Personalization and customization may sound similar, after all, both terms are defined as a process that leads to tailoring something to fit your preference, decided by an individual or a group of people.
There sure is some overlap when it comes to defining these two terms, still, for the majority of the part, both personalization and customization remain as two separate concepts having their unique implications.
With this blog post, we will be digging deep to find out how personalization and customization are different from one another. Likewise, we will showcase the benefits that come with each process along with their real-world case. So, once and for all, you will have a clear picture of which method you should be using to get the best results.
When you are creating a tailored experience that fulfills the needs and interests as per the list defined by you with no extra effort, it will be termed as personalization. A personalization strategy for your clients, customers, shareholders, vendors, and others, you won't be asking them to provide their inputs. As a result, the foremost control of modifying the experience on the user’s behalf is taken care of by the organization or the owner.
Customization solutions refer to the process of creating a tailored experience based on specific preferences. It could be making changes in the layout, content present on a website, or changing the entire functionality of your application to suit the user's requirements.
Here you will be given control of creating their own experience, which will empower your consumers and heighten their engagement with your service, along with satisfaction.
Let’s see how personalization and customization are different from one another to find out which one serves your business goals in the best way possible:
In personalization, you are the one in the driving seat, creating tailored experiences for customers to give them a streamlined journey.
When it comes to customization, you invite or let users participate in the process of tailoring and reshaping the experience so it can fit according to their preferences.
Personalization can be powered by AI, and machine learning uses the power of data analytics, making the system automatically adapt to users’ liking, past behavior when they visit the website or application, and the interactions they participate in.
Customization gives control to users. Using customization, customers can manually tweak settings or choose preferences. For example, it is up to you to decide whether your smartphone should work in dark mode or light mode, or it will keep changing based on the hour of the day.
In personalization, you aim to tailor the experience by understanding their needs, it could be a hit or miss. On the flip side, when you are customizing a product, you are zeroing down on it, you allow users to set the features and elements that suit them the most, as a result, users get higher flexibility in customization in comparison to personalization.
Let’s take the example of Netflix to show you how personalization works. You log in to your Netflix account, and there you see recommendations from Netflix based on your taste in movies, TV shows, and documentaries.
You can’t say Netflix allows you to customize; it doesn’t even allow you to customize your icon picture. You know why? Because Netflix provides you a set of personalized options from their database of TV shows, movies, and documentaries. You cannot ask for a film that is not present in their database. Similarly, the icon image you choose comes from a set of pre-defined images. You are not allowed to customize it by uploading a completely new character.
The simplest example of customization is hiring an interior designer for your home. You tell the interior designer how you want to shape the interiors of your home, and they will make it happen for you. In addition to this, the interior designer will also give you freedom in terms of budget, material use, and colors to choose from.
In this section, we will showcase the benefits of personalization that you need to consider as you work on developing a personalization strategy:
In the long run, the difference between generating profits and barely surviving is less determined by the people who are purchasing products from your brand for the first time and more by customers who are coming back for repeat purchases. 15% of loyal customers account for 50%-70% of total sales. Personalization is the key to creating a loyal fanbase and thwarting any attempts by competitors to lure your customers.
Businesses, especially those dealing in showcasing products and services, can leverage the power of AI-based recommendation engines that will automatically anticipate what users are looking for and are interested in. This will create tailored suggestions for users, and they will have a higher chance of picking up the service or a product that you are offering.
Research has shown that people spend around 5 minutes on average on a website before making a purchase or hopping to another platform. Personalization in the form of messaging, product recommendations, and even the content that users access can make them stick around to explore more. The more time users spend on your website, the higher their chance of making a purchase.
When your customer stays on site for a longer duration, the metric that handles your SEO ranking starts considering your website as a reliable source of information for users. On the other hand, the financial meaning of ranking higher in the SEO ladder is that people don’t even scroll down on the first page of Google’s SERP; 68% users click on the first three organic search results that they see.
As a result, with better personalization, your users will spend more time on your site, which leads to higher SEO ranking and finally yields better sales opportunities along with organic traffic.
Let’s find out how customization makes your customers happy and allows your brand name to shine in the industry:
The time of “monolithic” customers has left behind, brands that are engaging with their customers are making sure to try out as many customization tricks as possible to stay ahead of the curve, and for that, users prefer them over competitors. But, right now, users are a bit skeptical when it comes to sharing their information; they do not wish to reveal personal data or even fill out any survey forms.
As a result, using customization features, you let users describe their needs and desires without making them feel they have been trapped in invasive marketing tactics. The belief that customization is accessible and affordable for every single user empowers them exponentially and puts control in their hands.
Every business, no matter how big or small it is, fears product returns, the additional cost and resources spent on getting the shipped product can slowly bleed revenue. With customization, a brand lets the user decide how they want you to create a product or a service for them.
As a result, the final product that they get at the delivery is the one that they had in their vision in the first place. In addition to this, this will also lower any chances of superficial expectation because the customer has already seen the visuals of the product, leading to increased satisfaction.
Using the customization process, you get to provide customers with a unique product every single time, a product which is one-of-one and can’t be copied because it was developed keeping the user’s vision in mind, thus, making your brand outpace both small and large scale competitors.
|
Personalization |
Customization |
|
It is a process where the brand considers all the unique characteristics and likeness to come up with an exceptional experience. |
It’s a process where you allow users to make a choice, select, or even modify certain features that are part of your service or product. The customization can genuinely change the output that you provide; in some cases, the result of the customization could be so unique that no one else from your customer base can replicate it using the same modification and choices. |
|
For personalization, you are required to collect data that shows the behavior of individual users. |
Here, the control is given to users; they can manipulate certain aspects of your product or service based on their liking. |
|
The content created using personalization is highly individualized, relevant, and engaging to a particular set of user groups. |
The main goal of customization is to provide flexibility along with the choice for users. |
|
To create personalization, you have to heavily rely on the data provided to you by the customers in the form of browsing history, purchase behavior, and demographic information. |
To create a customization process, you may or may not require intensive user data; it all depends on the level of customization you wish to allow |
Royal Enfield is considered to be the leader of personalization in the motorbike world; they enable customers to add different elements to their bikes to make them unique and stand out from the rest of the crowd.
On the other hand, several bike customization garages let you completely change your bike from the ground up. You can add a new engine, have a custom body kit, paint job, and whatnot; that’s called customization.
Think of a website that knows exactly about your preferences; that’s the work of personalization. Now, if the same website lets you design the product and the result is one-of-one, that’s the use of customization.
Similarly, your company uses Salesforce, which is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform to manage your relationship with customers, streamline sales and marketing, and is a personalized process because you are actually working in a confined environment designed according to your preferences. The services, costing, and user interface are all pre-defined by the Salesforce team; you make some choices to start using it.
On the other hand, when you choose a video-based conversational AI chatbot from Lifeinside.io, you will be introduced to customization. The platform allows you to create a video AI avatar from the ground up; you can set their tone, language, how it looks, and how high or low-pitched their voice can be.
In addition to this, you can also decide in which part of your website and social platforms this video AI bot will be activated. What information can it provide to customers, and how can it connect customers with sales representatives in need?
Personalization in the health and wellness sector can be found in the automatic adjustment of your step goals, meal recommendations, and workout intensity based on how you performed in recent times. If you can move past 5,000 steps, next time you will get a target of 7,000 steps automatically, that’s personalization. On the other hand, if the app sees you constantly missing morning workouts, it might suggest you take a brisk walk in the evening after you come home from work.
Customization is manually setting up a timeslot for a preferred workout session, such as yoga, cardio, running, strength training, and others. Here you will be tailoring the app so it can fit with your lifestyle.
When leveling up your customization and personalization game, you first have to come up with a clear strategy to avoid any form of “random acts of personalization.” Otherwise, the entire personalization process won’t be able to move the needle.
Find out which particular metric matters to your business the most, then look at where your customers interact with you. After that, see how much budget you can put into creating a personalization or customization process in your business. Finally, see how much money you will be spending to track the progress of the newly included process.
We cannot fathom how much you need to prioritize privacy when implementing customization and personalization processes. Be honest about customer data, tell them, give them demos on how you are collecting their data and where you are going to use it to improve the overall experience. Do not forget to follow privacy laws such as GDPR and CCPA.
Don’t just provide the entire catalog of customization and personalization processes to your customers in one go, or develop every element at the same time; you need to understand that both these processes are data and tech-labor-intensive. So it is best to pick two or three highly impactful areas before moving on to complex tactics.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, people felt so isolated that they wished to be seen, heard, and represented; they want to have proper, authentic interactions with brands, and a similar feeling also applies when they shop.
Both personalization and customization improve performance and customer outcomes. So companies that can embrace these processes using tools like Lifeinside.io get a head start on competitors. Now it is up to you, based on what goals you wish to achieve.
Personalization is the way to go if you are looking to provide a tailored experience that matches customers’ expectations. And if you want to let customers create a unique experience on their own, customization is the process you should be following.
Implementing both personalization and customization could be a little tricky. Still, you can get it done by gathering enough relevant data using conversational AI tools such as Lifeinside.io that will help you prioritize customer privacy.
Personalization is better when it comes to improving customer experience because it is a data-driven, seamless process; customers don’t have to brainstorm on their own, they just have to choose from the different offerings that you are providing.
Here are a few essential steps that you are required to complete if you wish to implement personalization effectively:
Collect high-quality customer data
Leverage AI to deliver relevant content
A/B testing along with real-time analytics
Customer feedback and their behavior
Users can tailor products, services, and experiences to their preferences, which leads to higher satisfaction. It will also make users feel a sense of ownership and loyalty to the brand.
Yes, both personalization and customization can be used together to achieve a higher satisfaction rate in user experience.
The collected data of customers is used for creating more relevant and engaging customer experiences, integrating data across touchpoints to come up with a comprehensive customer profile while ensuring the data remains private and protected from attackers.