Today’s customers expect the hyper-personal touch

Scottish businesses are facing a seismic shift in what customers expect – and how those expectations must be met. Today, personalisation is no longer a pleasant surprise; it’s a baseline requirement. Consumers, conditioned by the likes of Amazon, Spotify, and Netflix, now expect seamless, hyper-relevant experiences. The bar has risen, and businesses that fail to meet it risk becoming irrelevant.

This is especially true for younger audiences. 67 per cent of Gen Z and 64 per cent of Millennials wish they spent less time online. But these consumers aren’t anti-digital – they’re anti-waste. They want fewer clicks, less noise, and more clarity.

Hyper-personalisation delivers that by filtering out the irrelevant and surfacing what matters most. To succeed, businesses must reimagine the customer experience, where the journey is not just a series of isolated transactions, but a living, evolving relationship. This requires moving beyond static personas and outdated segmentation, and instead harnessing real-time data and AI-driven insights to understand not just who their customers are, but what they need in the moment.

Gen Z and Milliennials want fewer clicks and more clarity when they shop online (Picture: stock.adobe.com)

At a top level, that means blending three layers of personalisation: segment-configured (tailored to the customer based on who they are), customer-configured (tailored by the customer, letting them shape their own experience), and message-configured (proactive, personalized, one-to-one messaging, insights and offers delivered to the customer). Done right, these layers work together to create experiences that aren’t just personalised – they’re meaningful.

Financial institutions have the biggest opportunity to capitalise through hyper-personalisation, where they can dynamically adapt to an individual's financial behaviour, goals, and needs. It’s more than using a customer’s name in an email or remembering their last purchase.

Hyperpersonalisation involves delivering real-time, intelligent, and context-aware experiences across all touchpoints – from web and mobile, to branch and contact centre. It means moving beyond being product-centric, to becoming truly ‘life-centric’.

Imagine: instead of an average investment portfolio, an AI-driven dynamic account based on cash flow. Instead of one-off insurance purchases, a single destination for all your protection needs across key life areas. Instead of a standard pension you rarely access, a life-centric proposition where you are prompted to take action at every career and life stage to improve your overall holistic wealth.

Anna Meikle, Accenture Song Co-Lead for Scotland

This represents both a massive opportunity and critical challenge. It enables organisations to achieve existing business targets faster, with proven increases in Net Promoter Score (a measure of customer loyalty), digital self-serve and retention as well as operational metrics in improved efficiency and cross- and up-sell conversion.

However, it requires organisations to invest in culture and technology. Delivery of hyper-personalisation requires unified data platforms, dynamic profiles, AI insights, and an orchestration layer capable of making millions of decisions in real time. This is what turns raw information into truly human experiences.

Coupled with this, organisations must undertake a cultural shift, embracing agile practices and fostering a mindset of continuous improvement. Clear vision and executive sponsorship are essential to overcome organisational inertia. Leaders must guide their teams through the reset that comes with adopting agile methodologies and breaking down traditional silos within financial institutions, ensuring that product lines, marketing, and customer service teams work collaboratively towards a unified vision of customer-centric, outcome-based decision-making to drive real change.

Now is the time to lead – by putting customers at the heart of every decision and scaling personalisation in a way that’s not just smarter, but also more human.

Anna Meikle, Accenture Song Co-Lead for Scotland