As usual first things first: Thank you to everybody who challenged my thoughts on my previous article. I truly appreciate it.
This is part one of a two part series about making business personal or maybe better why it actually is always personal and what to make of that.
Why do I even think it’s worth talking about “getting personal”? Everybody is talking about personalisation and the need to meet customers needs. So shouldn’t it be obvious and isn’t everybody doing it?
Indulge me if you may. I called this article or indeed series of articles “let’s get personal” for a reason.
I’m pretty certain you’ve heard something like this before “It’s not personal – it’s only business”. I know that I have and I have to admit that I even said it in the past before realising what it actually means. In my mind saying something would be only business and not personal is one of the biggest lies we tell ourselves. I don’t think I would be the right person to address why we tell ourselves that lie – though studying Psychology I’m not a fully trained Psychologist – there are people better qualified than me. Talking about why I believe it’s incorrect however I can.
So, let’s get personal.
If we really think about it absolutely everything in business is personal. Why we sell something, why we choose the staff we do, how we treat everybody in our organisation as well as our customers or even why we buy something as a customer. Businesses are not run by AI (yet) and AI doesn’t make purchasing decisions (yet). So how can we actually say it would not be personal when everything in every interaction is completely defined by the persons involved.
Since this is a lengthy topic this article addresses the business to customer (individual or another business) side of this topic. The next one will cover topics inside business organisations.
Getting personal with customers
When we usually talk about getting personal with customers we mean personalisation options in our product offering, tailoring something to specific customer groups needs or personal service through one way or another. That’s all great – actually the basis for everything else.
Let me direct you to one idea though: personal is emotional.
I literally hear someone saying: what is he talking about, of course it is, we all know that. That’s why we are available in customer service and provide personalised options. We even do emotional marketing.
All good but that’s not really emotional. It might convey emotions or try to spark emotions at these points but that’s not overall emotional.
Why?
- First because the emotion is neither under the control of the business nor is it probably the responsibility of a business to create emotions.
- Secondly because emotions are – well – in motion, they are not constant.
For the first point: It’s great to endeavour to provide all positive emotions when a customer interacts with the business. That’s the way it should be. Can that be controlled however? With many individuals that all think differently? Honestly, I don’t believe that to be possible. Things go wrong and people are different. So if emotions can’t be controlled would that mean that all endeavours are useless? Absolutely not! In my mind it actually means something truly great: It means that not only the positive emotions endeavoured to provide are valuable to the business but probably especially the negative ones.
As to the second point: Have you ever had a bad day? I did and I guess so did everybody else. The thing is though that perception changes depending on mood even in the same situation. This again is a fantastic opportunity. Isn’t it great when you were in a bad mood and somebody just made your day? What did you feel for that person and/or organisation?
OK, this may sound all totally fantastic and difficult to achieve. I would point you to my earlier articles for some ways to potentially achieve exactly that though. Agreed that it can never be perfectly achieved but everything – no matter how little – achieved more is valued by customers equally more. You probably even already have all the data required in-house without needing expensive research. The “implied data” from your customers is indeed more valuable than any paid for data – it has to be leveraged though.
Let’s dive into your available data and information to identify where to get more personal depending on your individual circumstances – with possibly easy solutions and also advanced ones.
These are some of my thoughts on getting personal with customers or indeed more personal than in the past. As always I’m interested in what you think and whether you agree or disagree with this take.
If you want to discuss in person and find out what I could do for you and your business just contact me to schedule an initial call.