Lessons in the Magic of Personalization and Gamification

My wife and I just celebrated our 28th honeymoon. Continuing with our Dave Ramsey plan, we saved up for a four-day vacation to Disney World. We chose Disney because of its level of inescapable immersion. We also wanted to feel special through their execution of personalization.

We opted to use the Disney MagicBand wearable device, which is much like a rubberized bracelet. It serves as an authentication key for purchases and hotel room access as well as other interactive opportunities. Both of our MagicBands in our personally chosen color came mounted in a box with our names printed alongside them. They could have just shipped a couple of pieces of plastic, but they used their data to demonstrate their level of attention. And that put us in the mood to start immersing ourselves in the pamphlets they also sent.

One of the newer experiences we enjoyed at the Magic Kingdom was a “Pirate Adventure.” After receiving a map, we went on an expedition to find various locations hidden around the park. For us, each location was marked by a skull. When we tapped our MagicBands, we were treated to an unraveling narrative that put us into the thick of the story. Upon completing several adventures, we went back to a cast member who had us tap into the system. The data showed our progress and we were treated to a fast pass for any ride — except for the Peter Pan ride, of course.

The interesting point was that they gamified our data and rewarded us according to our personal choices through a series of adventures. In spirit, this is how Genesys Predictive Engagement works: It studies consumer behavior and gives agents recommendations to personalize engagements, even enabling them to choose which channel would be best for the customer interaction.

Toward the end of the day we headed to Tomorrowland and discovered that Space Mountain wasn’t working. We walked across the park to re-ride some of our morning attractions and discovered that the Pirates of the Caribbean ride was also broken down. So, we (unsuccessfully) tried Space Mountain again before calling it an evening. Because the ride was still down, I asked a cast member about a fast pass for later. After a quick scan of my MagicBand, the cast member had a look of, “Oh yeah, you’ve been walking around a bit.” I didn’t see his actual screen, so I can’t say with certainty if he had access to my geolocation pathing through my MagicBand or some other data. Whatever data he saw, he connected with us personally and gave us a fast pass that was good for anything at any park over our stay.

That data helped him determine how magical his response should be. Personalization, in this case, was used to recover disappointment without overdoing it or being too costly. In the contact center, personalization can be used for effective customer retention or problem resolution.

Personalization takes on many forms and some are more subtle than others. Wherever we went, and after “tapping in,” with our bands, we were acknowledged with, “Thank you Mr. McCoy” and “Enjoy your day Mrs. McCoy.” We both loved that; however, the feeling of being authorized through our MagicBands was even more important and interesting. The real magic was in eliminating the resistance to get where we wanted to go. I didn’t have to manage a physical ticket for fast passes; I didn’t have to reach into my wallet for a room key or show proof of our reservation. Every interaction was fast and fluid.

In this way, personalization was in the form of knowledge of authorization. The contact center can use personalization to get a customer of a certain status to an interaction experience that’s appropriate for that status.  There’s no more need to “Press 1,” when the incoming phone number is immediately matched with known status and I am authorized to automatically connect with an agent most likely to meet my needs.  This fluidness of passing through status checkpoints was addictive — and I laughed when we got home and my MagicBand didn’t open my front door. Yes, I was still wearing it.

The Cloud Contact Center Magic
Notice I keep coming back to the MagicBand. It became the unifying key for all the special experiences we had all week. And this is the equivalent to your cloud contact center. The Genesys Cloud^TM platform integrates the channel interfaces with previous interactions stored in any number of CRM systems and third-party data stores. This fuels your omnichannel experiences and the opportunity to create meaningful customer interactions.

When we decided to spend money on the trip, we didn’t know for certain what it was going to be like. We hadn’t been to Disney World in over a decade. However, our expectation was established years ago — during our 10th honeymoon celebration at Disney.

At that time we had enjoyed a dinner and came back to our room where we found a card wishing us a “Happy Anniversary.” It was flawlessly signed with Mickey and Minnie’s handwriting. We never told a cast member our purpose for the stay, but somehow they put together the data to create an experience for us. We’ve never forgotten how special we felt by this act of personalization. When you bring together a cloud interface for customer interactions, intelligence to weave data into a customer narrative and a willingness to execute on a commitment for personalization, your customers will never forget it.

Contact Genesys to learn more about predictive engagement. And find out what the Genesys Cloud platform can do for you. Request a demo today.