Building Products Embracing Digital Trust
Understanding the Essence of Digital Trust and How to Build Data Products
Before we dive in to understand what Digital Trust means, let’s go through two scenarios where Zinnia and Edward are having a conversation on an interesting topic.
Scenario 1:
Zinnia (while checking her email): Hey Edward! Look what I received, there’s a 20% discount coupon on my favorite Bluetooth speaker.
Edward: Oh wow! Tell me the name of that amazing website.
Zinnia: It’s a new tech-product website that I was surfing this morning.
Edward: It might be a scam or a fake coupon.
Zinnia: Yah right, let’s ignore.Scenario 2:
Zinnia: Hey Edward! Look what I got, a crazy discount of 30% on my favorite Bluetooth speaker.
Edward: Really? Where?
Zinnia: Amazon
Edward: Grab the offer right now before it goes back to its original price.
What did just transpire here? Did Zinnia and Edward unquestioningly trust Amazon?
Now this might sound ambiguous. Let’s put it more sensibly. In simple terms, this CONFIDENCE, FAITH, and BELIEF in a brand is called Digital Trust. You know your data is in safe hands, which implies Digital Trust. Let’s dig deep into this online world with an ocean of private, sensitive, and crucial data with uncountable phishing attacks and a big net of hackers to trap you.
It’s not been very long since we won the pandemic battle. Due to having limited or no direct physical access to any store or supermarket, people had almost no choice of buying things offline, and the only option left with them was online shopping. Gradually the ONLY option became the BEST option for buying and selling things through web and web apps. With this exponentially rising demand for trusted websites where customers can feel safe with the sensitive data they share while signing up for a service or buying a retail product, businesses that miserably fail to provide digital trust lose their customers at the drop of a hat.
In the image above, the message is concise: Companies are 100% in agreement on the importance of Digital Trust, whereas 57% have fallen prey to data breaches. Moreover, 84% of consumers are believed to immediately switch their choice to other competitors if they find a brand being fishy or fraudulent.
It’s important to note that Digital Trust is not bound to retail products or B2C services. It applies to every business model where there is a client with a need for digital technologies and services and an organization catering to them.
If we look at the advantages of Digital Trust, it elevates a positive reputation by 66%, and there are 58% fewer privacy breaches. It wins customer loyalty by 55%, and guess what? The company’s revenue may rise up to 25%.
Be the Dab Hand at Winning Customer’s Digital Trust
While businesses and industries are advancing technologically and digitally, safeguarding the data that your clients and customers share while making any deal or transaction has become of utmost importance.
Let me generalize some of the critical values and dimensions of Digital Trust that you must consider while assuring your stakeholders that their data is in safe hands and will uphold their societal expectations and secure their interests.
Privacy + Compliance
To ensure privacy, an organization is expected to protect an individual’s personally identifiable and confidential data and adhere to the compliance of collecting, using, and sharing the data only for legitimate purposes with notified consent.
Just look at the Amazon Privacy Policy above, and you will get a decent idea of how an organization should be clear with its way of handling customers’ data.
Transparency + Honesty
Transparency is the base of any organization’s ethical presence in the market. The stakeholders and clients need to clearly understand how a digital technology is created, developed, and implemented while ensuring it meets governance standards.
This key value implies honesty that bridges the gap between an organization’s digital operations and methodologies and stakeholders’ interests.
Reliability + User Experience
Let’s explore an interesting scenario below to understand the importance of reliability and a positive user experience in Digital Trust.
Scenario:
Zinnia: Hey Edward! I received our new smartwatch two days prior to the committed date of delivery even though it’s been raining cats and dogs for a couple of days.
Edward: That’s great!
Zinnia: Not only that, they sent us a special note with chocolates and cookies for Christmas eve.
Edward: That’s very thoughtful of them
Prompt responses to queries, quick customer support, a user-friendly intuitive UI, timely availability of committed services, and going the extra mile for your clients are some of the many factors that ensure your client is happy, satisfied, and most likely to come back again for acquiring your offerings.
Authenticity + Originality
A real and practical example is a great way to infer a topic and its logic. Check the following conversation between Zinnia and Edward to know what role Authenticity plays in Digital Trust.
Scenario:
Zinnia: Edward! I have received an email saying my HSBC account needs verification to continue my banking services.
Edward: Oh! I find it fishy. What’s the email address?
Zinnia: It’s hsbc.hsbc.com
Edward: This is definitely not an authentic email ID. Report that email immediately and never respond to such messages and warnings.
Being able to act on what you committed and verify your market presence with proper business registration documents, trademark certificates, and required legal paperwork exhibits your authenticity. Using multi-factor authentication with strongly encrypted data and portals is inevitable when securing digital trust.
A brand’s authenticity is decided by whether they are faithful to their promises and social messages. Whether their promotions genuinely meet their products’ standards defines a brand’s originality. The employees working for that organization should have a genuine identity that can be verified through real-time authentication methods.
CyberSecurity + Safety
When there is a behemoth of data and a paramount digital technology, the overall ecosystem is prone to cyber-attacks and unauthorized access. Trustable and strong cybersecurity mitigates the risk of exposing and compromising crucial data to malicious attempts by cybercriminals.
Organizations need not only to implement robust cybersecurity measures to their digital systems but also to make sure their clients are aware of the implementation of safety and security of their data with best practices and industry standards.
Product Owner’s Guide to Win Digital Trust of Their Clients
As a Product Owner, it’s essential to understand that your brand defines you. How you portray your marketing strategies to engage customers so that they can build trust with your product is crucial in today’s ever-evolving market.
When the journey of buying a product starts, the customers are most likely to dig deep into the research of exploring “n” number of brands before they zero down to a particular name.
Even with super-articulating branding and marketing approaches, winning customers' digital trust has become an arduous task.
The buying decision revolves around both emotional and rational factors. Tailoring your strategies to address both aspects can influence customers to choose your product.
Many factors influence whether customers will buy your product or not. Let’s look into this one by one.
Reviews: The Decisive Factor of a Product’s Credibility
With the rising popularity of e-commerce sites like Amazon, eBay, and Myntra, to name a few, it has become of higher importance to consider having positive reviews on your products. Look at the following Amazon review, which sets a great example of how a witty and positive review can be a game-changer for a product.
Reviews hold importance over customers’ buying decisions. Positive reviews are nothing less than impactful endorsements. It provides social proof and an insight into the real-life experiences of other buyers.
Make sure you have a solid and responsive customer support team who can sensibly and respectfully respond to negative reviews and act upon them with the help of the product development team. Doing this ensures your customers are being listened to patiently and their feedback is received in a constructive manner.
Given the significance of reviews, companies are encouraging positive reviews. However, they are also mindfully utilizing negative reviews to improve product experience.
Robust Social Media Presence
Having a strong social media presence bolsters digital trust among consumers.
When products actively engage with customers on social media platforms, it significantly contributes to building a sense of trust and reliability among digital consumers.
One of the many robust uses of social media platforms is user-generated content (UGC). UGC has come a long way when it comes to creating digital content and sharing it with users without being biased about their reviews. UGC is a piece of content created by the user for the user. This encourages positive and honest feedback and helps buyers decide whether a product meets their expectations and standards or whether they should look around for more options.
Another commonly ignored aspect of social media presence is having a robust online community of users where users interact with other buyers and openly discuss their concerns without being inclined toward a particular brand.
ChatGPT? No, but Chat-Based Real-Time Support
Writing emails to any service desk support and waiting for their response is a long-route and time-consuming way to get your things done. Most of the time, it’s unreliable and not worth the wait.
ChatBot has been an integral part of customer support for a long time now. However, understand that teaching a ChatBot to sit on your website and apps alone will not run your business effectively.
A reliable, AI-based live chat service is an excellent means to engage customers with your services. Irrespective of the reason, whether they have visited your website/app for a complaint/support or a simple query, being prompt in responding to their concerns and providing real-time help with precise information makes your brand win consumers' digital trust.
Leveraging the Emerging Digital Technologies
Without going into the technicalities of some promising and budding technologies, as a Product Owner, it’s imperative to understand how to leverage them into your existing digital ecosystem.
With deep fakes (Fake images and video) and AI-generated voiceovers, digital threats are advancing in an inquisitive manner. While deliberating on enhancing digital trust through various investment strategies, leaders and decision-makers are expected to adopt a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach. This strategically defined process is aimed to strengthen cyber solutions by leveraging four emerging digital trust methodologies as follows:
- Data Trusts: Data Trusts are third-party legal entities that manage data on someone else’s behalf. They gather, validate, store, and secure data while ensuring it is not mishandled by unauthorized access and approaches. Implementing Data Trust in your business models ensures that your data is clean and reliable to perform any analytics and get insights from them.
- Blockchain: In simple terms, Blockchain technology is an immutable and decentralized ledger system primarily used for payments, transactions, tracking orders and assets, and exchanging valuable entities. It can be a house, car, cash, real estate property or copyrights, patents, or a company’s sensitive data. In the digital world, where data and information are exchanged between businesses every second, it is crucial to inherit blockchain technology capabilities to transparently transfer valuable assets without being altered by unauthorized access. Blockchain refers to a database mechanism where the data is stored in blocks and linked in a chain where each record will have a cryptographic hash of the previous block with a timestamp.
- Monitoring Risks Using AI-Based Tools: Leveraging AI to detect risks in digital data involves using machine learning algorithms and AI-driven technologies to identify, evaluate, and mitigate potential risks in your database. AI algorithms can monitor unknown patterns in data behavior and detect anomalies that directly indicate data security has been compromised or unusual activities have been tracked. It can be anything from unusual network traffic to unexpected user behavior. Thus, as Product Owners, it is not limited to providing customers with a positive and reliable experience but also making sure that your team is capable of proactively identifying and responding to potential threats and safeguarding and protecting consumers’ digital assets.
Conclusion
There is no all-in-one approach to ensuring digital trust in your clients/ customers/consumers. However, by being mindful of your brand’s online presence and adopting advanced technologies like BlockChain, AI, Machine Learning, Data Trust, and Quantum Technology, you can significantly influence a buyer’s decision to choose your product or service over other competitive options.
Trying to jot down below some key components that will help you strengthen your Digital Trust game and be the trendsetter amongst your rivals:
- Make sure you fulfill your promises and deliver what you commit.
- Ensure customers’ data is safe, secure, and free from all data breaches by leveraging emerging technologies like AI, Blockchain, and Data Trusts.
- Be transparent and honest with your brand’s goals and values
- Adhere to good governance and compliance
- Be open to constructive feedback and reviews and collaborate with the product development team to enhance user experience.
Being Trusted is a blessing that should not be taken for granted.
