Overcoming the challenge of personalization at scale

TEXT: TIMO MANSIKKA-AHO

Personal user experience, consistent across all touchpoints, is not an easy task to begin with. As the number of those touchpoints increase and growing customer expectations keep piling up the pressure, many companies find themselves facing unexpected challenges. Combining economies of scale with individual memory trace may often seem impossible, but in the world of modern digital commerce, it has become a downright prerequisite.

The good news is that for those able to pull through the demanding task of personalization at scale, significant business opportunities await.

According to Vaimo, a company specializing in digital commerce and customer experiences, personalization, when done right, can increase overall revenue by up to 15 per cent, with the best-of-class companies able to reach even 25 %. In addition, personalization can open doors to better conversion rates, improved average order value, better customer retention and other such benefits.

Instead of whether to personalize or not, companies should ask themselves, how to do it in a way that makes sense?

Marko Rytkönen, Vaimo’s Business Development Director, advises that it all starts by putting first things first.

“In defining your success, it’s important to start by focusing on the customer experience first before moving on to technology: that is, moving from the strategic side to the operational side. The first step should be clarifying your mission and vision as well as setting objectives for your journey.”

As technology does not set limits in modern business, targeting it the right way is one of the most essential keys to success. Marko Rytkönen continues that identifying the right target audience helps make the most of available resources.

“Knowing which use cases you want to implement allows you to identify the required capabilities for the solution, processes and people supporting these. All this leads to solution design, where you can define the architecture and tools you’ll need.”

More content than ever is needed to create personal experience

The core of the personalization challenge is in the fact that today, the average customer has up to eight connected devices in use. Providing a fluent customer experience across all those touchpoints requires a clear view on the customer’s needs, interest, and desires in an efficient and effective way, while being compliant with legal constraints.

“Getting that single view requires collecting and stitching both known and unknown customer data”, Marko Rytkönen explains. “All that should take place in a flexible environment that encourages experimentation and testing new things.”

Successful personalization may look like an insurmountable obstacle, but Marko Rytkönen encourages companies to roll up their sleeves. With the right approach and determination, even that mountain can be conquered.

“Sufficient technology needs to be in place, but deep down, great experiences are built by people and processes.” |

Read more at vaimo.com