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Scott Ko's avatar

Hey Mack, a bit of an alternative musing: Are there any insights on the long-term effects of customer personalisation? Specifically from two perspectives: 1) Whether giving customers too much personalisation ratchets up expectations that make it difficult for businesses to fulfil (i.e. are we teaching customers to be entitled?) and 2) Whether that personalisation results in genuine long-term repeat purchases and loyalty.

The reason I'm asking these questions is because I wonder if people really do want such a high degree of personalisation. Speaking purely for myself, I sometimes appreciate a level of consistency in terms of my expectations when I engage with a business; almost like a social contract for how I want to buy something from someone. Thus to the point about data privacy, I wonder if it's less about: "Oh no my data is being shared." and more: "You're getting too intimate with my personal boundaries in this business transaction."

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David Crouch's avatar

A very interesting set of data points Mack. I think that the move along the “digital transformation” route is being mostly done without a customer leadership perspective. It is clearly mostly cost driven and is part of business model changes across so many industries. It is my belief that younger customers accept lesser service so therefore these companies are able to get away with it. The asocial nature of social media has actually created fear in the youngest adults in interpersonal interactions preferring the apparent safety of purely digital moderated interactions. I was surprised that the survey says younger people are concerned with security issues on social media platforms for commerce, which doesn’t jibe does it with actual sales volumes.

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Bette A. Ludwig, PhD 🌱's avatar

That’s one of the biggest frustrations with customization. It lacks nuance. Just because you click on something once doesn’t mean you want to be flooded with similar content forever. Whether it’s movies, products, or anything else, relying too heavily on basic algorithms misses the bigger picture. Companies that don’t find a more sophisticated approach will lose out. Algorithms are great… until they aren’t.

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Mack Collier's avatar

I agree, Bette. There will always be a place for human input and oversight.

Often the things that companies think will add convenience for the customer, actually add frustration.

A few years ago I was working with a tech company helping them facilitate a focus group with their customers. The customers were complaining about having their support kicked to another country where English was a second language. The company jumped in and explained they did this so they could cut costs of their laptops by $50. Then the customers all agreed they would happily pay $50 more for US support. And now you see a lot of companies offering to upsell you to US based support lol.

When the customer says they want personalization, what they are saying is they are any relevance. Give them relevant communications and you’ll win.

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Bette A. Ludwig, PhD 🌱's avatar

Isn’t it funny how there can be such a disconnect with what customers or employees want and what management thinks they need. All it takes is for someone to ask! (By the way sorry this is so late - as you can see I got a bit behind on my notes) lol

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Neela 🌶️'s avatar

Oh man - a rant - intrigued lol

Adobe’s AI report basically confirms what we already knew that customers want brands to be predictable but also hyper-personalized.

Possible? Yes. Tricky? Also yes.

Companies chasing AI driven personalization will see wins, but honestly these attempts will be a LinkedIn message that starts with "Hey Mack, I see we have synergy!"

As for online shopping, people love personalization and worry about data security. So we want to have our cake and eat it, too. It doesn't work that way in real life—or does it?

AI, personalization, and trust are in a complicated love triangle, and brands that can manage the tension will win. The rest? well............ you can write an article about the rest bro.

Always a delight reading your articles.

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Mack Collier's avatar

I think I need to hire you to ghost write it for me, Neela! I feel like we are about to enter the ‘facepalm’ marketing era as companies try to turn all their customer communications over to AI. Which you can understand since AI is being sold to companies as “it will do the boring stuff that you don’t want to do everyday!” And since most companies don’t actually want to engage with their customers…

Rant has been building for a while, just saw a Note earlier that lit the fuse of inspiration lol. Thanks so much for reading, commenting and sharing, sis!

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