without understanding your audience. You can start by analyzing the data of your existing customers from your customer engagement platforms, CRM, and social media platforms to create a guideline for some important buyer personas. 

It is vital to create personas because personable customer service is not always time effective. And, it might only sometimes be possible for your customer service agents to cater to every customer specifically. 

Here comes segmenting. Segmenting your audience will help you predict customer preferences based on buying patterns. So, segmentation should go first, and then you can start individualizing the entire experience as much as possible based on your knowledge about your customers. 

Segmenting can give you insights into different kinds of customers. You can select the information you need and analyze it with the help of the right technology to proactively offer better personalization in customer service. 

For example, if you notice a pattern where various customers ask the same questions for specific products, you can create FAQs or knowledge base articles to answer the questions. 

Use your customer’s name

You will already have the names of your existing customers in your database. So, please don’t shy away from using them. And if you have a new customer, please ask for their name and register it so that your customer service reps can always greet them with their first name on phone calls, live chats, or emails.

Using the first name seems obvious, but many companies need help. Also, it is a neat psychological trick to hack your user’s brain. An exciting study found that people love their names, plus it’s an excellent way to connect with your customer rather than referring to them by a ticket number. 

Setup an omnichannel presence

Not all customers prefer to communicate with businesses on the same channel. So, as a business, it is necessary to be available on all the channels like live chat, phone calls, email, social media, and messaging apps.

To offer an excellent personalized experience, it is essential that your agents can check the history of communication of users on different platforms. 

For example, a customer might contact you via email about an issue that a rep helps to solve. Later, the customer calls for the same problem, and another agent attends the call. So, he must know the history of the recurring issue. 

Sound friendly and human

Knowing your customer’s name is not enough. Instead, you can talk like you are talking to a friend or a family member. Do not skip on the usual greeting and niceties. Also, please keep the conversation positive, even if the customer is irritated by some issue. 

Make technology your friend

To offer hyper-personalized experiences, you must invest in the right technology. However, businesses can leverage real-time data and artificial intelligence on their website by adding live chat, chatbots, and video chat options to ensure customers can contact them easily. 

Give custom and unique solutions

Who doesn’t love unique offers and solutions? If you provide your customers with solutions catered just for them—they’ll be super impressed! After you understand your customer, it becomes easy to suggest products or give them recommendations based on their needs. You can offer them custom quotes based on their requirements or create a bundle of their desired services. It works because one size does not fit all. It shows the customers that you can and want to satisfy their individual needs.  

Map customer journey for personalizing customer service

The idea behind mapping the customer journey is to understand in detail how customers travel through various touchpoints of your business. 

To start mapping the customer journey, you need to list down the touchpoints of your business first. They could be anything like a website, on-site reviews, social media accounts, and a customer service team. 

Mapping customer journeys can help you understand the customer’s actions for each stage, which can help you increase customer engagement and address their needs at an individual level. 

Offer a unique experience to your regular customers

Let your repeat buyers know that you see them and appreciate them. Ask your customer service agents to get in touch with them and offer them freebies like custom hats, hoodies, and other merchandise or discounts. You can even show your loyal customers that you care about them and offer them access to new products or services. 

Perks keep your customers engaged and happy. Loyal or repeat customer recognition is good as it shows them that you value and identify them. It will help you to establish a relationship with them. 

Personalized customer service examples

Many industries and brands are tweaking their offerings to ensure that they make the entire buying experience easy for the customers. Some such examples are:

Insurance industry

Established insurance companies like Progressive and Geico, to new players like Lemonade and Insurify, are taking a concise, web-centric approach to engaging their customers. Their website illustrates a well-executed personalization strategy. 

The great part is that they are taking two traditional products that have existed in their separate worlds and re-orienting them around customers’ preferences and requirements. They are further integrating bundles into their service offerings. It is an excellent form of customer service personalization as customers do not have to dive deep into every option to determine their requirements. 

At the same time, these bundles are self-explanatory, which means the customer does not have to repeatedly contact the customer service reps to get more insights. 

Evernote

Evernote sent out a personalized email to its existing customers due for renewal. They encouraged them to renew the subscription for a year and get six extra months of the same service for free. 

It is smart as the brand got the money for 12 months upfront, plus the added advantage of no cancellations for 18 months, which is enough time to establish habits that can lead to life-long relationships.  

Amazon

Amazon is one of the best-personalized customer service examples. They leverage their customer data to offer a custom-made experience. The brand uses the purchase history data of its customers to recommend new products and send focused emails with coupons and discounts. 

In fact, 47% of consumers check Amazon if the brand they are shopping from does not give them relevant product recommendations. Amazon has truly mastered the art of offering customer-specific solutions.  

Conclusion

Today’s customer has taken the one-size-does-not-fit-all trend seriously. This calls for the need for personalization in your customer service. If done well, it could very well be your differentiating factor in the market. 

Taking time to understand your customers and offer them personalized and unique solutions based on their requirements can help you create a loyal customer base that will keep coming back to you for more. 

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