Creating personalised customer journeys has been the topic on every CX and Marketing leader’s minds for years now, but as technology becomes more sophisticated, how do we ensure that we’re personalising customer experiences without infringing on customer privacy?

Personalised Customer Experiences has become an expectation for many consumers today.

According to Emplifi, 66% of consumers say they are willing to share some personal data if it will elevate their customer experience. Similarly, Twilio Segment reports have shown 49% of shoppers making impulse buying decisions after receiving a personalised recommendation.

With many organisations knowing that personalisation is the way of the future, being able to refine a company’s personalisation strategies and use behavioural patterns to sha ethe journey remains a challenge.

Speaking at The Customer Show Virtual Teaser Summit back in October, Alberto Fernandez, Head of Insights from Latitude Financial Services says that personalisation is a must have nowadays.

“We have the resources and the ability to do it, so it’s become the expectation among customers,” he says.

Speaking on the same panel, Head of Strategy Accounts at Zendesk, Ian Thomson, agrees:

“If you’re not creating personalised experiences as a one to one segment then you’re missing out on an opportunity.”

According to Ian, organisations need to start with the understanding that you’re moving a customer from an identified, unauthenticated person in the system, into an actual person in order to drive the right journey. When asked around customer privacy, he says the comfort level and concerns around data collection are less prevalent than a few years ago.

Where do you start when it comes to personalised journeys?

Alberto says that for organisations that are only now beginning to personalise some areas of their customer journey, they need to start small.

“There’s lots of levels of sophistication that you can consider in the beginning that can jeopardise the journey. There’s also so many levels of sophistication in the customer journey that you shouldn’t try it all in the one go,” he says.

One example is building machine learning abilities into the data. This needs to be thought through closely.

“The challenge is not just about collecting more data, it’s also about deciding what data you do not use, and making sure you don’t just create a machine or algorithm that only takes into account one side of the customer journey.”

Building machine learning abilities into the data – challenge is not just the more data you collect, it’s also about all the data you don’t use. And make sure you don’t just create a machine that talks only one side.

What data do we ignore and consider when personalising journeys?

According to Alberto, deciding what data to take into account and what data to ignore depends on the intent behind your customer journey. For instance, if selling a product, organisations need to look at the lifecycle of item, when they want customers to purchase the item and then use algorithms to identify which data points should be used when.

“It’s about using smart people to understand whether the data points in that instance makes sense,” he says.

“It’s about having the right data at the right time in terms of how you interact,” says Ian. “[Back in the day] it was all about data but in our organisation now globally, we have a big exercise in cleaning our customer data . . . whether it’s B2B or B2C you have to have a continuous process in your data management strategy and how use that data.”