“Personalization”: The New White Glove Service. Here are 4 Benefits of Giving Your Guests A Unique Experience

White-glove, personalized customer service is the future of the customer experience.

The future of customer service has already arrived, according to McKinsey & Company. Consumers are accustomed to receiving performance notifications and software update prompts for laptops and mobile devices. The same goes for vehicle maintenance reminders.

So, it should be no surprise that today’s consumers also expect brands to offer a more personalized customer experience.

“The next horizon is for customer service to be completely customized to each individual. When a customer calls a contact center, the agent can pull up a profile detailing the customer’s every interaction with the company, from previous service calls to payment schedules to marketing segmentation,” says McKinsey & Company.

“Such personalized service can be compared to the ‘white-glove service’ long associated with high-value customers and transactions.”

What is white-glove customer service?

White-glove customer service surpasses customers’ expectations by personalizing their experience, prioritizing their needs and solving issues before they arise, according to HubSpot:

” The key to providing white-glove service is being exceptional in your care, attention, and attitude toward customers.”

In the past, white-glove service was reserved primarily for affluent customers with a high lifetime value, says HubSpot. Restaurants and retailers met the customer’s every need, often provided by staff members donning white gloves. White-glove service is also offered for moving and setting up expensive items in wealthy customers’ homes.

“Today, white-glove customer service isn’t about providing a premium experience to your most profitable or valuable buyers,” says HubSpot.

“It’s about providing a premium experience to everyone, so that they enjoy the best your company has to offer, remain loyal to your business and spread positive word-of-mouth about your services.”

Brands can’t provide white-glove service from the customer call center or another support department alone, say McKinsey & Company:

“To offer high-touch service to everyone, customer service can no longer be an isolated department. It must be tied into every business unit that interacts with the customer, including sales, marketing, product design, collections and the front line.”

White-glove service offers a high return in investment and can lead to cost savings for your brand by speeding up the process of resolving customer issues, says McKinsey & Company.:

“While such services require technology investments and shifts in organizational structure, these investments and shifts will soon become mandatory as companies compete to meet customer expectations. All functions will benefit from the enterprise-wide visibility required to build comprehensive profiles of individual customers.”

Benefits of providing white-glove service

Today’s customers expect highly personalized service, and brands can benefit from providing white-glove customer service in the following ways, says McKinsey and Company.

1. Gain a deeper level of customer trust and loyalty

Brands can create lifelong customers by providing a “seamless experience across all touchpoints” and offering services or products that meet individual customer’s needs,” says McKinsey & Company.

2. Reduced call center volume

Along with digital support channels, white-glove customer service provides an improved prediction of a customer’s needs and intentions, resulting in increased first-call resolution and reduced repeat calls, along with the average time it takes customer support to resolve issues.

3. Reduced costs

Unlike traditional customer service, which offers the same standard service and solutions for all customers, brands that provide personalized, white-glove service lower the cost of running your business.

“Companies that know customers individually can tailor solutions to meet individual customer needs, possibly at lower cost to the organization — for example, offering a simple apology rather than a gift card,” says McKinsey & Company.

4. Increased revenue

Providing white-glove customer service in the past meant hiring specialized, highly trained call center agents and expensive concessions. Today brands must invest instead in IT, data management, advanced analytics as well as changes to training and management, but those investments can increase revenue, says McKinsey & Company:

“A systematic analytics capability enables organizations to analyze the whole population of customers — after which adding a new person comes at almost negligible cost.

“Once a company has developed a methodology to identify needs, execution is far simpler, and the service is ultimately cheaper to deliver. This is increasingly true as digital capabilities become more ubiquitous and less expensive.