by Vasudeva Rao Munnaluri, RVP India & SAARC, Zendesk
Customer trust in the digital age involves a paradox. On the one hand, customers say their trust in brands depends on the quality of personalized experience — 72% of consumers say that poor personalization decreases their trust in brands, a recent study by Adobe revealed.
Deeper personalisation relies on the quality of customer data businesses have. While customers understand this, they still have concerns about the safety of their data. In India, 93% of customers are concerned about data privacy, according to OpenText.
This isn’t an unfounded concern to have owing to the increasing number of data breaches. Primarily, the rapid adoption of AI and other emerging technologies is resulting in an exponential increase in data generation. While these innovations are important for business growth, they’ve also brought on major risks to customer data.
Customer trust in the digital era lies in building meaningful and personalized experiences but also in safe and secure data protection practices.
One thing brands need to know is that such contradictory customer trends aren’t a new phenomenon. They’ve always existed and historically, the most successful businesses are those businesses that have overcome these challenges, turning them into opportunities to build customer trust.
Trust can make or break your business — because more than half the customers across the world will never give your brand another chance if trust is broken once. Adding to this conundrum is the fact that regulatory mechanisms are tightening norms surrounding data privacy, forcing businesses to comply or face hefty penalties.
India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, much like Europe’s GDPR, imposes heavy fines for non-compliance. All these factors are driving businesses to consider data privacy as an important aspect for business resilience and retaining customer trust.
So how do businesses go about building this trust and ensuring it stays that way?
Marrying AI-driven personalization and data protection
When it comes to customer experience, there is a general consensus among IT leaders. They aim to deliver seamless, personalised experiences – augmented by AI – and powered by secure, private data. Data privacy is good for business and globally, 89% of leaders agree that it is essential to delivering trusted customer experiences.
But the growing number of data breaches have customers concerned about what businesses are doing with their personal data. In India, 82% of customers feel that businesses are collecting too much data about them, according to the Zendesk CX Trends Report 2023.
At the same time, 80% of customers want brands to use their personal data to deliver personalised experiences. In fact, a vast majority of customers in India want businesses to deliver AI-driven experiences.
That’s why businesses today need to have the right approach to data privacy and security. This includes increasing investments into such areas over the long term as it ensures financial stability, builds reputation and fosters a culture of trust among customers and stakeholders.
They also need to constantly evaluate their data privacy strategies to keep up with the rapidly evolving threats and regulatory framework. A misstep can make or break a business, particularly when 94% of customers say they would not buy from businesses if their data was not properly protected, a study by Cisco found. Thankfully, most businesses agree – 95% of organisations in the same study say that data privacy is a business imperative.
Building privacy and security into CX solutions
Collating customer data manually and ensuring they are in compliance is time consuming and nearly impossible. While looking to adopt AI-powered CX solutions, brands should choose those with comprehensive data protection mechanisms that make securing data easier.
These AI-powered tools can provide brands with the capacity to view detailed data access records, including information on who accessed what data, when, and from where.
At the same time, such CX solutions can encrypt personal information using customer-controlled encryption keys, set parameters and define what data should be stored or archived and for exactly how long. Having the ability to redact customer information ensures only the right people have access to the data.
Data masking ensures that employees only see the information they need for their work without compromising privacy. It enhances visibility and control and helps businesses meet regulatory requirements and also ensures customer data is protected — an important tenet to building trust.
Promoting transparency and authenticity
Another important element of building trust is communicating policies and procedures, core values, and overall mission, so your customers know you’re committed to privacy and protection. It helps to explain how their private information will be protected, especially from threats like data breaches. This makes customers feel reassured.
Customers are more likely to forgive brands for mistakes if they feel they are being heard and validated. It is important to be transparent about how and why businesses capture customer data, both to build trust and comply with regulations.
Customer trust is strengthened by detailing the ways in which you’ll be using customer information to drive deeper personalization and improve the overall experience. Transparency and trust can improve by meeting service level agreements or making documentation to customers available so that they can see how businesses are using their data.
Ultimately, trust is central to delivering great customer experiences. No matter how well-positioned your message is or how good your product or service is, your customers aren’t likely to do business with you if they don’t trust you.
Trust is the foundation for enduring relationships built between brands and customers. And in today’s data-driven world, mismanagement of customer data can break that trust. It’s important that businesses take the right measures to protect customer data or risk losing them to competitors.
