GDPR enactment is here. Is your CX Program ready?
GDPR comes up in every conversation I’ve had with CMOs and Marketing Directors over the past 12 months. That doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is how many organizations remain completely unprepared to adapt to the sweeping new Regulation, the first of its kind since 1995.
Do you remember what the internet was like in 1995? I don’t think anyone anticipated the form of modern Customer Experience programs and their reliance on cookies and tracking pixels to follow customers through every journey touchpoint.
NTT Security’s The Risk:Value report found that:
[M]any global companies are still unaware of how they will be affected by GDPR, and certainly don‘t understand the implications of the new rules.
So, how will GDPR affect your CX Program, and what exactly are the implications of these new rules?
I wrote this article to answer both questions.
To read the General Data Protection Regulation in its entirety, click here.
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1. Consumer Trust Is No Longer Optional.
Yahoo, Deutsche Telekom, Aadhaar—three organizations, billions of customer records exposed. In an era of highly publicized massive data breaches, GDPR cracks down on sloppy customer data management. Fail to follow strict customer privacy protocols, and you’ll face massive fines—or worse. Since nearly two-thirds of consumers either refuse to or are unlikely to do business with an organization whose data breach involves stolen personal financial data, companies now have two incentives to maintain compliance.
2. CX Must Be Consensual.
Without customer data, you don’t have a CX Program, period. GDPR adds a crucial step to acquiring that data—an explicit company consent request. Get this consent request wrong, and your CX team is flying blind. At eKomi, we provide our CX clients with both legal counsel and marketing-approved forms. This ensures that customers will accept your request while keeping your entire program GDPR-compliant.
3. Let Customers See Everything.
GDPR’s transparency requirements terrify CX team leads, whose industries have long been infamous for opacity. However, AXA Insurance and eKomi teamed up already in 2017 to roll out an unprecedentedly transparent and compliant CX Program.
Ultimately, the better you manage customers’ data across departments, the more visible your data usage will be. In this way, GDPR offers a unique opportunity for cross-functional alignment.
4. Siloed CX Is Illegal CX.
In the world of GDPR, if a customer requests their data, you’re required by law to leave no stone unturned fulfilling that request. Sound like a nightmare? For most organizations, where customer data is held in multiple locations, it is. A single request sucks time away from your marketing, accounting, customer service, and technical support teams to name a few.
In light of these changes, I suggest making significant moves toward a more centralized customer database to save future effort.
5. “Unsubscribed” Means “Unsubscribed.”
GDPR’s “Right To Be Forgotten” makes the traditional CRM email unsubscribe obsolete. Pre-GDPR, when a customer would click that nasty little “Unsubscribe” button at the bottom of your marketing email, they were not technically unsubscribed from the system, just from receiving future emails. Unless you are 100% certain that your Subscription Preferences infrastructure is GDPR-compliant, chances are, it isn’t.
Although your current CX Program may be illegal when GDPR takes effect 25 May 2018, you’re not without a solution. eKomi is the ONLY all-in-one CX and Reputation Management platform to meet GDPR standards before the regulation even takes effect.
If you want to clear up every remaining GDPR-CX question you have in one conversation, reach out to me directly. I’m happy to help your organization get GDPR-ready as quickly and cost-effectively as possible.
By Michael Ambros, CEO and Founder of eKomi
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