Taking Personalised User Experience to a new Level: Selective Contact

Turns out, the transition from a digital generic advertising experience to a personalised one has been smooth. Across the globe, leading e-commerce players facilitated the growth of personalised user experience, using the browsing and search history of the user to help them with relevant product ads. Today, for an average consumer online, a personalised experience is a routine. For the advanced consumers, who have spent over a decade surfing through the internet, anything outside the norm of a personalised experience is a disruption. From our emails to push notifications, personalised experience from any app engulfs our smartphone experience. However, the number of apps installed in one’s phone, ranging from six to ten and encompassing cab hailing services, grocery procuring, flight booking, meal ordering, and so on can prove to be a clutter in the name of personalised user experience, for too many push notifications can prove to be a headache.

This is where the personalised user experience fails. Apps and other enterprises may have learned what we need but what they haven’t realised is where we need them. I might like to have my flight ticket recommendations over an email, but that does not mean I want them in my inbox or as a push notification too. Often, one finds their email inbox to be cluttered by advertisements, relevant to their needs, but irrelevant to the medium. So, where does the solution lie? For one, apps and enterprises must invest in platforms that allow users to choose the platforms where they wish to be connected via. For instance, a food ordering service must help users to select from the medium where they want to receive details about their order. However, given the advertising gimmicks, most enterprises and apps will not find enough incentive to invest in such a medium, for it shall constrain their mediums of advertising. Thus, the likes of Amazon and Uber shall avail every possible channel to reach out to their consumers. The onus ultimately lies with the user to choose the medium they wish to receive notifications from. One could argue that tweaking the phone settings could help users customise their notification process.

However, more than the settings, it’s about enabling a far better-personalised experience for the user. What if my flight booking app had no access to my email, given I am anyway receiving all my confirmations in my SMS inbox? In recent times, with data protection and privacy laws taking over the news cycles across the globes, the users have been given back the rightful ownership of their data. Therefore, from here, it is only apparent that is faults in our advertising process is corrected, for a personalised experience is not about what I need, but when and where I need it.

Dear apps and enterprises, inform me, sell me cute stuff, but for the love of experience, do not annoy me.