Direct and targeted personalisation has long been a key part of managing customer relationships. Customers like to feel like they’re more than a number, and savvy businesses have always found ways to address this fact. Despite this importance, the number of approaches available here, especially for businesses with smaller staff or online storefronts, has always been limited. This is becoming less of an issue in the digital age, with newer technologies providing an unprecedented range of powerful and user-friendly personalisation tools.
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Building a Digital Difference
When looking at the history of more personal approaches in customer-business relations, the most obvious standouts come from older physical stores in smaller communities. Knowing the customers by name was much simpler in this time and place, depending on a person's memory, but this approach doesn’t easily scale. The more names, the more faces, and the more products available, the more complicated personalisation becomes.
Digital systems deliver a basis here through their ability to streamline data collection and analysis. As long as a customer has an account, their past purchases and activities are easily visible. The modern age of AI then builds on this potential, analysing data, detecting patterns, and making suggestions based on broader trends.
Modern Examples in Action
Hyper personalisation via digital tech isn’t limited to big businesses, but it’s here where the most famous existing examples are found. Starbucks, for example, is found in 89 different markets. While each account is locked to a specific country, all sales from these accounts are recorded and stored in a protected database. From here, their AI-driven systems analyse this data, suggesting drinks based on history, the time of day, and even local weather conditions. If a customer prefers chocolate on cold days, then they’re likely to be recommended more mocha-centred drinks on a cold morning.
The other example most users experience and overlook daily is the algorithm system utilised by streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, or HBO Max. Each show watched in part or in whole is added into a user’s history, then weighted by repeats, ratings, and larger viewing trends. The result is, again, recommendations personalised to a single user, at least as long as the account isn’t shared.
On the business side, delivering personalisation is constantly becoming easier with new generations of customer engagement management software. These tools deliver the kind of AI-driven personalisation created on-site by services like Starbucks and Netflix in a more modern and scalable framework. Every step of the journey can be customised with these platforms, aiding with activation, retention, and even gamification systems. While this example is targeted more at online trading, banking, and iGaming, such services exist to cover a broad range of other industries too.
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Hyper customisation isn’t strictly necessary for any business, but it can provide an appreciable edge. In an age where the biggest and often international storefronts and services dominate the conversation, hyper personalisation approaches and the tools that support them aid SMEs in keeping pace. As the technology and delivery systems improve, so too does the potential for relationships between businesses and customers, providing reliable ongoing conversations.
