Member Article

Personal services; digital panacea or Faustian pact?

Personalisation is seen as the panacea for digital services; we’ll select the perfect song for you, the perfect gift for you, the perfect news, concert, tickets and holiday all just for you. And that personalisation is now moving up a gear with developments in 3D printing and personalised manufacturing.

The Personalisation of Everything is on its way. We’re entering a world where you’ll be able to buy clothes tailored to your exact needs, where you can sit in a chair perfectly moulded and styled just for you, whilst you relax and eat the perfect chocolate, dark with salt and raspberry please. And of course let’s not stop there, maybe my car will take me on my perfect route, whilst the seats and trim have been created just for me, and if I’m in need of medical care we can even produce and prescribe the perfect medicine formulated to meet my exact needs.

None of these things are impossible, in fact most of them are available now, or at least in development. For example, my super-smart colleagues are experimenting with 3D printed chocolate, with flavours and shapes tailored to your liking. We’re also well into developing digital manufacturing and supply chain capabilities which will enable this next wave of personalisation, like Healthbox from Holland and Barrett, which delivers “Personalised supplements straight to your door”.

But are these levels of personalisation always a good thing? We have moved way beyond Henry Ford’s world of any colour as long as it’s black, to a world of mass consumer choice. If that means everything is upgraded and tailored to me, surely that’s a good thing?

For me a couple of key points stand out. First is a lack of surprises. One of the things I think many of us enjoy are those genuine moments of discovery, when we stumble upon a new taste, place or sound so exciting we desperately want to share and tell. Often these things don’t happen by design, often they come out of unplanned actions, rather than carefully orchestrated ones. The problem with a lot of personal services is they try too hard to know us well, and then try too hard to keep us happy. They’re like the poor aunt who at Christmas thought you still loved football, when you’d already upgraded to The Killers. Like that aunt too many personalisation services take too narrow a view and are not random enough to deliver genuine surprise and delight. So that’s an opportunity, and in the world of digital every opportunity brings a risk, taking us to my second point.

The Faustian pact of data exchange. Clearly to get that level of personalisation the service needs to understand things about me, in the form of submitted and collected data, cleverly processed to deliver relevant and valuable recommendations or tailored to me. But how much of me do I need to give away for that to happen, and often do I even know I am giving it away? Anyone caught out by Facebook’s uncanny ad presentation following conversations, quickly turns off microphone access and wonders what else has been done with their conversations. The Cambridge Analytica data scandal took this to a new dimension with personal data being abused for political gain. Yet, as consumers, year by year, and generation by generation our threshold for what characterises ‘scary’ use of our data changes as the benefits become more apparent. The more we get back from personalisation, and the more we trust it, the more we open up access to our personal information. But let us down, or fail to reward us, and we’ll bring down the shutters and shut you out, following the Cambridge Analytica scandal earlier this year 1 in 20 Facebook accounts were shut by Brits and 54% changed their privacy settings.

So where should we go from here in managing the opportunities, disappointments and threats?

Clearly both consumers and providers can get value from personalisation, especially as we enter an age of personalised medicine and health. What’s needed is a strong understating of the right value exchange between consumers and services, and a service delivery that matches that.

When a brand offers personalisation, they need to really deliver it, to surprise and delight me, make me feel special, make it right for me, and like a good friend suggest different things that are right for me. In return I’ll trust you with my data, my preferences, and maybe some of my secrets. But abuse that trust at your peril. Because when you do, regardless of whether it’s deliberate or inadvertently, you’ll lose me not for a week or a month, but forever.

Rob Mettler is a digital expert at PA Consulting, the innovation and transformation consultancy.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by PA Consulting .