ISSD Fall 2009 School of Information, UC Berkeley

Customers want products and services that fit their individual needs in as specific a way as possible. Providers usually segment the population of potential customers for their products and services, but would prefer to meet the specific needs of individual customers. The degree to which a person-to-person service can be personalized is limited by the extent to which the frontline employee is able to interact with the customer to obtain information about the customer’s requirements and preferences. It also depends on the customer’s willingness or ability to provide the information. Automated recommendation systems used by many service providers employ very sophisticated data mining and business intelligence algorithms that aggregate and analyze millions of transactions and queries.