EPISODE 58 OF WHAT WOULD THEY DO? THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PODCAST FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS
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In today’s episode, we embark on a customer experience adventure… straight into my rural Sydney coffee scene. Because nothing reveals the truth about customer loyalty faster than a café.
Let’s break down the 3 levels of personalisation every online business owner should understand, especially if you want more repeat buyers, more engagement, and less churn.
If personalisation in your business currently looks like “Hey {first_name}”… this episode will lovingly show you what’s possible and open your eyes to a new way of thinking.
What we cover:
The difference between personalisation that feels helpful vs personalisation that feels creepy
The 3 levels of personalisation (coffee shop edition)
How to apply this to your online business
Soundbites:
“The best personalization is predictive. Predicting what someone might need to hear from you, might need to see from you, might need to interact with based on the signals they’ve sent you.”
“Personalization creates trust, it creates a safety blanket where people feel like they’re in the right place and they don’t have to second guess whether you have another agenda. It makes them feel like they belong simply because you are on the same wavelength and you just get them.”
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Episode Transcript:
Nadine Nethery (00:01)
Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today I am taking you on a bit of an adventure into my home town. Yes you heard right. So I live on the rural outskirts of Sydney Australia and that means idyllic scenery but also very little choices when it comes to your morning coffee, eating out,
experiences etc. You get the hint. Country town feel in the middle of a metropolitan area. And I love my coffee, it’s my first go-to in the morning. So basically for me there are only two real choices here. So one is the local bakery which is run by a somewhat divisive
business owner, he’s very media savvy, so regularly gets the bakery featured on national TV, which means on weekends, locals are drowned out by people from inner Sydney who want to go for a bit of a scenic drive, get out of the big smoke and, have a daily adventure. But that also means that most of the time, the locals who
pay their bills and are their customers during the week, are just regular customers on the weekends. So even though I usually visit several times a week, drop in for baked goods, get my coffee, nobody knows my name, nobody recognises my face, and nobody knows my order because people don’t take notice, because they feel like they don’t have to, right? They’ve got a huge audience.
a huge profile and people are coming anyway. So yeah, they just don’t see obviously the need to look after their local customers, their regulars. Option two until recently because it closed down, I’m so sad, was the coffee shop next door which is linked to a nursery as I said, rural Sydney so there’s lots of space here.
And the nursery next door to where we live is a destination again for weekenders, mostly older people who come to have a look at camellias. So it’s a leading nursery for camellias in Sydney and same thing here. So people make a conscious decision during the week on weekends to come to the nursery. They drop into the cafe next door to get their coffee fix, have some lunch, have a great conversation with
our husband, daughter, etc. The experience there is very different. So as soon as you walk in, you are greeted by first name. we’d frequent similar amounts of times during the week, but I’m greeted by, Nadine, hey Jed, because we used to go every Friday when Jed wasn’t at school yet for our baby chino and my morning coffee and potentially a banana bread.
But yeah, the owner greeted us by first name. She usually had saved our favorite table for us. She knew that Jed was a baby Chino kind of kid. I loved my latte, banana bread, or potentially Vegemite toast for the Aussies here. if you know, know. So she would just sense check banana bread or Vegemite toast. What is it going to be? But basically she had your drink order ready before you came. She
was expecting you. She had put aside your favorite table and you felt like a VIP, right? Jed loved going. He was exchanging smiles with the staff in the kitchen. And it was just an all round feel good experience every time we went. And to take it one step further, we usually went on Mother’s Day. So my husband would book a table. We could walk next door. It was nice and easy, low key because we’d usually go to.
in-laws for lunch, it was just so good, so convenient. And if he happened to leave it too late, which isn’t unusual, the owner would actually send us a message to make sure we didn’t miss booking a table when she saw that the bookings were filling up. So she was anticipating what
we were potentially thinking to make sure we’re not missing out. And that is personalization at the highest level.
And I feel like in the online business space, personalization gets this bad rap because businesses think personalization is adding someone’s name in a subject line to increase open rates and make it feel more personal or sending a weird, cart’s about to close. I saw you clicked on the sales page. You sure you don’t want to join type of email?
So real personalisation, next level personalisation, like the one I just shared with you is not about using data, looking at clicks and using that to then be creepy. It’s about recognising behaviour and acting on it in a strategic way.
So taking the barista example here and sticking with that just to help you turn it into something, somewhat more accessible So there are three levels of personalization, coffee shop edition So level one is recognition. So recognizing your customer.
They know your name, they greet you by name, and that makes you feel seen. If you want to take it up a notch, there is familiarity. So they not only know your name, they also know your usual order. They also remember your preferences, whether you like a sugar or not. And that makes you feel totally seen and
understood, right, beyond that level one And then the ultimate level is anticipation, which is where the magic lies. So the barrister can predict what you want before you ask. So that’s the Mother’s Day example here. They anticipate that you want to book a table. So they reserve one for you to make sure you don’t miss out.
They know when you’ll show up. So they know your patterns. They’re paying attention to your regular signals that you’re sending them and they act on them. And that not only makes you feel seen, understood, it also makes you feel cared for. Like they genuinely care about you and your experience within the cafe. And the best personalization,
in your business that you can implement in your online business is not reactive. It is predictive. So predicting what someone might need from you, might need to hear from you, might need to see from you, might need to interact with based on the signals they’ve sent you and the patterns that you can identify when it comes to their interaction with your business. people nowadays,
We have lots on our plates. So I am a mum of three. I have a business. My kids are sporty. So my WhatsApp goes off nonstop between, if I had to count it, probably at least seven WhatsApp channels between soccer, cricket, swimming. There is heaps. So, you know, your customer.
is tired. They don’t want to make more decisions. Like for me, I’m like, what are we having for dinner tonight? Option A, option B, and then kids come up with option C. I don’t want to make more decisions. Right? I also am surrounded by that much noise. Ads on Instagram, people trying to sell me things, you know, trying to keep up with my business Instagram account. I had enough. And people don’t want to choose from 75.
options every time they deal with a business. So if you put yourself into the cafe owner’s shoes here, the smart one, that is cafe number two, they’re not just being friendly. What they are doing is reducing friction. They’re making it super easy for you to come to the cafe, have the best time and leave without having to make decisions, without
having to ask for something without having them fix something that they got wrong. They are taking care of things for you. They are anticipating things so you can totally relax and know that this is the best experience you can have. The no brainer choice. If I had to pick cafe one or cafe two, I’d always go to cafe two.
And if you can reduce that friction in your online business, that means we touched on that in the last episode. you are not losing that momentum. You are helping your customer make an easy decision and give you an easy yes and thumbs up. So personalization.
we’ve touched on it, creates trust, it creates a safety blanket where people feel like they’re in the right place and they don’t have to second guess whether you have another agenda. it makes them feel like they belong simply because there’s that element of understanding again, right? Like you are on the same wavelength and you just get them. And it…
creates loyalty because if I have a next level experience where everything just feels easy, there’s no friction, I’m going to come back for more because I totally and thoroughly enjoyed that first time I came to your cafe or bought from you in the online business space. And most people don’t abandon businesses because the product is bad. The coffee in Cafe One is
perfectly fine. I don’t mind it. It’s potentially even better than the coffee in cafe two but they make me feel like a number and leave me totally deflated once I have fought my way through the queue to the register to then get attitude from the checkout staff. If you’re paying attention in your online business,
you are going to get easy yeses. People are feeling seen and they’re going to have an ongoing affinity with your brand. So now to link this all up to your online business. are your emails designed in a way that they feel like
they’re written for one person and one person only. Do your offers feel like the next logical step? So do they actually make sense in the bigger picture? Do you present the offers to them when they have shown you signals that they’re ready for them? And does your onboarding feel like, welcome, we expected you or well, now that you’re here, good luck. So if you want to have a competitive advantage in your online business, you
definitely need to pay more attention. If you are playing in the personalization space already, I can guarantee you that there’s a lot more potential, which is something that I explore in great detail in Retention Lab. I love going deep. I love looking at signals that your audience is sending you. And with my members, we are strategizing amazing.
gamification opportunities and behavior driven funnels. So if that is something you’re curious about, definitely check out Retention Lab. It’s linked up in the show notes. Another point here and a quick word of warning, just because we can doesn’t mean we should let that sink in because as tempting as it can be with all the data we have on hand, we don’t necessarily have to or should act.
on those because that’s when personalisation feels creepy. So if the way you use personalisation feels too much too soon, it’s not the right move. If it feels totally automated and cringy, it’s not the right move. If it feels like surveillance, like I’m watching you, I know you’re clicking, I know you’re doing this, not good. And if it’s self-serving you,
making more sales and pushing people into an agenda. It’s also a no-go. So personalization that feels good comes from a place of caring, caring for your audience, for their results and for their investment. Because ultimately again, if someone drops money because they feel pressured, they are not going to buy from you again. And ultimately in the long run, it is going to hurt your business more than not making that sale. So personalization,
that is strategic and designed in a fair good way is based on consent. So you want to ideally collect as much first party data. So that is data that your customers are providing you with voluntarily, whether that is via signup form, click in an email where you’re asking them to tell you whether they’re a service provider, a course creator, et cetera. So you can totally have clever ways in your emails to
encourage your subscribers to give you that first party data to volunteer information about themselves that you can then with consent use in your funnels, in your marketing, et cetera. good personalization also is subtle. So you should not know as a customer that this is based on behavior, on signals.
that you are sending the business. It needs to feel totally organic and it needs to make their life easier. Plus it can totally make your life easier because if that funnel is totally personalized, chances are people are going to buy more. Right? We established that Cafe One, Cafe Two. And personalization needs to be designed in a way that helps them reach their goals. So really personalizing the customer journey.
and giving them personalized recommendations means they reach their goals quicker, they solve their problems quicker, and they are ultimately going to come back to you to help them fix even more problems. So again, bringing it back to the cafe here, your customer, journey should feel like walking into your favorite cafe. Your customer should feel totally at home. your website is the actual cafe.
Right? That’s where they make themselves comfortable, get the vibe. Your emails then are the conversations you’re having with the staff, right? Where they’re potentially pointing you towards today’s special, the crowd favourites, to, you know, the best option for you. Your offers are the menu where people can suss out how they can work with you. And then your onboarding experience can be that first.
sip of your coffee, which is magical, right? If you like coffee, I’m sure you can relate. if your customer journey doesn’t feel like cafe number two, and it feels more like an airport food court, I just waved my parents goodbye. I’ve talked about it back to Germany. So I’ve just been at the airport having our last meal in an airport food court. Let me tell you, it’s not very inspiring.
But if your brand feels like an airport food court, don’t be surprised when nobody becomes a regular because they’re overwhelmed. No one knows them and they’re a number that’s transient and never to be seen again. So to leave you with one reflective question from this episode, I would love you to have a think about if your customer walked into
your business today, if your business were a cafe, would they feel recognized? Would they feel like you know them inside out? Would they feel supported? As in, would they know that you you’ll recommend the right things and you will take care of them? And would they feel like you know what they need next? So would you help them find their way around? Personalization ultimately is about
noticing things and reading between the lines and paying attention to subtle signals your guests are sending you and then actually doing something about it because you can collect all the data, you can collect all the signals. If you’re not acting on them, what good is it to you? So that’s it for today. Bit of a different episode. If you enjoyed it, send me a DM on Instagram and we can talk.
cafes all day long. Let me know your favorite coffee order. I’m a latte kind of girl I did mention. And yeah, if you enjoyed the podcast, if you would like more pointers, thought provokers like this one, please hit subscribe, follow along and I will be back in your Airpods next week. Have a good one.
