In the 1951 musical, The King and I, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s show tune “Getting to Know You,” delighted Broadway audiences. The lead character Anna sings the song as she tries to strike up a friendly relationship with the children of the King of Siam. Fast forward 65 years, hyper-personalization has taken the concept of “getting to know” customers to new heights by delighting them with a more personalized customer experience.

Profiling vs. Personalization

For an increasing number of companies, creating hyper-personalized interactions is an emerging goal.  Yet, there is still plenty of misunderstanding when it comes to the definition of hyper-personalization. Customer profiling is confused with providing truly customized customer journeys.

This confusion is rooted in the fact that both profiling and personalization enable you to create customer portraits that provide a better customer experience (CX). However, the portrait designed through hyper-personalization is dramatically more detailed because it uses customer history and real-time context. By doing so, you can identify the many customer details that profiling simply doesn’t catch, to deliver tailored and targeted content, products, and services.

For example, “Charles” and “Ozzy” are both males born in 1948 in the United Kingdom. Both have been married more than once. They both have multiple kids and live in castles. A company that uses profiling would identify these customers as being very similar and provide them with the same level of service based on these similarities. In contrast, the company that leverages customer history and real-time context to provide hyper-personalized CX would know that one customer is Charles, the Prince of Wales and the other is Ozzy Osborne, the self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness. While Charles and Ozzy have some remarkable similarities, there is a world of difference between the next in line to the British throne and the heavy metal rocker. Only through hyper-personalization can these differences be identified and acted upon.

Achieving Hyper-Personalization

Hyper-personalization is both an art and a science that requires sharing information and context across digital and voice channels. The first step is deploying a customer experience platform that breaks down silos across channels, departments, and the customer lifecycle to support omnichannel experiences, journeys, and relationships.

For the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Health Plan, breaking down silos was a prerequisite to provide hyper-personalized service for their Medicare Advantage members. The health insurer identified that these patients, who are primarily elderly or have cognitive disabilities, need specialized help to navigate Medicare services, coverage, and prescription drug costs.

To make this happen, UPMC deployed the Genesys Customer Experience Platform. With the right infrastructure in place, they launched an innovative concierge program which gives each of these members a dedicated, personal healthcare concierge who automatically receives their calls. Concierges provide highly-personalized service for their assigned members, including discussing gaps in care, assisting in scheduling doctor appointments, and notifying them of benefit changes. They also proactively share information about benefits to these members who may not otherwise know about them. Interestingly, UPMC found that within the first year of implementing the program and increasing outbound calls to these members, there was a 27% decrease in inbound call volume. Many of their key performance indicators (KPIs) also improved, including a 96% increase in first call resolutions. Read more about UPMC’s journey to delivering personalized, proactive service excellence.

Personalized journeys are becoming increasing critical to stay competitive as customer expectations continue to rise and to drive business value. The right technology enables sharing information and context across channels. By choosing infrastructure that supports the next-generation of customer experience, you’ll be well-positioned for the age of hyper-personalization.

Interested in learning more about offering your customers a personalized experience? Read the Omnichannel Customer Engagement Playbook.