Product customization is the key to serving your customer base successfully. Not all of your customers want the same thing or use your product the same way. Product customization is essential for delivering a personalized customer experience to each segment of users, and can drive customer loyalty and increase customer satisfaction.

Not All Your Customers are the Same

Regardless of whether you sell a physical product or online software, your customer base has different wants and needs. Remembering that all of your customers are different, is critical to create a product that is attractive to as many people as possible. As the old saying goes – if you try to appeal to everyone, you’ll appeal to no one. Instead of being just generally suitable for your clientele, you can customize your product to be specifically perfect to every different segment of users.

Millennials are particularly attracted to the idea of customization.  “millennials (13 to 31-year-olds) have grown up with customization, and naturally expect it in every aspect of their lives.” Brands have been developed around the idea of hyper-personalization, which makes it possible for everyone to get exactly what they want at the press of a button.

Customers love things made just for them

Customization is a great business strategy because it makes customers happier; and happy customers are repeat customers! In retail, we found that 1 out of every 5 customers is willing to pay 20% more for a personalized or exclusive product. Similarly a new study on customization found, “customization increases perceived service quality, customer satisfaction, customer trust, and ultimately customer loyalty toward a service provider.”

Why? For the very simple value that customization brings to the customer. Customers who can customize their experience find value either through exclusivity, in the form of a personalized, unique product,  or specificity in the form of a feature that works in a way that they would like.

Customization as a Feature

There’s no denying that customization is an expensive affair. It takes time and money to offer multiple versions of the same product. Your development team needs to dedicate resources to building out new customization options. There’s also a higher risk factor, since more customization means more complexity. In retail, this might look like you are shipping the wrong customized product. In software, you might see bugs pop up as there are more and more different ways to use your product, that you may not have even thought of testing yet.

All this means that you need to treat customization like any other feature in your product. Decide whether it’s worth it to add more complexity to the product. Are users asking for what you’re thinking of building? How much time will it take to build and support this feature? What else will be impacted by this customization? Will the additional customization support or devalue your existing brand?

The most important questions to ask when considering customization is “who are my customers?” and “what do they really want?” The answers to this question will help you identify places where customization can really help boost customer loyalty and satisfaction.