Nearly half of customers report changing service providers over personal data usage, is your business next?
People are more comfortable than ever sharing deeply personal information with friends on the internet, but are paradoxically more conservative when it comes to sharing information with businesses. Don’t let tell-all blog posts fool you: 72% of Americans are hesitant to share personal information and data with businesses. On top of that, 48% of people have switched providers due to privacy concerns. And who can blame them? Between breaches, data leaks, and the increasing risk of hacks, consumers don’t want any of their sensitive personal information like bank records, names, and addresses at risk.
If companies really want to get ahead, they need to prioritize privacy. It’s not enough to say you care - it has to be embedded in your product. The good news, though, is caring about privacy is a revenue and customer loyalty magnet.
Customers are acting with their dollar
The old adage used to be that customers could choose between an archaic but secure platform or a sleek, convenient interface that sacrificed privacy. Now, customers expect both - and they are willing to pay. According to a new Cisco study, 80% of customers expect to pay more to feel confident their privacy is protected.
Privacy is a competitive advantage
Since nearly half of customers are willing to switch providers based on privacy concerns and the vast majority are willing to pay more, privacy is a competitive advantage when it’s baked into your product.
The other side of this competitive advantage is forward-facing. When you have a secure data environment and high customer trust, you have the opportunity to collect even more information about customers. This can not only inform future products and services but also gives you more insight that can be used to reduce customer churn and increase both revenues and profits.
Build privacy-first
For companies looking to take advantage of customer movement and extra dollars going toward privacy, focus on two things:
- Building privacy-first, not convenience-first. Make sure that privacy and security is the bedrock of your experience then augment it to be convenient.
- Embed privacy throughout the whole business. This includes how you sell, answer support tickets, and more. This is not only an added layer of security (which justifies the premium price tag), but also helps do your marketing for you - if the entire buying process is secure, customers can have confidence that your product is secure as well.
This is something that we focused on when building ICwhatUC. Our product is encrypted and secure by default, since we don’t ever store information on a user’s device. At the same time, though, we focused on building for how field workers actually work - no apps to download, just a simple link that opens a secure browser-based video and text chat.
There’s more to privacy than slapping encryption on the platform and hoping for the best. Companies that truly prioritize privacy will need to think about privacy and convenience as dual challenges to solve, not two layers to mush together. The ones that prioritize privacy, though, are the ones that open a huge revenue and customer loyalty opportunity for the future.
