Authentic & Personalized - Make Your Customer Proud

Personalization is here to stay. Everywhere I turn, a company is making recommendations for customers based on past behavior. Spotify has curated playlists, Netflix recommends me movies for date night and WSJ wine is so certain of my taste that they will refund me on a bad bottle of wine.

A business to customer relationship needs to be based on familiarity and a willingness to celebrate as well as empathize with the customer. We should strive to anticipate a customer's needs before the customer experiences frustration that the needs are left unfulfilled.

It's my stance that one of the key ways we can cater to our customers needs and have a meaningful relationship with them is by being authentic and personalized. Anyone who knows me professionally knows that I try to be accessible to my students, and I strive to engage with my students individually, abandoning the mail merge in favor of a personalized video announcing an applicant is admitted. I feel its my job to walk a student across campus and get to know him or her in the process rather than pointing to a building and wishing them good luck in finding it.

In the international office at Louisiana Tech, our team of international student ambassadors are responsible for engaging with prospective students. They achieve this by developing relationships with potential students from around the world via chats, videos and phone calls. We approach these communications the way you'd try meeting someone at a party. You'd never walk up to someone and starting shoving information in their ear. You'd ask them questions and get to know them and their interests. This takes time. It builds trust. And when trust is earned, people respond gushingly.

We are in a time in which trust is a dire currency. Our emotional patience is exhausted with COVID and misinformation. Showing a customer that you care, not in some superficial way, but actually asking how they are and how you can improve their experience goes a long way in building emotional trust and loyalty. Real relationships. Personalized interactions. Authentic interest. We believe caring matters and through it we are able to create loyal and satisfied customers.