To better understand UK customers and the role that technology plays in underpinning the business-to-customer relationship, Insight UK surveyed more than 200 business leaders in companies with 500 employees across the UK. It found that no matter the technology in use—cloud, data analytics, artificial intelligence, mobile—organizations have data overload.
A remarkable nine-out-of-10 business leaders expect a shift in customer behavior over the next five years, and 86% believe that digital technologies have enabled the evolution of business and the creation of new services. However, while business leaders feel ready to face the digital age from a customer experience perspective (89% are confident their company is ready to meet the demands of the digital customer), they wrestle with security and privacy.
About 84% of business leaders said that it’s important to their customers that they know where their data is being stored (53% said ‘very important’); and half (46%) of business leaders revealed that data privacy is one of the top things customers value. However, more than half (54%) find storing data securely extremely difficult.
Less than two-fifths (38%) hope to achieve improved security when implementing IT solutions.
“Bearing that in mind with the fact that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force in just over six months…letting data privacy take a back seat has the potential to cause irreparable—both financially and reputational—damage to customer relationships,” said Insight UK, in a blog. “What better example of this than TalkTalk’s breach in 2016 which saw the company face a jaw-dropping loss of £60m, not to mention the fact that over 100,000 customers left during its third quarter.”
Lal Hussain, IT director of Applications at Insight UK, said via email that security will be a differentiator for customer service in the future—if it isn’t already.
“In the world of ‘always-on’, every device is an entry point,” said Hussain. “Cybersecurity must be designed into every single project and business solution that is put forward to be signed off. As such, security which is transparent to customers will help to differentiate in the future. In the same way you don’t need to see police officers on every corner to be reassured that they are there, you understand the basic social contract which assures you security without it being thrust to the forefront at every occasion.”