Making It Personal: How to Profit from Personalization Without Invading Privacy

There are very few books on the personalization issue so far. This is one of them. And it's very good. The central DILEMMA of Kasanoff's book is this: No one can enjoy the benefits of personalization if he is not willing to share the personal information necessary to make those benefits possible. And yet, by sharing that information, the person is risking his privacy in the bargain. And the issue is much more complicated than most publications suggest: "Just as different customers have different needs from your business, different people have different levels of sensitivity with respect to protecting their own privacy". Kasanoff refers to a story that we have all already heard, but this time it has a different ending: "We would all like to get back to the old-fashioned service where you return to your local merchant and he remembers that you buy large white eggs and that you like a special kind of fabric. But we wouldn't think so wistfully about this type of relationship if the merchant had run off and shared intimate details of your life with the blacksmith, the saloon owner, and the dressmaker". Here are the four primary INDIVIDUAL BENEFITS OF PERSONALIZATION: 1. SAVE TIME: Eliminate repetitive tasks; remember transactional details; and recognize habits. 2. SAVE MONEY: Prevent redundant work; eliminate service components unnecessary to the person; identify lower cost solutions that meet all other specifications. 3. BETTER INFORMATION: Provide training; filter out information not relevant to a person; provide more specific information that is increasingly relevant to a person's interests; increase the reliability of information; replace "average" information with information specific to that person's environment. 4. ADDRESS ONGOING NEEDS, CHALLENGES, OR OPPORTUNITIES: Provide one-stop services; allow flexibility in work hours, job responsibilities, and benefits; accommodate unique personal preferences; recognize and reward achievement with special treatment. Here are 11 WAYS TO MAKE IT PERSONAL, i.e. this is how a firm can deliver the benefits of personalization: 1. COMBINE: Merge information a person already has with that of others, to provide additional insights. 2. COMPARE: Show how prices, quality, or specifications of one option match up to others. 3. CONNECT: In most large firms, data exist in "silos" or departments. Firms can connect this data, providing a more accurate picture of the firm's interactions with that person. The flip side of this is that connecting previous disparate data removes a level of privacy. 4. EXPLAIN: Clarify how, when, or why to use a product or service, or to perform a task, precisely when a person needs such help. 5. FIND: Locate a person, product, or service based on supplied specifications. 6. MONITOR: Track the status of events, news, or actions of others. 7. RECOMMEND: Suggest a course of action based on historical data, the current environment, or predictive models. 8. REMEMBER: Most people are stil

An enjoyable and provocative read, but very importantly, Bruce adjusts the dial and focuses a great deal on stakeholders and employees, who are, after all, critical elements in the achievement of customer satisfaction,loyalty, and profitability. Bruce provides lots of examples personalization and privacy (and the lack thereof) that make one gasp, think, and question some of the longer term ramifications. He also offers some reasonable solutions and guidelines to help companies prevent a privacy faux pas. Your next visit to the grocery store, weekend getaway, or web site will never be the same after you read this book!Enjoy and beware!

Mr. Kasanoff's book is a great way to open eyes. Whether its within your own corporation or your clients, this book is a great place to get literate about the intersection of privacy issues, 1-to-1/relationship marketing and customer experience. In addition to sketching out scenarios that bring the issues to life, Kasanoff shares helpful frameworks, both tactical and strategic, to help make the connections to your own business issues. I highly recommend reading it and I also recommend using it as a corporate educational tool.

I started jotting down some one-word descriptions of Making It Personal while I was reading it- Insightful Readable Practical Creative Compelling Important EntertainingBut then I forgot about taking notes. I guess I'll just have to add Absorbing to my list.Bruce does a wonderful job of presenting personalization and privacy issues in an amazingly accessible way. It's not pedantic. It's not ominous. It's not dry. Besides being extremely topical, it's a darned good read.