March 9, 2009
Personalization: Good or Evil Customer Experience?
It seems to me that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.
Janov Pelorat in Asimov’s Foundation’s Edge
When you go to your next door’s butcher shop, do you mind him remembering your favorite piece and giving you a nice discount on it as one of his best customers? When you go to the hair dresser around your block, don’t you enjoy to learn a little bit more about the rumors going on in your neighbourhood? Isn’t it the reason why you like to go there rather than to the impersionnal corporate stores were you are nothing else than yet another customer?
But who likes his e-mails to be scanned by Google? Who likes his purchase records to be analysed by VISA? Who likes his PC to send diagnostic reports to Microsoft?
While most people are appalled in theory by the data privacy issues caused by profiling, not so many manifest such disagreement in limiting their usage of services using profiling, sometimes even extensively. On the contrary, personalization creates more adoption and engagement online. This trend is growing so fast that it is quickly becoming a standard.
So when does personalization helps providing a better customer experience and when will it backfire?
