The Customer Experience (CX) of Privacy

How to build trust with users through privacy communication and empowerment

Summary

· Despite massive corporate investment in privacy initiatives, little has been done to ensure users have a positive privacy experience.

· The perception of corporate privacy practices is beginning to shape consumer opinion and purchase behavior.

· The public lacks a fundamental understanding of data privacy and places the onus of educating and protecting consumer privacy on companies.

· A great data privacy experience can build a positive consumer perception of the brand, create competitive market advantage, and improve brand trust and retention.

· Slalom has a systematic approach to building and measuring a great data privacy customer experience.

Defining the CX of privacy

After engaging with your brand, would consumers say they understand how you are collecting and using their data? Would they say they trust you with their personal information? Would they say they feel empowered to manage their own data through your platforms or systems?

Privacy CX is all about building an experience that creates trust with end-users by being proactive and transparent about data collection and management. At a time when trust between end-users and brands is paramount, a well-designed privacy experience can be the deciding factor in a purchase, membership, or engagement decision.

To find out what US consumers think about their current experiences, Slalom conducted a survey. We asked questions about their past data privacy experiences with companies to understand their level of comprehension around their own privacy rights. We also benchmarked current data privacy management behaviors and captured sentiments on privacy topics.

Why does the experience of privacy matter?

To date, US Fortune 500 and UK FTSE companies have invested $9 billion in compliance efforts. And large enterprises report spending an average of $1.9 million annually on privacy-related compliance, staff, and technology.

Big investments do not equate to a positive experience for the end-user

Despite the massive time and monetary investments in personal data protection initiatives, little is being done to ensure the experience consumers have with data privacy is a positive one. The lack of effort in this area is evident when you look at public sentiment around personal data — only 33% say they understand their privacy rights, and nearly 80% do not feel in control of their online privacy (Exhibit 1).

Privacy is top-of-mind for consumers

From stories about the latest corporate data breach to a new political row, consumers are exposed to privacy topics through social media or news outlets once a week on average. Any topic covered with that cadence will undoubtedly shape sentiment. This helps explain why 97% of consumers place “strong importance” on privacy-related issues and awareness of personal data privacy is at an all-time high. (Exhibit 2)

Privacy perception is starting to impact purchase and loyalty behavior

While compliance and management initiatives have been top priorities on privacy roadmaps for many companies, our study shows that the time has come to prioritize the customer experience. In the Slalom survey, a full 70% of consumers state that they have avoided a company or service due to their perception of the company’s privacy practices. Another 73% say confidence in data privacy practices has been the deciding factor in a product, membership, or enrollment decision. (Exhibit 3)

Lack of consumer understanding creates a dangerous situation for brands

Despite placing a high level of importance on privacy, most consumers do not understand the fundamentals of data privacy. Less than 40% say they understand their privacy rights and only 16% can identify basic types of PII such as IP address. A mere 9% say they read privacy policies and only 24% have acted to protect their data (clearing their cache, removing social media posts, etc.)

The onus of privacy protection & education falls on the company

53% of consumers consider it the responsibility of companies to protect their data, followed by 18% who say it should fall to governments. Only 22% of consumers consider it their own responsibility. (Exhibit 4)

The rewards of building great privacy CX

The value exchange of data

Data is valuable. And many consumers are willing to share more of their personal data in exchange for compensation, access to free content, or an improved digital experience. By proposing a transparent exchange of data for access and educating consumers, brands can build both databases and trust. (Exhibit 5)

Impact business objectives

Building a positive privacy experience for the consumer has the promise to impact nearly every business objective and KPI. (Exhibit 6)

Trust & loyalty: a positive experience builds trust between the brand and the consumer or employee, which in turn impacts retention and loyalty

Competitive differentiation: as consumers begin to consider privacy practices in their decision-making process, great privacy CX can be an important differentiator

Sales: data has shown CX has a positive impact on sales and returning business

Slalom’s approach to empowering consumers through privacy CX

At Slalom, customer experience, communications, and privacy design are some of our core competencies. Looking through these lenses at the overlapping consumer and business needs related to privacy led us to create our newest offering — privacy customer experience design, or privacy CX.

Privacy CX is the convergence of privacy design, communications strategy, and experience design. And the objective is to educate and empower consumers effectively across the entire consumer or employee journey.

There are 4 core components to Slalom’s privacy CX offering:

Understand customer needs

Steve Jobs famously said “privacy means people know what they’re signing up for, in plain language, and repeatedly. I believe people are smart. Some people want to share more than other people do. Ask them.”

Slalom leverages deep research expertise to engage directly with your consumers to benchmark their level of trust with your brand, gauge understanding of their privacy rights, and uncover what they want from a brand/consumer privacy exchange.

Create data & PII consumer journey maps

As part of privacy initiatives, many leading companies have already created data maps to log the categories of data they request or collect from users. Taking that a step further, Slalom works with business stakeholders to create data journey maps that marry data collection with traditional customer journey maps to visualize when collection occurs across the journey.

Common processes such as registration, purchase flows, accepting legal terms and conditions, and managing privacy settings are generally prioritized as they involve large amounts of PII collection and storage.

Identify the privacy communication “moments that matter”

Using the data & PII journey map and consumer research, we identify the privacy “moments that matter.” These moments are points in the process where there are needs and opportunities to build trust with consumers by communicating with them about why data is being requested or collected from them, what their data rights or options are, and how/where to manage their data.

Slalom will work with your team to take these moments that matter and create a communications and channel strategy to optimize each opportunity to communicate with and empower your consumers.

Create a system to scale privacy communications across the journey

Slalom can lead efforts to bring your privacy plan to life and scale it with a communications system. Similar to a design system, a communications system outlines all the “tools” you have available for communicating with end-users (i.e. email, notifications center, tooltips, etc.) and will put rigor and governance around how and when each method is used (i.e. always have a tooltip present when PII is requested to describe how the company collects and uses that data).

Measure the impact of privacy CX

Despite the well-documented business benefits, investing in CX efforts is often questioned. Proving direct CX ROI can be a challenge for many organizations. Slalom has created a privacy CX measurement framework to measure and segment users with higher and lower levels of trust. Based on behavioral triggers, the framework provides a solution for determining the value of each segment against key business objectives and goals.

Conclusion

Privacy is the newest frontier in customer experience. As consumers become more cautious about their data privacy, companies that prioritize customer needs in their privacy design and communications strategy will be a step ahead.

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