Personalization Becomes Participation (In the Words of Monty Python)

Customers are individuals, and participate more deeply in response to a meaningful level of personalization.

The Strategic Brief:

If you are stepping up to responsibility for Customer Experience (CX) in your business, you may be considering the title as Chief Experience Officer or CEO. However, your CEO may question others having the same acronym as themselves, so the industry uses CXO. There is a better choice – Chief Participation Officer. Customers are individuals, and respond more deeply to a meaningful level of personalization. The real result of focus on customer experience is more than connection or engagement or permission to market. Participation with you as a business is the true success criteria for customer experience management.

Technology promises a personal customer experience for the hoi polloi.

“You’re all individuals!” declared Brian to his followers in the Monty Python film. The devotees responded in unison, “Yes, we’re all individuals!”. Lovely irony. Yet when I use an Automatic Teller Machine, I do not get to feel much like an individual. I receive a set of default options for my withdrawal; the same as everyone on the planet. What if the bank tracked my regular behavior and offer that amount and combination of notes as the first option to me? Decades have passed since the ATM was introduced in the early 1960’s. Meanwhile, the difference in customer experience from the first ATM and a current one is basically the addition of a color touchscreen.
The personalized experience used to be exclusive to the extremely wealthy. Downton Abbey gives tantalizing glimpses of such lifestyles. If wealthy enough, you could define how each aspect of the day would unfold for you: fresh flowers present before you awoke; medium poached eggs over a crispy bagel served to your bed; bath temperature set to your preference; clothes laid out; shoes shone; rose petals thrown on the steps as you exit towards your chaffer-driven transport. (1)

We never really got the individual experience.

The web was meant to get personal. Computer technology has always asked for your personal data and promised the individual experience in return. Does it feel that individual? On a modern website, the extent of personalization is often limited to showing a username and maybe some basic configuration settings. Commonly, you do not even get to re-organize menu items based on the options you commonly use. Amazon is well-known for its’ recommendations based on your purchases. Have you had the experience of seeing recommendations after you have made the purchase? You already have it, why show you recommendations that could only trigger buyers remorse? (2)
Smartphones moved technology into a personal scale. The device is both individual to a single user, and powerful enough to support a unique user-based experience. By allowing applications, mobile technology delivers access to information that can be customized to your specific interests and needs. Yet most applications fail to support meaningful personalization, let alone support disability access.

Developers misunderstand the value of exploiting the data that their customers share with them. While it is reasonable to exploit the data for your company’s benefit, you also need to reward your customers an exceptional customer experience.
The side benefit of personalization is that it requires a deeper understanding of the overall customer experience. What is really going on in the interaction? Why is the consumer there? What do you get? What do they get? Such detailed examination will often allow removal of many less important aspects of the interaction for both parties. You need to reach the experiential point where the customer participates with you. They can easily identify why they are using your offering, and are prepared to share that information through online reviews, feedback sessions with product teams, discussion forums. They are not just engaged, they participate.

Participation Scorecard.

Try this score-card to see how you deliver on key aspects of personal customer experience. This is not a complete list, but intended to give an instant status check of where your current participation health today. See how you score out of ten with each being worth one point.

• You measure and set goals for the participation level from your customers – how many stars will they give your company this month? (be careful to watch the ratio of how often you ask against how often they use your services)
• You measure and set goals for the participation value to your business – how many stars would the company give to these interactions with this consumer? (answering the is it worth it question)
• Your application design process brings customers into the partnership (not just indirectly via product management)
• Your delivered services have responsive design – they function and feel the same whether mobile app, web, face-to-face, etc.)
• Your design values feature discoverability, feedback, proper mapping, appropriate use of constraints, the power to undo one’s operations, above prettiness or trendiness – though beauty is sometimes and effective delivery system
• You keep information concurrent information across locations – if i just paid my bill via the web, don’t show it as outstanding on my mobile app
  You ensure applications reflect how customer decisions affect the outcome – e.g.  ordering a different item changes the expected delivery time
• You get your code to do the work instead of your customer by automatically tuning the experience based on how we use your application – e.g. ‘we notice you use the share price page quite often, can we move this to your home page? Yes/no’
• You make the data you have on your customer exportable so they can easily see and analyze what you know about them – e.g. Facebook’s ad preferences; Uber’s customer rating
• You empower privacy for your customers by always using opt-in approaches and never a default checkbox – building a trusting relationship with the consumer so they will share information with you freely. NOTE: This is where the personalization will pay off. As users see how you use data to make their life better, and save them time or money; they will be prepared to share more details with you.

Update: Some suggest Uber as an exemplary personalized experience. Not so. Uber is the ‘Santa Claus’ experience – knowing if you have been naughty or nice. Uber puts coal in the drivers stocking if they have been naughty (and does this to the customer as well). Though Uber was more personalized than the default taxi experience, it fails for not personalizing the interface. If I never use for a delivery service, the UberRUSH option should eventually move itself off the main menu. That would be a personalized experience. Also for the sight-challenged, how about a method to get the drivers name and number plate in a huge font as the car arrives?

1. Ok, I have never been that wealthy, but I imagine that is what would happen.
2. Hmm. Could it be they their advertising revenue more important than your experience as a customer?