A massive 81% of the UK businesses believe they are offering personalised experiences despite only 64% of customers agreeing.
A shock new study from Twilio also revealed that if brands fail to offer a personalised experience, 45% of consumers say they’re likely to take their business elsewhere.
The research questioned whether British businesses are equipped enough to be able to deliver personalisation after COVID-19 prompted consumers to expect deeply personalised experiences across every channel. Tailored, one-to-one marketing stopped being a ‘nice to have’ and became a basic expectation, the report states.
It adds: “The last year has transformed consumer behaviour like never before. With high streets closed across the UK during the worst of the pandemic, companies of all sizes were forced to rethink their customer engagement strategies overnight.
“The choice was stark: go digital, or go out of business.”
Twilio’s State of Personalisation in the UK was released today and included some shock findings in omni-channel.
Up to 69% of consumers say they appreciate personalisation, so long as it’s based on data they’ve shared with a business directly. The report added that personalisation can go hand in hand with privacy, and that only 14% of UK businesses say they are investing successfully in omni-channel personalisation because of business and technological barriers.
The report also revealed there is a gap emerging between customer expectations and reality, adding that the pandemic accelerated the adoption of personalised, one-to-one marketing, the data suggests that most UK businesses are yet to take full advantage of.
It also delved into the top four data challenges for UK businesses this year. These include:
- Reaching new customers: 61%
- Balancing personalisation and privacy: 41%
- Getting accurate customer data for personalisation: 39%
- Achieving consistent messaging across: 39%
The study adds: “Data security and privacy aside, UK brands are struggling to even access and make the most of their customer data in the first place, impeding their personalisation efforts.
“39% of British firms see collecting accurate, real-time customer data as the biggest challenge to personalisation, while a third of companies struggle to provide internal teams with a single source of truth about their customers.
“Finally, 41% admit they struggle to balance customer data privacy with personalisation.”
“It’s not surprising that there is a disconnect between companies thinking they’re delivering personalisation and customers saying they’re not,” says Metrigy CEO & Principal Analyst Robin Gareiss.
“Personalisation is a broad term, and companies often fail at defining it in a way that resonates with their customers. They have to do research first to understand how customers view the topic, and then map their outreach and interactions to their definitions.”
The full report can be found here.
