With the rise of behavioral targeting in advertising and personalization on websites, companies can deliver very targeted and very personalized messages to their customers. Companies can greet customers by name when they return to a website, ask them on another website why they didn’t buy when they abandon an order, and make recommendations based on previous purchases. This kind of personalization can work well, such as when Amazon recommends a new album coming out from a favorite artist or remembers my credit card and shipping info when finalizing a purchase. This kind of capability can also create a negative experience though, especially if what a company recognizes about a customer’s behavior is embarrassing to them. It’s important for companies to figure out when their customers want to be noticed and when they want to be ignored, online or elsewhere.

I’ll portray a few parallels to illustrate. Let’s say a person wants to see a psychologist. One of his good friends is a psychiatrist. Instead of using that friend, he solicits a stranger for his sessions, because he’s too embarrassed to admit to his friend that he needs this type of help. He is more comfortable sharing his thoughts with someone he doesn’t have a relationship with. That same person might be someone who loves that they remember his name at the local coffee shop every morning though.

Different people have different preferences when it comes to how personal they want an experience with a company to be. Companies need to create frameworks that indulge those who love to get personal treatment from their company and those who want to remain anonymous as well. It is also important to know that the same person might want a personal experience for one element of a service, but an anonymous one for another element.

Offline businesses seem to have developed a sense for when personal interaction is appropriate and for which customers. For example, at that coffee shop, they know to greet the soccer mom by name every morning, but also know not to bother the man with his newspaper. It’s a little harder to tell online sometimes. A person may not want to receive email recommendations from a service, but that same person might get angry at the fact that the website didn’t remember his credit card information.

Going back to that first example, with that psychiatrist, that person would likely want the psychiatrist to remember his last session upon return for a second visit, but he might not want that psychiatrist to say hello to him if they cross paths on the street. I imagine it’s very important for a psychiatrist to know those boundaries. It’s also important for a business. To truly personalize someone’s experience, you first need to understand what elements a customer wants personalized and what they don’t. Sometimes not remembering their names might be the best way to personalize their experience. Does your company know when your customers want you to say hello and when they want you to pretend they don’t exist? It should learn.