How to Make CX Feel Personal as a Major Brand

By Megan Freshley

What does your brand do to strike a personal note while interacting with thousands of customers as unique individuals rather than demographical data points? The days when blasé messaging and sterile CX did the trick are long gone, but making a customer feel seen as a person when no face-to-face interaction is taking place is an art that takes even the most accomplished marketing teams scratch their heads.

Is authenticity still the name of the game, or has the world moved on toward an emphasis on experiences that feel exclusive? When personalized emails perform 26 percent better than generic ones, brands need to shift their priorities away from their products’ backstories and focus instead on their customers as individuals.

What does “authentic” mean in 2016?

You’re probably familiar with these two distinct customer experiences: the bland efficiency of shopping at a mega-store, or the effortful over-curation of a local, artisanal shopping experience. The former is baby boomers’ bread and butter, but it just doesn’t inspire love in customers because of how impersonal it is.

The latter, though, has been mimicked so much by larger brands that it’s lost its power. Big brands start waving the artisanal flag just make customers want to call their bluff — especially when it comes to the millennial pool those very claims are meant to appeal to.

Deliver personalized experiences on a massive scale

Rather than pretending to be a small business to keep customer interest piqued, larger companies need to focus on delivering insider experiences targeted toward accurate personas that will leave customers feeling seen, heard, and known — all while maintaining an easy air in the process. Some ways to achieve this are thoughtful clienteling, compelling newsletters and social presences, and approaching communications with a casual voice.

Personalization just takes a pinch of intimacy

A University of Texas study tried to crack the code as to why personalized experiences make such a big impact on consumers, and they found two main answers. First, consumers interacting with personalized messaging feel a greater sense of control. They feel more at ease in the driver’s seat of the experience.

Second, personalized CX also diminishes the exhausting sense of being bombarded with irrelevant information on all channels that so many of us experience each time we open our browsers or turn on the TV. A personalized brand interaction doesn’t feel like a waste of time spent looking at an ad meant for someone else. Relevance is key.

Customer engagement is a two-way street

So how should you infuse your engagement with a human touch? There are endless ways to do it, but each of them lets consumers do what they really want: to feel involved in co-creating their experiences with your brand. Subscription boxes, birthday giveaways, and well-researched clienteling all contribute to that sweet spot of consumer control and relevance that leaves everyone feeling like their time and preferences matter.

But it doesn’t have to stop once the customer makes a purchase. Live video support, for instance, gives customers the sense that they matter enough to conduct a one-on-one conversation with — that the brand cares enough to take a literal look at any problems that may arise. Every step of the customer journey can be imbued with personalization. It’s just a matter of major brands realizing that just because they’re big doesn’t mean they’re too big to make each and every customer feel like an insider.