Bionic Personalization: integrating physical and digital 1:1 experiences

Even in our digital age, brands will ultimately win based on their ability to build and nurture human connections. If you are like most brands, you are investing massively in new digital customer experiences and yet still feeling like you are falling behind. But what are you doing to make the human-to-human experiences connected to your brand magical and personalized?

Leading brands are making bold investments in consumer-facing digital. But a select few are taking this further by empowering their front line staff with big data and digital tools. Front line staff can now anticipate and serve individual customer needs in ways that have never been possible before. I call this new capability BIONIC PERSONALIZATION: the integration of physical and digital 1:1 experiences. And Bionic Personalization is paying off: for my clients (examples below), it is increasing customer satisfaction scores by double digits, while also lifting sales by more than 10% in a variety of settings.

One retail chain has equipped its store associates with access to AI-driven recommendations for their omnichannel customers. If a frequent customer abandons their online shopping cart, an associate in the customer’s favorite store is alerted. That associate can then reach out to the customer with a range of relevant messages to rebuild the brand connection and resuscitate the buy. They can inform the customer about an upcoming product launch in the same category, talk about best-selling complements and substitutes, or mention similar products in stock now that the customer can visit the store to see. Also, that outreach can be via email or text, whichever the customer prefers.

Another emerging practice – employed by both a premium apparel brand and a restaurant chain - is to send store managers weekly reports of their store’s top 500 customers, and flagging which ones have not been visiting recently. They then make it easy for employees to reach out and send personal invitations to upcoming in-store events or inform them about new items.

It isn’t just retailers that are implementing Bionic Personalization. Smart airlines are knitting together information about key passengers across various databases, and providing ground staff and flight attendants with composite snapshots about passengers. If a connecting passenger has disembarked from a delayed flight or the airline has lost someone’s bag, the airline’s employees will immediately know what the passenger has been through, flag the situation, and do their best to make the rest of the customer journey better. Proactively acknowledging the issue can go a long way in these moments of truth.

Despite the rise of chatbots, Bionic Personalization is also helping telecom brands, banks and healthcare companies deliver the right human interactions via their call centers. AI, paired with the right test and learn processes, can suggest the next best conversations to have in complex interactions that are still best delivered by humans. These can include navigating how to select the right phone plan, responding to a customer calling to cancel a credit card or outbound calls suggesting steps to improve adherence to prescriptions.

Notably, digital tools now allow the front line to connect with more customers, including customers they never had enough time to connect with before. In retail, online shoppers who rarely visit a store and generally infrequent shoppers are customers that store associates typically do not get to know personally. The same holds true for airlines with their non-frequent fliers and most other industries. The reality is the bulk of customers for any brand fall in these categories. By reaching out to these shoppers with personalized recommendations and interactions, brands can jumpstart relevant conversations with customers they were never able to have personal relationships with before.

Although it sounds simple from a consumer perspective, it isn’t easy to make Bionic Personalization happen. Our BCG Personalization framework (please see https://www.bcg.com/publications/2017/retail-marketing-sales-profiting-personalization.aspx) will tell you, broadly, that companies must cover four bases to get personalization right and there are specific considers for Bionic Personalization.

One, companies must DESIGN THE EXPERIENCE so that digital data enables human connection. That enablement should ideally have two dimensions; employees’ interactions with each customer are richer, and employees can reach out to more customers on a one-to-one basis. Focusing on just the former may not justify the investments necessary for Bionic Personalization. 

Two, given the amount and types of DATA needed for Bionic Personalization, privacy concerns are bound to arise and must be carefully considered. Creating transparency and getting the right consent from customers is paramount. Most importantly, instead of focusing Bionic Personalization on just driving the next purchase, brands should show customers they truly care about solving for their most pressing needs even if this doesn’t result in a sale right away.

Three, companies have to integrate various TECHNOLOGIES to ensure that Bionic Personalization systems can tackle both external and internal needs. There is no shortage of CRM tools, but most aren’t built for Bionic Personalization. For instance, your personalization stack may enable some 1:1 email communications, but not for these to be sent by front line staff, and not the text or voice messages that some customers prefer. For brands that are looking to leapfrog in this space, they will need to carefully consider where to build new elements, while integrating best of breed components from key vendors.   

Four, and this is the most difficult challenge, companies will have to adapt their WAYS OF WORKING to pursue Bionic Personalization. Organizations will have to train thousands of associates to use digital technologies as part of their daily work. In my experience, companies that start small and convert a few employees into evangelists for the new ways of working successfully create momentum. There’s often a lag between plan and performance in a large, fragmented front-line organization, but giving employees access to leading indicators serves as a powerful incentive. Nothing will overcome the resistance to change more than showing how Bionic Personalization helps employees improve customer satisfaction while also delivering on sales targets. 

The 2010s were the decade when Segment-of-One Personalization finally started fulfilling its promise. To win the 2020s, brands will need to up their game with Bionic Personalization and integrate this capability across their physical and digital experiences.

About the Author: Mark Abraham is a Managing Director and Senior Partner at BCG, based in Seattle. He leads BCG’s Global Personalization & Digital Marketing teams as well as BCG's Marketing & Sales Practice in North America.

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