The Vatel Hotel & Tourism Business School, in its endeavours to sensitize their students about the importance of understanding a customer and empathizing with him, conducts several training programmes and workshops. Extending a personalised service to a guest and winning his heart can, besides winning the guest’s loyalty forever, even make up for a few deficiencies and shortfalls
When customers reach out to an organization or a business with their problems, all they want is a complete solution. They want customer service to be a seamless experience without having to go through multiple stages of addressing their issues, long wait hours, and unsatisfactory responses. Providing them with personalized services that are tailor-made to cater to their problems can help in building meaningful relationships. These relationships can give an edge to the businesses over their competitors who don’t prioritize their customer service.
Personalization is more than paying lip service to customer’s preferences; rather it is adding value to a customer’s choice. But humans are funny creatures. Often times we prefer something because it is familiar to us. In fact, we prefer the familiar so much that the acclaimed psychologist Amos Tversky gave this phenomenon a name: familiarity bias. Preferences are built upon habits, where habits are established in the familiarity of repeated choices. Businesses, like individuals, must make choices in uncertain, ambiguous situations.
Product design demands a business choose between selling a product customer “prefer” as inferred from their previous choices, or selling a product that adds value to the customer’s choice. Decisions based on preference appear less risky than those based on “value,” under the assumption that past behaviour is the best predictor of our future behaviour. Amazon’s recommendations for similar products after you make a purchase is a great example.
Decisions that consider what drives value for the customer are riskier by nature. Values are qualitative and variable as opposed to quantitative and fixed. Customers’ values might change over time, leading them to feel “bad” about their decision to buy your service or product.
Tips to Deliver Personalized Services
- Get to Know Your Customers
- Be Available to Your Customers
- Give Your Customers Options to Choose From
- Ask for Customer Feedbacks and Reviews
Below are some benefits which businesses can derive by offering personalized customer service to their customers –
- It Lets Businesses Deliver Faster Customer Service
- It Offers You a Competitive Advantage
- Gives Power to The Companies to Meet Customer Expectations
- It drives customer loyalty towards the company
