Trust - A New Business KPI.

Commercial success is established on trusted relationships powered by the data.

In the new digital era, ‘Trust’ has become a new business KPI. It acts as a glue that binds customers to companies. 

Businesses can gain customer trust in the way they manage their data and get their consent to use it in innovative ways. It can make customers confident about security and responsible use of their personal data, which can lead to valuable insights for business growth.

That’s why I think regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and DPDPB should really be seen as a positive opportunity that would provide a stimulus for enterprises to be more transparent about how customer data should be used. Ultimately, this will lead to building customer confidence and establishing greater levels of trust.

What is trust? How do we define and quantify it?

Trust – not a Straightforward Rather a Quite Subjective Term.

We as customers have different expectations from different organizations. The level of trust we demand from BFSI and the healthcare industry is quite different from what we accept from the likes of Google and Facebook.

As a matter of fact, we as consumers have accepted that the big digital players will share our interests with retailers for advertising purposes. We have accepted that it’s a value exchange, allowing us to access their platforms, often for free.

With the changing digital landscape customers are becoming aware of the importance of their data privacy. They expect businesses to take consent from them explicitly. This implies that today’s consumers want total control of their data i.e. the purpose for which their data will be used, how it is being used etc. This means transgressing customers’ privacy, which will lead to risk of losing trust and confidence in an enterprise at any moment.

Here, it becomes imperative to understand the nuances around consumer trust. Getting it right depends on the specific operating model and the value exchange between your offerings and your customers’ data.

Despite the variance in customer expectations and trust, the underlying principle of enhancing the level of trust is transparency. If a business is transparent in managing and sharing how they manage and share customer data, there would be arousal of a common set of expectations that will help to better understand the meaning of consent.

Now-a-days, Consent is becoming the buzz word in the digital world with flurry of regulations like GDPR, CCPA, TCCCPR and DPDP, Bill 2022 etc. that are putting transparency and consumer interest at their core. Therefore, it is required, for organizations to keep their focus on creating and maintaining a sustainable automated business model in compliance with these data privacy regulations. As per these regulations transparency offers two ways to drive growth by:

• Improving Service Quality

By taking customers’ consent and remaining transparent on how you use their data will provide enterprises the clarity on customer data and can flag off processes that aren’t working or are impacting their service levels. Further, this will enable in proactively fixing the problem, enhancing customer satisfaction leading to heightened customer experience.

• Implementing Data-Driven Services

With the demonstration of data accountability, businesses are more likely to earn customer consent, which can further be used in new and innovative ways. As the data has become truly transformative, it can well be used to deliver hyper-personalised services that address customers’ needs and wants.

Ultimately, clear and transparent way of data collection results in enhanced customer trust that can be leveraged to increase the share of the wallet and would facilitate in attracting new customers. This is when your customer become your advocate. Also, it is most likely that they would recommend your services.

In a nutshell, I certainly feel that by embodying data transparency businesses can build greater levels of trust with customers.  Also, by earning customer’s consent, customer data can be used in innovative ways – viz. creating products, services, and experiences. This will provide clear differentiation and an implicit increase in wallet share in today’s highly competitive market.