By Ernan Roman, ERDM Corp

According to the IBM 2017 Customer Experience Index (CEI) Study, “Only 19% of brands offer more than a basic level of personalization of the online experience.” This doesn’t come close to meeting consumers’ demands for more personalized and human needs-based communications and experiences.

So how do marketers step up and deliver? For 2018 they need to trust that customers know what they want. Marketers must end the condescending view that customers don’t know what they want or don’t tell the truth.

In our ERDM VoC research, consumers told us time and time again that marketers still don’t get it! They still aren’t providing personalization that is meaningful or relevant:

• “What we receive is not smart personalization.”
• “They aren’t personalizing the things that matter to me!”
• “What they consider personalization is so old-fashioned.”
• “I want more than just simplistic buying history-based emails.”

To provide “smart” personalization, marketers must engage customers to learn how they define their individual, personal, human needs. Then, meaningful communications and interactions must be created, which are not generic, inferential or transaction-based and are more helpful and tailored to selfprofiled preferences.

See full article here.