Understanding how they differ and what you can to increase both personalization and customization in your online offering are essential to building a long-lasting online business. This especially holds true when you sit down to develop your products and content strategy, so that you can choose the right approach for you and your business.

Gartner defines personalization as “a process that creates a relevant, individualized interaction between two parties designed to enhance the experience of the recipient.” This means that you can see personalization as any action that you take that tailors the experience of your customer to information that you’ve already learned about them. For example, using their real name in email communications and offering packages tailored to previous usage patterns are two great ways to personalize your interactions.

According to the Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, customization is “building, fitting or altering according to individual specifications.” While this may sound eerily familiar to the definition of personalization, it’s not. Although both terms deal with tailoring an experience to the user’s interests, the ways they go about achieving this goal are quite different.  

The Difference Between Personalization and Customization

The main difference between these two terms is mostly about who performs the actions that change the experience. While both describe the act of changing the users’ experience according to their individual characteristics and needs, personalization is done by a company on behalf of their customer. Users customize products and services according to their needs, although organizations do the work of enabling the customization options. 

Personalization relies on an organization’s ability to derive insights about their individual customers using data that they’ve gathered. Organizations then use this data to modify the experience according to their users’ tastes, preferences and characteristics. Today’s savvy online customers are aware that innovative organizations have the ability to personalize their communications and offerings. And they expect nothing less.

Personalization helps to increase brand loyalty and deliver a better customer experience. It can also seriously increase your sales and reduce marketing costs. According to the Harvard Business Review, personalization can reduce acquisition costs by up to 50 percent, increase revenues by between 5-15 percent and increase the impact of marketing by 10-30 percent.

While customization and personalization both deal with modifying products, services, communications and experiences, personalization is far more impactful when it comes to delighting the customer. This is mostly because it makes customers feel like they’re being catered to and are valuable to the brands that they interact with. 

Consolto Delivers Powerful Personalization & Customization Options

Consolto delivers an advanced, robust live video chat platform that was built from the ground-up to help brands develop better relationships with their customers. We realized the importance of personalization and customization during customer interactions and developed powerful personalization capabilities within the platform. 

Live video chat. There’s no remote interaction more personal than live video chat. Consolto’s live video chat capabilities enable online businesses to get up close and personal with their clients. 

Mini-CRM. The only way to personalize is to constantly gather, save and leverage specific data about your customers. Consolto’s live video chat platform features a mini-CRM that lets you add specific information about clients to their profile in the CRM. Take notes, record meetings and add action items to each customer profile so that you can easily access the info later. Use this information to personalize your interactions and delight your customers.

Analytics. Leverage real-time analytics about the way each individual customer behaves on your website. Understand what their interests are and how your products can solve their pain points. Use this data to prepare yourself before every interaction so that you already have a tailored offering that meets the specific personal needs of your client.

Communication channels. Give your customers the option of reaching out to you across their preferred communication channels, be they live chat, SMS, phone or popular instant messaging platforms like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger. Study their behavior to learn which communication channels they like most and then customize your list to make it easier for them to reach out the way they like most.

Proactive engagement. Proactively reach out to any website visitor with Consolto’s live video chat. Surprise and delight your customers by initiating live video chat interactions directly with them, while they’re on your website.