Today businesses are striving to be more customer focused than ever before, and that’s a good thing, but such a high focus on customer satisfaction leads to high levels of personalization for each individual customer. From a customer standpoint, this sounds great; however, customization for every individual customer can cause problems for a business and other consumers as well.
When individual customers have specific requests that are not typically offered, it is easy for businesses to be underprepared when dealing with these requests. The business may not have someone qualified to do what the customer has requested or it may simply take too much time, in which case other customers may be left waiting for longer amounts of time. This in turn worsens those other customers’ experience with the business.
It is almost impossible for a business to offer a good customer experience, low prices, and lots of room for individual customization. Businesses that exclusively market their products online have the highest potential for succeeding in all three areas, but they often lose money or make very little profit because they spend the effort to personalize for individuals and strive to offer a good experience, while maintaining low prices. This makes the customer happy, but isn’t the most sustainable business model.
For a business that operates both on and offline, it is more difficult to try to balance these three aspects. They may be able to offer customization through their online stores, but they will likely fall short in the physical location of the business. Companies with established physical stores want to make sure everyone has a good experience, rather than creating a great experience for one customer. They have to focus on the masses not the individual.
Purely brick and mortar businesses are practically unable to maintain the balancing act. If they offer extreme levels of customization their prices are likely to increase or the customers’ experience will worsen. There are a lot of tradeoffs to take into consideration when choosing what kind of experience you want to give your customers. At Navigation Advertising, we strive to help our clients consider the tradeoffs and find the balance that best fits their consumer base through effective advertising and marketing strategy.