Why use a preference centre management tool?

First came GDPR. But in my previous articles looking at how Privacy Legislation is spreading around the world, I highlighted that 107 countries have already put in place legislation to secure the protection of data and privacy. Every survey ever produced reports that consumers are growing increasingly concerned about the use of their data by businesses. Every survey also highlights that the public is jaded by junk mail, nuisance calls and spamming. They want it to change and they will appreciate and value the brands that clearly give them choice and control. This article draws on a Deloitte survey about consumer data sharing & trust. The survey sums up nicely why you should invest in the capabilities that a preference centre management tool provides – consumers want it, appreciate it, value the brands who deliver it, engage more, share more and ultimately they buy more,So there are some very obvious signals that your customers want change. A preference centre management tool such as the Cassie Privacy Management Platform provides the ability for you to deliver the very change your customers want. Why do you need a Preference Centre? Read on…

• Give your customers control. Let them decide how you communicate with them;
• Reduce your unsubscribes. Provide granular options by channel and by product/service and customers will opt out of the ones they don’t want, but opt in to those they do want. If you don’t give customers the granular choice, there is a good chance they will simply opt out (or not opt in) to everything
• Improve engagement and trust in your brand. By using a Preference Centre you are showing your customers and prospects that you take their data and their privacy seriously
• Improve your segmentation, targeting and ROI. By only campaigning to an audience who are interested, response rates increase
• Learn more about your customers & prospects – by opting in/out you are gaining some very insightful information. Use it wisely!
• Ensure legislation compliance. A Preference Centre will maintain full audit trails, manage contradictory consent based on date/time-stamps, provide a “single version of the truth” for each customer or prospect
• Continuously improve. A good preference centre management tool will enable you analyse how well your consent statements are working across different segments. A/B split cell testing will let you try new approaches that can be compared to your “Banker” (control) approach
• Central co-ordination of consent deployment and response handling. If you deploy all consent gathering statements from the same system and you receive all responses into the same system via widgets and links, it then becomes relatively simple to disseminate that data across your other systems and infrastructure via API’s and file loads. The centralisation is crucial to ensuring that all parts of your infrastructure carry the same preferences – the website, the customer service call centre, the sales order processing platform, the CRM system, the Marketing Database, etc
• Implementation of a Preference Centre is a major step towards the cultural change that legislation such as GDPR requires. Privacy by Design requires a holistic approach to the use of data across your organisation. From the Boardroom down, focus should be on your customers and how to best serve them – that means building Privacy and Consent into every aspect of your business.
• Remember - consumers will appreciate and value the brands that clearly give them choice and control. If done well, those brands will then generate a higher level of engagement and loyalty.

A survey by Deloitte confirms all the above points. They surveyed more than 8,500 consumers in six different countries on how they feel about sharing personal information with businesses. Here’s a summary of the findings from US responders:WHAT CAN COMPANIES DO TO REASSURE CONSUMERS?The study finds that while consumers state that they want more protection and security, the reality is that they may be more willing to provide their personal information if companies:

• Are transparent about how they intend to use consumer data
• Allow consumers to easily opt out of data sharing
• Provide brief and readily understandable privacy policies and agreements

      WHAT CAN COMPANIES DO TO ENCOURAGE CONSUMERS TO SHARE DATA MORE FREELY?The good news from these results is that the consumers surveyed appear increasingly willing to share data with companies—if there’s something in it for them. A closer look shows that this willingness to share information with companies varies by age. While approximately half the consumers in each age group say they sometimes provided information online, younger consumers surveyed were more likely to provide fake information on websites than older consumers. Younger generations also take more protective actions, such as adjusting privacy settings on their mobile devices, than older generations (figure 3)—which could also explain why Gen Z expressed the greatest feeling of control over their data.   Here’s what organizations can do:

• Make it easy for consumers to choose what they share or do not share
• Offer valuable benefits to those consumers who choose to share data
• Customize the organization’s data-gathering strategy to different age segments

  Consumers don’t forgive and forget!While the consumers surveyed are more willing to share data if they see some benefits, they won’t hesitate to take action against companies involved in a data breach, whether they’ve personally experienced a breach or heard about it in the media. On average, one in four consumers will take cautionary actions after hearing of a breach to digitally protect themselves and avoid future data breaches. While industry observers have long suspected as much, this survey is the first time we have heard this directly from consumers WHAT CAN COMPANIES DO TO HELP KEEP CONSUMERS’ TRUST?

• Enforce privacy measures to prevent breaches in the first place:

– Encrypt data at rest– Destroy consumer data when not needed

• Systematically control the damage after a breach has occurred by identifying causes and implementing remedies that hasten recovery:

– Identify affected systems and isolate them– Gather all available evidence, and analyze it to determine cause, severity, and impact– Document how the incident came to light - who reported it and how he or she discovered the problem - and report findings to relevant stakeholders– Assess the possibility of insider involvement– Strengthen network security and improve protocols– Enhance monitoring to mitigate the risk of future breaches

• Develop an integrated, enterprise-level approach to data governance, and ensure the leader of this initiative is a C-level executive

The Deloitte survey makes the following conclusion:Don’t be complacentWhile our results indicate that younger generations are currently less concerned about data privacy and more willing to share data, that doesn’t mean that privacy concerns will become less of an issue for companies as younger consumers enter the job market, build financial equity, and make more financial transactions online. If consumer-related data breaches continue or increase, younger consumers may take even greater measures to protect their personal information—making the efforts of companies to build a relationship with them that much harder. The bottom line: An important way companies can build and maintain consumer trust is to both put in place proactive data security and privacy measures and to engage in a transparent, ongoing dialogue with consumers on data privacy.Source: Deloitte University Press    Cassie Privacy Management PlatformThe world is entering a new Privacy era and Kudos are proud to be part of it by providing the best technology available. Too many companies are still seeing Privacy Legislation compliance as a legislative and systems change. Systems such as Cassie enable compliance but the successful organisations have changed their Culture as well as their systems. The Cassie preference management tool is currently used by organisations around the world, in 36 languages, totalling 165 million worldwide customer records with 2.4 billion preferences and making 2.5 million updates EVERY DAY! The Deloitte survey sums up nicely why you should invest in a preference centre management tool – consumers want it, appreciate it, appreciate the brands who deliver it, engage more, buy more, share more.

Contact Us!

For a free demonstration of how Cassie will deliver you all the above, call James Squires on 0330  043 1583 or email us on help@kudos-data.com