Data privacy is a hot topic right now, and with good reason. May 2018 saw the implementation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the associated panic as global companies raced to comply with some of the strictest data privacy protections enforced since the rise of the Internet. This was followed by new legislation in California in June, offering the strongest consumer data safeguards in the United States to their residents by 2020. More governments around the world are expected to follow the same path.
Consumers overwhelmingly support these types of regulations because they mistrust the usage of their personal data by governments and corporations following scandal after scandal in recent years. Companies need information about their target customers in order to make smart choices about what products to sell and how to reach the right consumers – and this information is becoming increasingly hard to get. I heard one case this week about a large auto manufacturer who found their access to customer data reduced by 96% in just the past two months as a result of GDPR.
The reality of the situation is that consumers actually benefit when they get better products and services – especially those that are personalized or tuned to meet their specific needs. They get greater value for their money and higher levels of satisfaction with each transaction. But companies need to have access to those consumers to get the insights they require to build those improved solutions to the problems of daily life. So, how do you re-gain trust and engagement with consumers – and convince them that some level of data sharing is in their best interests when the law states that they have control of the data?
The answer, we believe, is building a community of opted-in customers who get something in exchange for the data they share with a company. At Keurig, members of their coffee-drinking community have the opportunity to influence decisions about new products, and can see the results both within the community and on their grocer shelves. At PBS, viewers engage in a continuous dialogue with other community members and the network to shape programming choices – and get the shows they want to watch on the air.
We shouldn’t consider this new age of data protections as an impediment to customer-engagement, but rather as a driver to do it better, smarter and faster through deeper, trusted relationships with consumers that go far deeper than the surface. Surveys that end up in spam folders are OUT- opt-in community engagement is IN.
Check out how Vision Critical meets the needs of companies to speed innovation and make smarter choices about go-to-market for products and services at www.visioncritical.com
IT Sparks 