Getting the best of both, Data Privacy and Personalization!
Over the past decade, digital consumers have grown more and more accustomed to highly personalized user experiences. These experiences have increased participation in the digital ecosystem and online marketplaces and have led to users expecting a certain degree of personalization across platforms.
However, this highly efficient customization engine is capable of tailoring feeds and market experiences of millions of users worldwide only because it is sustained by a steady and incessant collection of first, third and zero-party user data[1]. Naturally, the call for data privacy and the need for hyper-personalization are then in diametric opposition to each other. So, with a steady increase in customer expectation for efficient user experience and a rallying call for privacy, how do organizations continue to innovate while complying with the social and regulatory pressure to restrict personal data usage?
The answer might be in the consumer and the organization working together to meet each other halfway, by promoting transparency and reducing the information asymmetry and epistemic inequality[2] between the organization and the consumer. And this begins with educating the consumer base about the real challenges, limitations, and opportunities of data usage by companies.
Followed by building and maintaining consumer trust by championing transparency and accountability. Companies must make it explicitly clear to their users how their data is collected, stored, and used and how it serves as a vital tool in bettering their customer experience. Consumers must be given a choice to opt for personalization and must be made aware of how such hyper-personalization can affect their privacy.
Companies must also hold themselves accountable to the highest standards of consumer trust without the impetus of legal oversight. Consumers by nature trust companies to protect their data and not use it against them. The safeguarding of this trust will prove to be the definitional challenge for digital companies in the decades to come. It also becomes increasingly important to extract only that data which is necessary for the betterment of the platform for a multitude of reasons, not least which is that safe storage of user data which can prove to be a logistical, technical, and legislative challenge.
Every new generation of internet users brings a fresh outlook and new expectations, some of which may be contradictory to each other. Navigating through each aeon of technological evolution means finding the most optimal solution for all parties involved. But a cheat code to solving these problems might be to reimagine the digital user as an active stakeholder in the ecosystem and educating him about not just how the digital environment affects him, but how he affects it.
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References:
[1] “Zero-party data is that which a customer intentionally and proactively shares with a brand. It can include preference center data, purchase intentions, personal context, and how the individual wants the brand to recognize [them].” (Khatibloo)
[2] Shoshana Zuboff defines “epistemic inequality” as a new kind of social inequality; “defined as unequal access to learning imposed by hidden mechanisms of information capture, production, analysis, and control. It is best exemplified in the fast-growing abyss between what people can know and what can be known about them”. (Zuboff)