To Build Customer Trust, Prioritize Data Protection and Personalization
Customers will increasingly buy products and services from only the brands they trust. That trust is built by honoring customer expectations in how their data is collected and used to enhance their experience. Here, John Nash, CMO, Redpoint, discusses how brands can build customer trust.
Trust is increasingly the currency of engagement between a consumer and a brand. Consumers will gladly provide a brand with personal data providing two conditions are met. First, consumers want assurance that their data will be protected by the organization, not sold to a third party for marketing or advertising purposes. Second, consumers expect that any data provided to a brand will be used to enhance their experience. Experience, in this context, refers to an omnichannel customer experience that is consistent across every channel as if the brand is speaking with a customer via one voice.
Consider a Harris Poll survey commissioned by Redpoint, where 54% of consumers said they are willing to share more personal data with companies to achieve a more personalized experience. Furthermore, 73% said it is either very important or essential that a brand reveal how the information is being used, and 71% said that it is up to the customer to provide explicit authorization for how the data will be used.
From the customer’s perspective, trust manifests itself with highly relevant, pitch-perfect experiences. Irrespective of channel or device, online or offline, every interaction must be in the precise cadence of a unique customer journey. Continually presented with a next-best-action, a customer understands that with the data they’ve provided, the brand has developed a deep, personal understanding that is reflected in the experience it delivers.
When a brand fails to meet consumer expectations by using data without permission or not demonstrating a personal understanding, consequences are severe. In the same Harris Poll survey, 88% of consumers said they are likely to switch brands if an organization sells their data to another company without authorization. And 37% of consumers said they would not do business with any brand that fails to deliver a personalized experience.
That level of decay in trust is not sustainable in the experience economy. Redundant emails, late messages, the wrong cadence of messages or anything that is not directly relevant to the consumer in the precise moment of a customer journey will drive customers to a brand that does a better job of demonstrating a personal understanding.
See More: How To Help Consumers Understand Your Approach to Privacy
Embrace First-party Data
To hold up their end of the bargain, brands need to embrace a fundamental shift over how data is collected, stored and protected. Recognizing that a personalized customer experience drives revenue, brands are putting a premium on first-party data as the gold standard for developing a single customer view that tells a brand everything there is to know about a customer.
The loss of the third-party cookie is a consequence, not a cause, of the shift. Tracking cookies, like reference files, rely on third parties to provide information about a customer (or, more accurately, a device) that is likely stale. Resolving information tied to a device or a lookalike audience is not the same as applying advanced identity resolution capabilities at the moment data is ingested to resolve an identity at an individual or household level.
Perfecting data in real-time — within milliseconds of its collection — allows business users of the data to make bold decisions on behalf of a customer because they can trust that the data accurately represents a customer in the precise moment of a customer journey.
Because first-party data is foundational for providing hyper-personalized experiences, the mindset shift that prioritizes its collection must include a different way of thinking about how to safeguard that data. The question of who owns the data is top of mind. A surge in data privacy regulations and several newsworthy breaches, combined with the customer’s expectation that they are only providing data in exchange for a personalized experience, put the onus on the brand to prioritize consent contracts, preference management centers, and other mechanisms to provide customers with visibility into how their data is being collected, stored and used.
Secure Data, Secure Trust
Behind the preference centers that manage consent — the front-end that customers see — is where protecting customer data comes into play. One option for brands to ensure that marketers and business users of the data do not make a mistake is to utilize Personal Identifiable Information (PII) vaults and data clean rooms that separate PII and other information the customer does not authorize for marketing purposes. In this way, all customer consent on sharTagsing and marketing is automatically honored.
Data sharing clean rooms utilize a type of data encryption where an organization can analyze, match and build models off the anonymized data for marketing purposes without ever accessing or decrypting the PII data. Companies can interact through a data clean room, essentially becoming digital advertisers for their customer base, receiving only clean output in the form of fully anonymized data that’s compliant with all regulations. The important thing is the contract with a customer is always honored to the letter and in spirit.
To uphold the integrity of a single customer view while also honoring customer contracts, one further option for brands is to keep all customer data behind their own security perimeter by using a customer experience platform-as-a-service (PaaS). When all customer data records are in a single database inside a brand’s own cloud subscription, and that database is used to control views, exports and interactions — with user preferences and compliance rules applied to every interaction — the brand is assured that security and privacy will not be compromised. Conversely, the data can be held in a SaaS vendor’s database, provided the brand accepts the vendor’s terms for how the data is managed from a compliance standpoint.
See More: How Zero-Party Data Can Take Your Customer Experience to The Next Level
Either way, the most important consideration is that the customer’s permissions for how data is collected and used are upheld. A breach of contract, written or unwritten, breaks trust. Broken trust, as we’ve seen, is a surefire way to lose a customer. Alternatively, taking the necessary steps to be completely transparent about customer data, particularly how it is used to consistently deliver a personalized customer experience, engenders a trusting, long-lasting relationship that is not easily broken.
What steps have you taken to build trust among your customers? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
