How Ethical Personalization can Enhance Trust and Unlock Savings
From delivering customer support to special offers after customers have browsed certain products, businesses rely on personalized digital experiences. While customers appreciate thoughtful personalization, however, many are uncomfortable with the sense of being spied on.
Marketers face their own challenges when balancing engaging personalization and privacy, not least from regulators. For those operating globally, to comply with new and constantly evolving guidelines means investing in different platforms and regimes across multiple jurisdictions.
As consumers grow more aware of data privacy, their peace of mind is essential to companies unlocking the benefits of personalization. Having the right software is key to ensuring that data is managed properly, boosting marketer and developer productivity, and availing of opportunities to build better customer relationships.
Striking the right balance between personalization and privacy
According to Salesforce’s 2022 State of the Connected Customer Report, 52% of customers expect offers to always be personalized. Yet 74% of consumers feel companies collect more personal information than they need and 64% feel companies aren’t as transparent as they should be when it comes to personal data use.
Personalization and privacy don’t have to be at odds. Leaning into ethical data tools and services can be an essential design principle for ensuring digital experiences are built to enhance trust. There are four key ways that companies can unlock value and savings by implementing ethical personalization.
Create consumer-facing data policies and practices, and communicate these in simple, understandable language. For brand and operational consistency, companies should also implement these policies at all levels – not just in training or guidance but in the software. By embedding ethical use into data collection, use, retention, and expiration processes, everyone across the organization can focus on differentiated and ethical customer engagement.
Decrease the data “productivity tax” to free up marketers’ time. It’s estimated that marketers are losing between 8% and 12% of their overall production time to inefficient data management. By carefully designing the way data are collected, retained, and used, businesses can cut this productivity tax and free up teams’ time to deliver personalized experiences instead.
Keep more first-party data. Having a complete view of the customer enables organizations to tailor communications to their specific needs and interests which will drive incremental sales and margins. Yet, on average, companies lose 8% of their first-party data due to time spent cleaning, preparing, and managing. By improving tools and communication with customers about data collection, organizations can avoid throwing away this valuable information.
Maximizing Value for Businesses and Consumers
Consumers are more likely to do business with companies they trust. Data can be incredibly valuable for improving the customer experience, but it must be used ethically and responsibly. The more transparent they are about their personalization strategy, the easier it will be for customers to understand what data they should provide and how it will be used.
By building safeguards and protections into products and practices, partnering with engineering and product teams to consider the privacy implications, and working closely with customers to explore thoughtful data collection, companies can deliver remarkable experiences for their consumers while deepening trust. With the right mindset, partners, and technology, privacy and personalization can work hand-in-hand.
Authored by:- Mr Vivek Abraham, Regional Director, External Strategy – India & South Asia, Salesforce
(The views expressed in this article are by – Mr Vivek Abraham, Regional Director, External Strategy – India & South Asia, Salesforce. Technuter.com doesn’t own any responsibility for it.)
