While 75% of companies believe that they provide good or excellent personalized services, only 48% of customers agree, according to new Twilio research.
Indeed, its State of Customer Engagement Report 2022 highlights a significant disconnect between how companies perceive their personalization strategies and the actual customer experience.
As such, the study indicates that companies must qualify their understanding of what it means to deliver “excellent personalization” in a new age of digital customer engagement.
Building on this point, Glenn Weinstein, Chief Customer Officer at Twilio, says: “True personalization means showing a real understanding of your customer. It goes beyond adding their name to the top of an email, into tailoring their experience based on everything the customer has shared, and it’s built on meaningful engagement and trustworthy first-party data.
Brands that show that they know their customers – and act on that knowledge – will win in today’s digital world.
Perhaps this seems a strong statement, yet personalization is becoming an increasingly important staple of digital CX. The research reflects this, finding that 83 percent of consumers believe it increases their engagement, with 98 percent of businesses agreeing.
Yet maybe this statistic also highlights that customers underappreciate the impact of personalization on their buying decisions.
Another finding that supports this assertion indicates that – on average – customers believe personalization increases their spending by 18%. Meanwhile, businesses report an average increase of 46%.
Such a significant rise is perhaps why Twilio Segment recorded a growth of 38% in the use of its personalization apps from 2019 to 2021.
More Fascinating Findings from The Twilio Report
The Twilio study uncovers lots more intriguing statistics that go beyond the topic of personalization and into the broader customer engagement arena. Standouts include:
- Companies that invested in digital customer engagement over the past two years have enjoyed an average 70% increase in top-line revenue.
- 81% of companies rely on third-party cookies to fuel CX strategies — despite the data source not being available after 2023.
- 95% of B2C companies think that consumers trust them to protect data, yet just 65% of consumers actually do
- Gen Zs and Millennials are more than twice as likely as Baby Boomers to have experienced digital fatigue in the past 30 days. To combat this, Twilio suggests: “Creating better (not more) interactions can ensure business doesn’t suffer as a result.”
Twilio worked with Lawless Research to survey a mixture of consumers and business leaders to gather these results. They also aggregated data from trillions of interactions enabled through the Twilio Flex platform.
Interesting in gaining more insights from recent Twilio research? Check out our article: Customers are Receiving Too Many Messages from Brands
