Future-Proof Your Customer Success in the Privacy-First Era
By : Steve Keil
Product Evangelist, Flytxt
The world of cookies is coming to an end. As privacy-conscious customers continue to influence policies worldwide, marketers can no longer rely on third-party customer data from cookies. In this new privacy-focused era, the future is privacy-preserving AI.
The end of cookies
Cookies were a marketer’s best tool to tackle large data sets through automation. Although imperfect, they helped personalise customer experiences and improve targeting. The scalability and consistency of cookies made them a go-to source for audience insights.
Despite their many advantages, the reality is that cookies were a poor crutch. Their limited shelf-life undercut marketers’ ability to evolve personalisation efforts over time, and customers were increasingly concerned about the way companies used their data. The elimination of third-party cookies paves the way toward a more transparent future.
Challenges and opportunities
The availability of customer data through more devices and channels has elevated customer engagement and created new ways for companies to differentiate. In most cases, new challenges are also introduced in tandem. With added complexity, customers are more anxious than ever regarding the privacy and security of their personal data. In fact:
- 41% of customers don’t believe companies care about the security of their data
- 46% of customers feel they’ve lost control over their own data
Trust is now paramount to a CSP’s customer loyalty and long-term revenue
Privacy and security are the natural counterbalance in a world where data – and lots of it – fuels elevated experiences. Customers want to know that their data is respected and being used legitimately. When transparently applied for their benefit, the majority of customers are actually comfortable with a data-value exchange.
The key to connection: Inspire belief
CSP’s must emotively connect with customers, be transparent, and deliver on data-value exchange.
Businesses have a lot of ground to cover on trust
Unhappy customers are not only at risk of leaving, but also tend to strongly voice their displeasure.
Despite more businesses understanding this fact, the statistics show room for improvement:
- 20% of customers had bad customer care experiences, 25% had neutral ones, and
only 55% were positive!
While these numbers don’t seem particularly unexpected, the concerning factor is the
sentiment trend of customers. When asked about their interactions with customer care support:
- Nearly half say their frustration levels have grown over the past year,
- 55% feel increasingly stressed, and
- 52% state that support interactions leave them exhausted.
The worse news:
73% of these customers said they will switch to a competitor after multiple bad experiences—and more than 50% will head for the exit after a single unsatisfactory interaction.
Embracing customer empathy, empowering trust, and delivering personalization
Larger CSP’s and organisations relied on processing cookies in an attempt to deliver personalisation at scale. With cookies sunsetting and the era of first-party data upon us, it will never again be humanly possible to tackle this challenge. Modern data collection is reliant on integrated OSS and BSS systems, mobile apps, and connected third-party data ecosystems. In this context, developing a behavioral first-party data graph and processing it manually becomes an insurmountable challenge.
This is a challenge suited for Privacy-preserving AI. Businesses can lean on its unique strengths to deliver trusted, personalised experiences that leverage customer empathy and build trust.
Tomorrow’s leaders will adopt AI-based paradigms for customer success.
Leveraging AI for CX will help reduce customer churn, improve customer experiences and care interactions, and boost revenue through increased loyalty and personalised services and offers.
Privacy Preserving AI is the only viable tool able to deliver personalised customer experiences and conquer customer happiness, growth, loyalty, and revenue metrics.
The ability to collect first party data and subsequently apply models trained on trillions of anonymous, encrypted, and relevant customer interactions is unprecedented. It’s also a difficult challenge to achieve, which is why privacy preservation – and the transparent communication of secure privacy – will be paramount.
CSP leaders will no longer have the luxury of ignoring customer sentiment and emotions. Those that adopt specialized AI tools to augment their marketing and business teams and deliver amazing customer experiences will thrive. Those that don’t, will struggle.
Sources: 6th Edition State of the Connected Customer from Salesforce