Personalization occurs when a company knows about enough of your likes or dislikes and offers something appealing (based on the textbook). Nowadays, many companies use this to create customer satisfaction and establish a good relationship with customers.    

Cookies are used for personalization by websites. For example, when you use the Google web search engine, the sever remembers your search habits and provides customized results for you. Also when you check the box "remember me" (when logging in) then it will automatically log you in without the hassle of typing a user ID and password every time. 

Membership is a typical way of personalization. For example, when you become a member of Costco and buy something from Costco, the product information that you buy is recorded on the server. Using analytical CRM, they can predict specific items they need and monitor which customer likes or dislike what kind of products. They advertise tailored products to customers that they want to target. In my experience, I bought a case of beer at Costco and it was recorded on their server. A couple of weeks later, I got alcohol coupons from Costco and I actually used the coupon to buy alcohol. Their personalization marketing influenced me. It can apply to other products in the same way.

Access reports that we made in class can generate personalization information. For example, I made Access reports for a hospital. Patients' information will be recorded and used when they visit the hospital the next time. Doctors will perform customized service for them. When you visit a hospital for the first time, you need to fill out a lot of information about yourself. However, when you visit the same hospital again, they already have your information so you do not need to provide your biological information (such as my height, weight, brood type etc.) again. That creates customer satisfaction.   

Many services or organizations use a registration form. The customer's information including gender, region, ethnicity, etc will be used for customized offerings. For example, registration information that I provided for campus housing was used for personalization. They knew that I am in the college's business program and they used that information for personalization and put me into the business themed apartment.  

Information from surveys is used for figuring out tastes of customers related to a product or service. Even anonymous costumers' information can be useful through analytical CRM tool. There was a survey about Coca-Cola Zero. The company used feedback from the survey to figure out the name "Zero". 

Personalization is an important aspect of CRM. It will help to determine which type of marketing and sales campaign to launch, which customers to target and at what time. Using CRM with business intelligence will help companies to make better decisions and get huge rewards (based on the textbook). However, there is a privacy issue with personalization. Facebook is currently involved in this issue because of the company's rapid growth.  

References