by Janus Boye
If you have been following privacy expert Tim Walters for the last couple of years, you might have noticed that he added ‘Trust Me’ to his Twitter name, so that the name on account today is: Tim "Trust Me" Walters.
Back in 2019 he famously said that Trust Is A Prerequisite For Great Customer Experiences. Today, as we’ve arrived in 2022, it is just a bit longer since the implementation of GDPR, the major privacy regulation by the EU.
Tim has carefully studied how privacy and trust is changing and how it impacts our work as digital leaders. In a recent member call, Tim shared what organizations must do in 2022 to create competitive experiences in today’s privacy-centric environment. According to Tim, businesses competing for consumer’s attention and loyalty, need to look at the evolving data privacy challenge as about far more than securing customer data and satisfying regulators.
Tim is no stranger to our community, a highly-rated keynote speaker at past Boye conferences in Philadelphia and also Aarhus, most recently in 2019.
Below you’ll find a few of my notes from the call, and towards the end, you’ll find the entire recording.
The real GDPR is coming
GDPR is widely known as the General Data Protection Regulation, which was published by the EU in 2016. As the EU recognized that it would take some effort to implement, companies were given 2 years to adopt it and it was only enforceable beginning 25 May 2018.
According to Tim, almost 1,000 GDPR-related fines have since been imposed and whereas 160 million Euros were fined in 2020, the figure grew substantially to above one billion in 2021. It’s having a big impact.
Still, Tim urges companies not to think about privacy or compliance as just regulation, but rather as a culture and social force. It’s the Global Data Privacy Revolution as he calls it.
It’s about how less than 25% of customers, when given a choice and visiting a brand that they love, chooses to opt-in for marketing. It’s even much less when visiting sites that we don’t love.
It used to be that digital teams, or customer experience teams, could collect all the data they wanted, and a bit more using modern MarTech, but today the game has changed. That’s what Tim referred to years ago as the change from ‘Big Data to Beg Data’ and also what he meant with the title of the call - we need to shift from privacy (compliance) to trust (worthiness).
To build that trust, brands need to make a good impression and as we all know, first impressions matter. In the call, Tim reminded us about the first impression that we have on many brand sites today:
A badly implemented cookie banner ruins the first impressions and erodes trust. That’s a competitive disadvantage.
What makes you happy to share your data?
Trust is the #1 driver of consent, but as many have documented, we are going through a crisis of trust at the moment and this is not something new to 2022.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres opened the General Assembly in 2018 with the stark observation that “our world is suffering from a bad case of ‘Trust Deficit Disorder.” Since then the state of trust has not necessarily improved with fake news and the so-called infodemic that came with covid19 . The 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer speaks of a “failing trust ecosystem unable to confront the rampant infodemic, leaving the four institutions—business, government, NGOs and media—in an environment of information bankruptcy.”
This means that data is harder to get today than ever. As Tim said in his talk:
80% prefer businesses that offer personalized interactions, yet over half don’t want to trade data for targeting.
Tim suggested that organizations consider what he called ‘just-in-time consent’. That would rarely be as a part of the first impression, but rather a few steps further down the relationship building. It could be when I’m looking to complete my purchase, or if I want to claim a discount voucher.
It does look like we should be reevaluating how we approach trust digitally. Customers clearly don’t like giving up their data and trust can’t be rebuilt. As Tim said: Trust is earned. It’s about ethics, competences and considering when you really need that data.
Trustworthy customer experience
Money can’t buy you love and you can’t make a customer trust you.
To quote Tim, you need to:
Embody, demonstrate and project trustworthiness.
Importantly, and getting back to the real Global Data Privacy Revolution, it’s not something you should do just to satisfy the lawyers or the regulators. The customers demand it and their voice is increasingly loud.
As an example, consider the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) of 2018. It was originally proposed as a ballot proposition by a privacy group known as Californians for Consumer Privacy. Widely recognized as the toughest privacy regulation in the US, it has since been expanded by the newer California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (CPRA), which also grew out of a ballot. As Bloomberg wrote in late 2020 in this piece: Move Over, CCPA: The California Privacy Rights Act Gets the Spotlight Now:
Never before has a state gone so far to protect consumer data privacy.
So, how do you exhibit trustworthiness? Here are two good places to start for your trustworthy customer experience as suggested by Tim:
Ethical consent practices
Manipulative consent interactions may be compliant, and they may deliver more data (in the short term) - but they actively communicate that you are not trustworthy, that you do not have the consumer’s interest at heart
Competent data management
To gauge trustworthy competence, Edelman asks one question: Is this organization good at what they do?
PwC: Globally, 32% say they would stop doing business with a brand they loved after just one bad experience. In Latin America, it’s 49%
Learn more about privacy and trust
You can read more about this topic in some of our past posts:
Introducing The Handbook For Ethical Digital Design (May 2020)
Defining Your Company’s Data Ethics Is A Great Opportunity And Competitive Advantage (September 2016)
You can also join our peer groups, where the conversation continues. Expand your network, get useful help to take the next steps and become a part of a unique learning and networking experience. There’s also the next Boye Aarhus 22 conference coming up in November, where the community gets together alongside world-class speakers.
Finally, you can lean back and enjoy the entire recording from the call below.