The Future of Experiences are Powered by Customer Data
More robust customer data enables personalized experiences, but the avalanche of data presents more involved challenges.
When we talk about customer data, we are always implicitly talking about customer trust. As customer data is used in increasingly creative, strategic ways. For more discerning customers, there is a greater awareness of the ways and reasons personal data should be protected. Customer data has long driven marketing strategies, but as AI takes on more responsibility in the customer journey and the contact center, it has become the lifeblood of business.
Customer data has long driven marketing strategies, but as AI takes on more responsibility in the customer journey and the contact center, it has become the lifeblood of business.
The best experiences intelligently leverage customer data, and this truth extends from a surprise-and-delight retail experience, to a conscientious healthcare experience, to a polished and efficient banking experience. The misconception that personalization is limited to exciting, “nice-to-have” additions to CX is pervasive, but as innovative leaders push for organizational restructuring that put customer preferences and insights at the center, experiences of all kinds are taken to a higher level of quality.
In this issue of the CCW Digital Magazine, we explore a few different perspectives on the role of customer data in shaping experiences, and how those strategic decisions impact customer trust.
AUDREY STEEVES audrey.steeves@cmpteam.com
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Underexplored Dimensions of Personalization in the Digital Age
Personalization and the Next Generation of Experience Design
The CCW Digital Analyst team discusses the evolving role of customer data in designing experiences, along with the challenges posed by an abundance of data.
She leads CCW Digital article development and contributes to the analyst team by supporting online events. Her current work focuses on the intersection of customer centricity and employee experience. ANALYST
BRIAN CANTOR
Brian Cantor is the Managing Director of Customer Management Practice’s Digital division. Driven by a passion for helping brands better empower their employees and more meaningfully connect with customers, Brian oversees research, product development, editorial vision, and commercial strategy for properties like CCW Digital. Reaching a community of almost 200,000, these digital properties offer industry-leading commentary, research reports, and virtual event sessions.
Far from a “boardroom manager,” Brian routinely speaks at leading customer contact events and directly engages with global enterprises and innovative start-ups via training and advisory services sessions.
BROOKE LYNCH
Brooke Lynch is the Divisional Director of Digital. With a background in television news and production, she’s worked across industries covering B2B marketing, procurement and finance events.
Her current work highlights challenges and opportunities for customer experience and contact center leaders, with a recent focus on e-commerce, retail, and technology.
AUDREY STEEVES
Audrey Steeves is a content analyst for CCW Digital. She is an experienced content writer with a background in healthcare and technology across consumer and B2B audiences.
AUDREY: What makes a predictive experience valuable for customers?
BROOKE: Customers are not overtly aware that brands are delivering a ‘predictive’ or data-driven experience, they just want their issue solved. An effective predictive experience, then, feels almost invisible; it is not something customers are tracking or taking note of, it’s just an experience made easier. When they are most successful, predictive experiences solve problems customers don’t even know exist.
For example, your bank predicting and flagging a fraudulent transaction or your doctor sending you a reminder to set up your yearly physical exam. These types of interactions add value because they feel personal and relevant to the individual.
They also make the interaction and end-to-end experience more seamless. When we think about personalization it can often feel like a cue to be overly specific with customers, friendly and kind. But, predictive experiences can actually feel like the opposite — when done right, customers may not even have to speak with your brand at all.
Therefore, the most successful predictive experiences address customer needs proactively and take something off of their plate. By flagging challenges in real-time or solving issues before they arise, customers begin to trust that the organization has their best interest in mind.
AUDREY: What is the difference between proactive engagement and inundating customers with communications?
BRIAN: The simplest answer is that it comes down to the intention of the message. Why are you really sending the communication? You can certainly have business-centric motivations in mind, but if you’re not meaningfully taking the customer’s perspective into account, the message is doomed to come across as spammy rather than supportive.
As you start to think about the customer’s perspective, it is important to focus on four factors: respect, relevance, efficiency, and delight.
Respect has become a lost art in today’s landscape; so many brands adopt a “spray and pray” technique,
The most successful predictive experiences address customer needs proactively and take something off of their plate. By flagging challenges in real-time or solving issues before they arise, customers begin to trust that the organization has their best interest in mind.
bombarding customers with text messages, emails, push notifications, and website pop-ups. They also do this at all hours of the day, neglecting the fact that some customers want to be left alone at certain times – and will instantly resent any notification chime, no matter how valuable the message may actually be.
Relevance is equally important; if your message does not demonstrate an understanding of who the customer is, what they typically want, and what they might be trying to achieve, it will get lost in that sea of irrelevant marketing messages. The products you hype, the service warnings you deliver, and the promotions you offer should all be directly tied to the customer.
At the end of the day, proactive engagement is supposed to make life easier for the customer. If your message does not clearly preempt a service request or help them navigate through a purchase faster, it comes across as more annoying than efficient. This applies not only to the actual message you’re sharing, but also the experience of accessing the offer. For example, don’t tell customers about an important new reward item in their account – and then make them jump through 30 authentication and checkout hoops to access it.
Finally, you want to think about how the customer ultimately benefits from your offer. Will they feel like they avoided a considerable amount of hassle, saved a significant amount of money, or received special recognition? The more customers believe the proactive message helps them, the more inclined they’ll be to answer and engage with future offers.
BROOKE: Brian does a great job of outlining the differences here. I want to add some commentary on the reason this distinction is so critical, because when brands get this wrong, the consequences can be much bigger than just annoyance.
When companies do not appropriately tailor messages to each customer it can feel as though they are primarily focused on getting the next ‘sale’ instead of welcoming them as a customer.
I’m sure most people reading this can think of a company that, rather than working to understand them, proceeded to treat them as an opportunity for more revenue. This can feel not just frustrating but entirely offputting. By disregarding their needs and aggressively overcommunicating, companies can end up losing customers altogether.
It is important to frame proactive engagement and communication as touchpoints for building a relationship. Treading lightly, respecting customer needs and learning more about them, gives brands an avenue for establishing a meaningful relationship. Every new point of contact is a way to keep customers engaged and excited about your brand, take each interaction seriously and deliver every message with care.
AUDREY: We develop highly orchestrated and specific customer journeys, and yet acknowledge that customers want to maintain agency over their experiences. How can these ideas co-exist?
BRIAN: For many years, the customer contact community has discussed the pros and cons of “right-channeling.” Should we as a business guide the customer on the journey that we know in our hearts will be best for them, or should we give them full autonomy to choose and adapt accordingly?
This debate never should have been necessary: customers can be finicky and emotional, but they are ultimately rational. Few are so married to certain channels that they would stubbornly refuse to engage in an obviously better environment.
The reason the debate emerged is because, deep down, we accept two realities. First, we know that the way businesses define the “right channel” is not customer-centric in nature. When a business defines chat as the “right channel,” it might be because it is cheaper and more scalable than a phone call – not because the customer will actually get better support.
Second, we know that our journeys are full of friction. Switching between touch points usually requires additional effort, whether in the form of changing the channel or interface you’re using, waiting on hold, or repeating information. And so we know that when we guide a customer to a given channel, we are effectively locking them into what we probably know is an inferior experience.
The takeaway, then, is to ensure we are approaching journey orchestration the right way. Are we designing individual channel experiences based on what customers want to get out of those channels? Are we transparently explaining why a particular channel is right for them so that they start to gain awareness, trust, and familiarity with new options? And, are we ensuring they can seamlessly move throughout the journey so that following the company’s recommended path will not restrict them from jumping back to their own?
If we can answer these questions in the affirmative, we can be confident that there will be more alignment between what we’re orchestrating and how customers are behaving.
BROOKE: It’s helpful to not view it as journey orchestration vs. autonomy, because in a perfect world customers will have both. A highly orchestrated journey should ultimately be a positive thing, not a form of constraint.
However, customers can, at times, see these journeys as a way to deflect them, force them into a journey they don’t want or give them no way to reach an actual human. To mitigate the risk of customers forming this unhelpful perception, they must offer alternative options. Although brands may think they ‘know best’ customers don’t always agree. Additionally, it is impossible to know exactly how a customer feels, thinks and decides on their journey. Giving them every option to succeed, however, is the one way we can ensure they embark on a journey that works for them.
At the end of the day, there are many benefits of creating a highly orchestrated journey, and many customers will reap those benefits. But, brands have to be aware that some customers will always decide to piece together their own journey, and that is ok.
Breaking down walls and giving customers alternative options and channels to engage keeps everyone happy.
AUDREY: How can business leaders be cognizant of when their personalization initiatives actually create more friction and work for the customer?
At the end of the day, there are many benefits of creating a highly orchestrated journey, and many customers will reap those benefits. But, brands have to be aware that some customers will always decide to piece together their own journey, and that is ok.
BRIAN: On the surface, some may think that the rise of automated, digital communication is relaxing the standard for personalization. In reality, it is raising it. It is certainly true that there may be fewer opportunities (not to mention less value) for “polite personalization” in today’s landscape. The “small talk” and friendly bonding that we associated with the classic brick-and-mortar experience does not really fit into the digital CX landscape and is even losing its luster in physical stores. More and more of today’s customers want to go about their business and move on.
But at the end of the day, what the rise of digital has really done is underscore the importance of competing on convenience. And personal customer data absolutely improves convenience. When I know who a customer is, how they typically like to engage, what products they have purchased, and what previous support interactions they have had, I can better anticipate their needs, and more efficiently route them to the right destination. I can also avoid certain authentication steps and repetitive questions that notoriously added friction in the contact center of yesterday.
The key, then, is to hold your experience accountable for that personalization-convenience pathway. What do I know about this customer and what steps does that knowledge eliminate from the CX journey? If the answer is none – or, worse, if I’ve actually added steps – I know I failed.
What’s also important to remember is that customers are increasingly cognizant of what brands know about them in the digital world. They know their web browser activity is being tracked. They know they are logging in prior to making a support inquiry. They see their account information and history on the chat screen. So when this information is not optimizing their journey – or, worse, when they’re asked to reshare the information – they feel twice as mad.
CUSTOMER TRUST:
An Essential Foundation For Customized Experiences
Part of managing a prolific business has always involved finding creative ways to leverage the information they have on customers to drive sales. The advent of systems that capture first-party data, and later third-party data, were transformational not only for marketing teams, but businesses across the board, as it led to increasingly tailored offerings for increasingly specific customers.
In CX, the push towards customization has resulted in mixed results for customers themselves. Customization for customization’s sake has proven less than worthwhile, raising important questions about the ethical guidelines of what customer data should be used for. And as legislative bodies around the world crack down on cookies and thirdparty data retrieval, organizations have to be more intentional and strategic about what they collect and how it is used.
Personalization can deliver unique value to customers when done well, but CX practitioners walk a thin line in balancing the things that actually value to customers and the types of data that is easier to collect and action on. CCW Digital sat down with Tutu Adenle, an industry expert in CX and operations with experience at American Express and Twitter, to investigate this delicate balance.
customers share data, they expect experiences that save them time, anticipate their needs, and reduce friction. That might mean anticipating and resolving issues proactively. The benefit must feel tangible; something that customers can identify quickly. It can be convenience, speed, or the type of personalization that makes their journey smoother and more rewarding.
Q: The customer perception of personalization often results in a trade off: customers are only incentivized to share their personal data if they believe there will be real, tangible benefit. What can that customer benefit look like?
A: The most powerful customer benefit is relevance. When
In addition to this, at the heart of personalization is trust. Customers are only willing to share their personal data if they see a clear return on that investment. The return doesn’t have to be flashy—it needs to be practical, tangible, and rooted in making their lives easier. That could look like surfacing proactive solutions before they even notice a problem, or tailoring recommendations to their unique needs.
When customers feel that a brand knows them well enough to remove friction and add value, they’re more willing to engage and share.
Q: How do you ensure personalized experiences, or touchpoints that collect customer data don’t come off as invasive or creepy?
A: The line between “personalized” and “creepy” is thin, and it comes down to transparency and intent. You need to ensure that customers always know why their data is being used and what value they get in return. When we frame personalization as enabling—not extracting—it feels like a service rather than surveillance. For example, proactively suggesting a simpler path through a process feels helpful, but asking for unnecessary
Customers are only willing to share their personal data if they see a clear return on that investment. The return doesn’t have to be flashy—it needs to be practical, tangible, and rooted in making their lives easier. That could look like surfacing proactive solutions before they even notice a problem, or tailoring recommendations to their unique needs.
details without context feels intrusive. Clear communication and respect for boundaries build trust. Customers want to know why their data is being collected and how it will be used.
Q: Customers still overwhelmingly prefer to speak with a human agent over AI self-service. What essence of human-to-human interactions make this preferable? What could convince customers that AI is equally adequate or even more helpful than a human?
A: Human-to-human interaction resonates because it delivers empathy, reassurance, and understanding—qualities that can’t be reduced to speed alone. When something is complex or emotionally charged, customers want to feel heard. That said, AI has a critical role to play.
When AI is designed with accuracy, contextual intelligence, and seamless handoff to humans when nuance is needed, AI can deliver speed and consistency that customers value. Over time, as AI continues to demonstrate its ability to resolve issues quickly and reliably, customers will see it not as a replacement, but as a trusted first step.
Q: Customers also consistently prefer to engage with brands in the channel of their choosing. When they’re seeking a simple resolution, they can be incensed by the need to sign into their account or download an app. How can customers be led through this digital journey without experiencing friction?
A: Today’s customers want choice, simplicity, and flexibility. They don’t want to be forced into
Frictionless experiences respect both the customer’s time and their preferred channel, which builds loyalty and trust over the long term.
one particular journey or navigating multiple channels just to solve a basic issue. The role of brands is to design digital journeys that are lightweight and intuitive, meeting customers where they are and capturing only what’s essential. For simple resolutions, that could mean one-click pathways. For more complex needs, it could mean offering seamless escalation without forcing customers to repeat themselves. Reducing friction is about respecting the customer’s time, which in turn strengthens loyalty. “Customers want simplicity on their terms. If a resolution is quick, they don’t want to jump through hoops.
Underexplored Dimensions of Personalization in the Digital Age
For today’s brands, differentiation is just as reliant on the customer journey as it is on the product itself.
Personalization is not merely an elevation of customer service or a value-add to a formidable product: it has become a core expectation of any digital customer experience. According to CCW Digital data, 30% of customers are willing to pay more for a highly personalized experience. As more brands are able to offer the expediency and convenience of Amazon and big box stores, customers increasingly expect their payment to go towards an elevated level of service.
Personalized experiences do not require overtly customized content for each customer, in fact, the personalized element should not always be apparent at all. Personalization in
digital experiences is more of a function of the way data is leveraged, and developing personalized experiences requires a deep understanding of customers. Experience data alone isn’t enough–there are insights that can be gleaned across the organization that contribute to a holistic picture of the customer journey, including its weak points.
In this discussion with CCW Digital, Sarah Lazun, the Director of Customer Analytics and Data Science at Nespresso, explained how Nespresso intelligently uses data to create opportunities to celebrate their customers.
Q: How does your team support the customer journey?
A:
Our team is essential to the customer journey. There would be no CX improvements without our team, both from a data enablement place, but primarily from an insights perspective. Most of our team’s work is bringing insights and things that we’re seeing in the customer journey, like attrition spiking or lifetime value going down. Our team is working to uncover customer pain points, and how to address them, and what’s adding future value for the customer, and thus Nespresso. A big area of this is understanding why customers leave us. We can flag early signals and even try to prevent that from happening with modeling and prediction. We’re really tied in every day to making sure the customer experience across channels is improving, and that our offerings, even down to a product perspective, are tied to consumer insights.
Q:I know “customer obsession” is one of Nespresso’s values, what does this actually mean in practice?
A: At Nespresso we are so focused on customer service, it probably overweights our decisions. Maybe more than it should from a financial perspective, so there are a couple areas where this comes through. For one, we spend a lot of resources on 24/7 human support. This has always been part of Nespresso DNA, that we can be reached at any time. We spend a lot of money on making sure that we’re accessible, that we’re able to troubleshoot, and that we’re always providing hands-on service.
Q: How does personalization fit into the mix– what are the personalized experiences Nespresso is proud to offer?
A:
We’re using our data and our understanding of the customer journey to create these personalized journeys, almost behind the scenes, that the customer doesn’t necessarily pick up on. It’s not like, “Wow, I know I’m getting all of this hyper-targeted messaging,” it’s just that we’re guiding them through the Nespresso journey, based on the signals that they’re giving us and our knowledge of the ideal path. But also offering, what I would call choice points. For example, if someone starts using our app, they’re a way better customer. But that may not be for everyone. Some people really want to call our call center and order coffee. We’re not going to force people to do it, but we’re going to give little nudges, and if they say no, it’s like never mind, this is your journey.
Q:
How does AI fit into this mix of designing and calibrating journeys? What does Nespresso’s customer AI strategy look like?
A:
Nestle’s a little behind the times in these things, but our team, in particular, is driving this forward for Nespresso. Teams are definitely taking ownership of where AI fits in their realms more than an overarching corporate strategy, and I think that’s working. In the past, our team would probably lean in and say we’d own AI, but it’s too prolific, and there’s too many use cases for one team to own it all. So are adopting this notion that everyone needs to be educated on AI in their realm. For example, customer service is doing an amazing job going out
into the market, talking to their vendors, and understanding decision points of what should be a human interaction and what is okay for AI, like a chatbot or a voice assistant, to take on. Looking at if it’s a low-value interaction, or if it’s not a heated exchange, they’re basically going through decision trees of how to parse that out, and I think that’s great. That’s an amazing example of how to free up bandwidth for their employees to handle high-value, high-touch situations, and let AI do what it’s good at and handle the routine questions.
This is happening more and more in our organization, like, where in the customer journey is it okay to use AI? Where is it better for human touch? Really understanding the circumstances. You need some emotional intelligence to put yourself in the customer’s shoes of where it is or is not okay. But our team has been using AI for a while in the form of machine learning. We have a lot of models and predictions that are behind the scenes, which is technically traditional AI. But we’re starting to leverage more cutting-edge stuff, where we can use large language models to understand customer sentiment. We’re definitely moving in a direction as a company of understanding that the customer is using AI in their everyday, and has way more of a trust and understanding than they did before. There’s data out there now around how much people trust AI in decision making. It’s kind of alarming, actually. And so we’re trying to future-proof even our website, like, how do we handle people using Chat GPT for search, and when they land on our site, is it pulling the right information? That’s the new SEO. So there’s a lot going on that we’re thinking about.
Sarah Lazun is the Director of Data Science at Nespresso. She started her journey at the company eleven years ago as a CRM Analyst with a focus on the performance of Nespresso’s direct marketing campaigns. Over her career at Nespresso, Sarah has been at the forefront of modernizing the company’s data infrastructure and expanding its analytical capabilities. In 2022, Sarah was one of the founders of the Data and Insight Department, which serves as an objective entity to drive data-informed strategy at Nespresso.
SARAH LAZUN
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