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Mass customisation

 involves providing 

tailored content to a group with similar interests. This approach is sometimes also referred 

to as ‘

collaborative filtering

’.

All these personalisation techniques take advantage of the dynamic possibilities of web 

content. Users’ preferences are stored in databases and content is taken from a database. 

Personalisation can be achieved through several dynamic variables including:

● 

the customers’ preferences

● 

the date or time

● 

particular events

● 

the location.

Personalisation

Delivering individualised 

content through web 

pages or email.

Mass customisation

Delivering customised 

content to groups of 

users through web pages 

or email.

Collaborative 

filtering

Profiling of customer 

interest coupled with 

delivery of specific 

information and offers, 

often based on the 

interests of similar 

customers.

Loyalty drivers

Summary metric

1  Order fulfilment

Ship to target. Percentage that ship on time exactly as the 

customer specified.

2  Product performance

Initial field incident rate – the frequency of problems 

experienced by customers.

3   Post‑  sale  service  and 

support

On‑time,  first‑  time fix – the percentage of problems fixed on 

the first visit by a service rep who arrives at the time promised.

Source: Adapted and reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review from information on pp.  105–  13  

from ‘Your secret weapon on the web’, by Reichheld, F. and Schefter, P., in Harvard Business Review,   July– 

 August 2000. Copyright © 2000 by the Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, all rights reserved.

Table 9.4

Relationship between loyalty drivers and measures to assess their success 

at Dell Computer

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Chapter 9  Customer relationship management

Personalisation can also be used to offer innovative services. Online bookseller BOL 

(

www.bol.com

) allows customers to choose their favourite parts from different types of travel 

guides, perhaps history from the Rough Guides and maps from Lonely Planet, but excluding 

night clubs and restaurants. The personalised book can then be printed on demand on the 

customer’s printer.

A more typical personalisation service is that provided by the portals such as Google, 

Yahoo! and NetVibes. These enable users to configure their home page so that it delivers 

the information they are most interested in: perhaps their regional weather, the results from 

their soccer team and the prices of shares they have purchased.

Turning to negative aspects of personalisation, there are two chief difficulties. First, cost, 

for the reasons explained in the next section and, second, it may act as a barrier to users. 

For example, some personalisation requires the user to log in. This may be a problem if a 

customer has mislaid a password. Equally, for a new visitor to the site the need to apply for 

a password can be offputting and a customer may disappear, never to return. Effective per-

sonalisation will still enable a new visitor to view a good deal of content even if they do not 

have a password. Use of cookies can avoid the need for the customer to actively log in, with 

this occurring automatically.