Hyper-Personalisation: an augmented vision of customer
knowledge
[Article published in La Razón print edition – Sunday, November, 29th]
This 2020 we have made an obliged move to a hyperconnected society where, especially in the past few months, physical distance has boosted digital presence, which has been the Key tool to keep us connected.
The current climate has empowered digital presence by transforming and innovating the way of thinking and created a wide range of opportunities such as: new businesses, new products or solutions within existing companies, as well as a new way of communicating with customers.
Nevertheless, what’s being perceived in the market is that knowing and understanding your clients continues to be essential to a company’s success. Understanding their behaviours and distinguishing features, allows us to classify them into homogeneous groups with similar needs and traits which will allow us to communicate in a much personalised and less intrusive manner. Only this way will we achieve a significant communication with relevant content, personalised to each channel, less intrusive…
Personalised communication is a must in this hyper-connected society where consumers have become more demanding; for nearly every significant transaction there is previous research, both about the product itself and its competitors. This information allows customers to know the product and its costs inside out. Furthermore, they expect us to know and to act accordingly. Nowadays, as consumers we are all aware that our data –or at least certain information– are available for companies and many customers –especially younger ones– take it as a certain tacit agreement: you have my data and you will use them, therefore, make a right use of them in order to offer me what I am really interested in.
Exploiting these data can provide companies with the knowledge that allows them to classify customers in great detail and granularity; the objective is to tend to the “segment of one”, in order to focus our actions on maximum personalisation.
How do we achieve this level of personalisation? And how can it be managed?
Hyper-segmentation is the process of knowing our customers almost individually and clustering them into homogeneous groups with common features. The classification of customers in clusters is not new, but these clusters or segments are built with the highest level of detail from all the available information and variables of very different categories are compared in them: it has been not only a quantitative jump but also a qualitative one. Right now, companies have data Transactional from different channels, web browsing logs, text written in questionnaires, conversations with customer services, Social media information etc.
At Innova-tsn they have been providing technology consultancy services for more than 16 years, starting from the exploitation of data through advanced analytics tools at any moment of its life cycle. These years, we have lived through –and in some cases, led– successive instances of turning to the customer as the core of the company’s processes, both commercial and technological. Right now, what we see in the market is that the need for a 360 degree customer view is well-established in all industries and at all levels, personalisation of communication is regarded as desirable for most of them. Large leading companies in various sectors –including utilities, retail, telecom– are already working to move one step further, towards hyper-segmentation.
In their experience, companies that start undertaking this approach are the most up-to-date ones in their sectors and they are certain it is a tool that should be used. In order to succeed in hyper-personalisation, we need to find support in technology. This does not necessarily involve a large investment; it will depend on every approach, the scope we decide and the company’s analytical and technological maturity. And in all cases two fundamental aspects must be taken into account: on the one hand, the aim of hyper-segmentation has to be very well defined; only this will allow to find a really useful result. On the other hand, we should be clear about the type of actions we want to carry out after obtaining this result.
Above all, we should think of possible and executable actions with the company’s current systems, processes and budget, so they allow us to exploit the information provided by this hyper-segmentation and achieve the required return on investment.
Mature companies in both the application of analytics and the management of communication with customers are not reluctant to apply this type of solutions. In general, we see three types of benefits which may minimise the time needed to recover the investment:
- A greater understanding of the consumer. This offers competitive Knowing their needs and problems allows a company to position itself and provide them with a tailored solution.
- An increase of effectiveness and cost reduction in sales When carrying out completely individualised actions, the company obtains a higher conversion rate.
- The potential to significantly improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. The new hyper-informed customer who knows our offer and that of our competitors in detail, the rise of e-commerce and new habits during the pandemic and its extension to a greater or lesser extent to services, make it essential to have a solution that allows us to reach customers.
the new habits during the pandemic and their extension to services to a greater or lesser degree, make it essential to have a solution that allows us to reach customers.
A positive trend is that it has been accepted that technology and advanced analytics are very powerful tools to help communicate more effectively with customers. The adoption of modern technology such us Big Data or Artificial Intelligence and the application of analytics by an expert partner, is professionalising many areas that previously relied exclusively on the team’s business knowledge and whose tasks were becoming increasingly complex with an amount of data unmanageable for old tools and processes.