Data Privacy And Your Company's Customer Experience

Modern customers expect high engagement levels and personalized experiences from the companies they do business with. If your organization is to offer unparalleled customer service, it’s important that you collect customer data and develop a customer experience strategy that is designed specifically for your brand’s audience.

While it may sound simple, in a world where data privacy is top of mind for consumers and businesses alike, this isn’t always easy.

In fact, a number of businesses have fallen foul of data privacy issues and cyber crimes in the last few years.

Perhaps the most well known, however, is the Yahoo breach of 2013. In 2017, Yahoo published a statement confirming that all of its 3 billion or so users were compromised due to an attack in 2013, in which user names, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, encrypted passwords and, in some cases, security questions and answers were stolen.

With companies storing an ever-growing amount of customer data on their networks, cybercrime targeting businesses has only become more common.

Research from Cybersecurity Ventures has found that cybercrime will cost the world in excess of $6 trillion each year by 2021 - up from $3 trillion in 2015. This can have an expensive impact on your company. Data published on Wikipedia estimates that the average cost of one single data breach will be over $150 million by 2020.

Whether your company is hacked by cybercriminals or falls foul of data privacy laws, it’s not just the monetary impact that you need to be worried about. Data privacy also plays an incredibly important role in your brand’s overall customer experience.

Companies must stay up-to date with new data privacy laws

It’s more important now than ever to engage customers and offer personalized experiences, but to do so your company needs to collect data. Thankfully, it’s likely that your company possesses the personal information of hundreds, thousands or even millions of customers.

Previously, there were no real regulations on how that data was collected, managed, stored and used.

That has changed. New regulations have made consumers more aware of how their personal data is being collected as well as giving them more control over how it’s being used, while at the same time making companies liable for the proper usage and storage of private information.

Here are the two most important data privacy regulations that your company needs to be aware of right now:

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): GDPR is a regulation in EU law that was created to provide better protection of personal data. While companies in the US are not currently legally required to follow these regulations, any brands that do business worldwide have created, or are in the process of, creating new data collection and usage standards that ensure they comply with GDPR.

California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA): The California Consumer Privacy Act came into effect on January 1, 2020, and is designed to give permanent residents of California more consumer protection when it comes to misuse of their personal data. The new regulation gives Californian consumers the right to:

• know which personal information is being collected and how it’s being used;
• delete personal information held by businesses;
• opt out of the reselling of personal information;
• and to non-discrimination of price and service when they exercise their right to privacy under CCPA.

How does data privacy and the customer experience tie together?

Companies across North America are desperately struggling to keep up to date with new data privacy regulations. In the process, they are forgetting just how important clarity is for their customer.

This gives your business a huge opportunity to bolster your customer experience through clear, concise and preferable data privacy actions.

Once you create a data privacy strategy that clearly explains to your customers how their data will be collected, managed, stored, used and securely protected, they’ll trust your brand far more than your market competitors.

By taking data privacy seriously and creating a policy that gains trust right from the start of the customer journey, you’ll be able to build a relationship with your customers in which they are happy to share useful, insightful and actionable data for your customer service, sales and marketing teams.

Are you looking for more information about data privacy or creating a superior customer experience that delights your customers? Contact Advantage Communications today. Our team of customer service experts would love to answer your questions.