Igniting Customer Connections: Fire Up Your Company's Growth By Multiplying Customer Experience & Engagement

Chapter 20Consumer PrivacyAddress This Critical Issue with Transparency, Knowledge, Respect, and Responsibility

Customer connections, atomic moments of truth, deeper engagement, and a better experience—all of the ideas and strategies we've explored so far are based on connecting with customers more closely. The many benefits this closer connection brings to your business and the consumer are clear—from more relevant messaging and offers to greater efficiency to better results. But when citizens and consumers become valued customers and prospects, it also raises a key issue—privacy. Here we highlight the importance of respecting customer privacy, and share some of the ground rules that help ensure it.

Why Is Privacy an Issue?

The digital era enables businesses to compile, share, analyze, use, and store more data than ever before—more easily, and at a lower cost. The growing volume of highly detailed data has triggered an ongoing privacy debate. It's a major topic of discussion—not just within the marketing community, but around the dinner table, in the news, and on Capitol Hill. Any marketing organization that ignores its customers' privacy does so at its own peril.

As we established earlier, businesses operate differently than in the distant past of a decade ago—they move faster and rely on more channels to connect to their customers. To meet the fast-evolving, diverse needs of their customers, they're gathering more data, creating privacy concerns that never existed back when ...