How Top Companies Use Personalization to Drive Customer and Employee Experiences

Personalization has become essential in various aspects of business, and remote employee experiences are no exception. Some might even say that enterprises are regressing to a time when personalization was the norm before the Industrial Age gave us standardization.

There’s a big difference, though. Personalization in the pre-Industrial era was a matter of necessity and had little to do with the “customer.” Nowadays, personalization is all about creating an amazing experience for the end-user, whether internal or external to the business. Furthermore, personalization relies on data to create this experience, which requires the use of technology.

For example, data on the purchase history of a customer is collected, analyzed, and used to make recommendations of other products that might be of interest. Amazon is well-known for this.

The Power of Personalization for Customer and Employee Experiences

Personalization doesn’t just apply to external customers, but internal ones too such as personalizing distributed workforce training. Once again, data is collected on performance, learning styles, and more, to deliver a learning experience tailored to the individual for improved results (Rallyware’s platform is a great example of this)!

Whereas a few years ago, personalization might have been considered a new-fangled thing, it has now become a necessity. Today, nearly everyone expects it. Here are several stats that highlight the power of personalization:

• According to Epsilon, 80% of consumers are more likely to buy something from a brand when they offer a personalized experience. Furthermore, 92% of consumers bought products based on personalized shopping cart suggestions.
• Research from McKinsey found that 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.
• Companies that grow faster drive 40% more of their revenue from personalization than their slower-growing counterparts, McKinsey also noted.

Considering the challenges involved in achieving effective employee training and engagement with a distributed workforce, personalization might be the optimal solution.

Below, we look at five companies that clearly understand the benefits of personalization.

Netflix Saves $1 Billion in Potentially Lost Annual Revenue

Netflix’s streaming platform is known for providing personalized recommendations based on user viewing history. That’s why they are one of the most successful streaming platforms on the market. 

However, Netflix admitted that they’d almost lost thousands of subscribers, which would have cost them around $1 billion in lost revenues per year. They avoided this catastrophe by improving their personalization algorithm.

With such an extensive entertainment catalog, viewers won’t spend more than 90 seconds searching for something to watch. Netflix’s new algorithm helped users find what they wanted faster by providing them with options that were better aligned with their tastes. 

Starbucks Gamifies Coffee

Starbucks improved customer engagement using a mobile app, which gamified coffee drinking experience. The app makes it easier for people to order and customize their drinks, reducing the in-store wait time to pick up their order. It also uses the consumer’s purchase history and location information to provide a fully personalized experience. 

Furthermore, the addition of the reward system that awards users with points for every purchase that consumers can redeem for a “gift” led to a significant increase in Starbucks’ revenue. 

The app that delivers such a personalized coffee drinking experience is so successful that, in Q1 2020, it accounted for approximately 17% of all Starbucks’ sales in the United States. It also allowed Starbucks to outperform all their competitors during the pandemic by allowing consumers to limit in-store number of interactions. By going through a digital transformation early on, the company set itself up for success even during the times of crisis. 

Cadbury’s Matches Consumers and Flavors

Cadbury’s ran a marketing campaign in Australia inspired by Facebook’s success with their personalized video. However, rather than talking about themselves, the company took a different approach.

Using information gleaned from users’ Facebook profiles, such as age, location, and interests, Cadbury’s matched them with a specific Dairy Milk flavor. 

When the user agreed to connect with Cadbury’s, their personal content was automatically converted into a video, creating a personalized story that resonated with them. The proof of this campaign’s effectiveness lay in the 65% click-through rate and 33.6% conversion rate it achieved.

Coca-Cola “Renames” Their Soft Drink

Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign is still considered one of the most original and successful in its approach to personalization. 

The company replaced the Coca-Cola logo on their products with the most common consumer names in the countries where the campaigns ran. They also encouraged people to share with their friends and spread the Coca-Cola message using #shareacoke. 

The campaign’s goal was to reconnect with the brand’s key audience, namely teens and young adults. The pilot launched in 2011 in Australia and was so successful that it was rolled out to 80 markets and continued for seven years. 

The overall outcome was Coca-Cola saw an increase in sales for the first time in eleven years!

Rallyware Enables Enterprises to Personalize Employee Experiences

Personalization is as effective for remote employee training as it is for marketing. Even in the early 1980s, it was an accepted fact that students learn best when their education is personalized to their needs. 

The increased employee engagement alone makes personalized, just-in-time learning worth it, not to mention the employee upskilling and reskilling capabilities. But the primary benefit of personalized learning comes down to driving employee productivity, and it has been proven to deliver an average of 24X ROI. 

However, personalizing learning for employees can be somewhat more challenging than for consumers. Much of the effort and technology used to achieve personalization are outward-facing, with less emphasis on employees’ needs. 

While focusing on customers is critical, enterprises should not forget the value of a highly engaged workforce. After all, research shows that companies whose employees are highly engaged are 21% more profitable.

Rallyware’s learning and enablement solution helps enterprises effectively personalize distributed workforce training as well as training for the in-house staff. Like personalization algorithms used by companies such as Netflix and Amazon for their customers, Rallyware uses data to personalize employee experiences and improve performance results. 

The platform analyzes the learner’s geolocation and delivers tailored content adjusted for language, culture, and more. The system also provides content adjusted to the learning preferences of the user based on their past interactions with the system to maximize training outcomes. After all, people have different learning styles and preferences. Some are auditory learners, others visual, and others tactile, which the Rallyware platform factors in when delivering learning content. 

Another variable the system considers when building a unique employee experiences includes the learner’s personal and career goals and how close they are to achieving those goals. A skills assessment can also be employed to determine where the learner has gaps and would benefit most from training. 

The system also uses data to track performance and then delivers the appropriate training to improve results.

Unique to Rallyware, the performance tracking feature really sets this platform apart. It tracks any deviation from the norm and reacts appropriately. For example, if it registers a decline in a person’s performance, the system will deliver training to improve results. On the other hand, if someone is exhibiting growth and exceeding normal parameters, it will place them on a personalized high-achiever path.

Furthermore, as the learner uses the platform more and more, it learns and improves the employee experiences, including accounting for important dates, such as milestones, birthdays, and anniversaries. This adds that extra human touch of celebrating meaningful events of each team member yet doing it automatically and at a scale. 

Rallyware doesn’t stop there. The platform also features enablement tools so that, once the unique learning experience has been created, the system helps reinforce the training. 

Therefore, once the employee has learned something, the platform will prompt them to apply their new skills in real life. It then monitors the results to determine whether the learning experience was effective or if more training is necessary. 

As personalization is the future of work and business, enterprises should certainly continue to focus on personalized marketing. However, they should also consider ramping up their effort to personalize employee experiences to boost productivity, reduce attrition, drive engagement, and maintain a competitive edge. 

For the ultimate solution to personalized learning and enablement that will help your organization boost employee performance, request a demo of the Rallyware Performance Enablement Platform!