Why Data Security Is Key for Customer Retention

Featured article by Thea Millard, Market Data Analyst

Customer care can be the defining factor that makes a difference between a successful company and a failing one. All other tasks and activities derive from the connection between product and client. Marketing may be the most volatile field in business, but one thing is always clear: customers will always come first.

Customer Retention Is Equal to Lead Generation

Finding new leads and turning them into customers is one of the most exciting adventures in digital marketing. However, as important as lead generation is, so is customer retention. It may be even more effective for the entire company than other marketing branches as the relationship between brand and customer has already been created. The only thing left is to maintain a quality service so the client won’t leave the company for greener pastures.

Before turning to data security, let’s understand better what drives the customers to create a connection with a company.

Customers and Their Connection to Brands

The purpose of the customer retention usually aims at nurturing loyalty between customer and brand. There can never be a long-lasting relationship if the two parties don’t trust the other. However, once customer retention is successfully achieved, the company has a solid foundation on which to build a grand future.

In the digital era, the brand-customer connection was upgraded to the cyberspace. There are many advantages to that. Communication, purchase, customer care, newsletters, advertising, and information can go back and forth in a fraction of a second. This amazing speed is the source of the success of digital marketing.

Companies have gained access to a worldwide market while the consumers are not restricted by space limits to get what they want. So, the online world has served the interest of both parties, but it is not without disadvantages, though.

The Downside of the Online Customer Care

An online connection with the brand requests personal data from their clients in exchange for quality service. This mass of data covers credit cards, bank accounts, identity, online and offline activities. Once consumers become customers, they are constantly exposed to threats to the safety of their personal information. That can ultimately cause them to worry and even cease doing business with your company. The best solution to detecting leaving intent, though, is to organize customer surveys.

An example of such a survey covered 5,750 consumers from Brazil, France, Australia, United Kingdom, United States, Germany, and Japan with the goal of analyzing customer behavior when they become victims of data breaches.

The results were clear and shed light on this sensitive topic once and for all. 64% of them confessed that they wouldn’t return to a company where hackers intruded to steal financial data in the past. In addition, 75% of consumers believe that businesses are not protecting or securing their data. You can find more results on their Customer Data and Loyalty Breaches survey.

However, companies are not the only side that puts the safety of the data in jeopardy. More than half of the participants confessed that they usually use the same credentials for several online accounts. This means that the data leak can be triggered both by the companies and consumers.

However, the blame for all the data leaks will be redirected toward the businesses only. This means that besides the stolen data they have to retrieve, they will also need to add measures with which users can protect their personal information in the future. Companies will eventually bear the entire outcome of data leaks on their shoulders. That’s why prevention is better than solution.

Big Data Environment

It’s crucial that data security is not a measure to overlook. The company should have the customer trust in mind, and compromising the security of the data will most surely end its relationship with the loyal customer.

Once consumers entrust their personal information to a company and it has successfully kept it protected, new customers will be coming in. That means more chances of conversion for new clients and more opportunities to retain existing clients through trust. However, that also brings a big responsibility.

With the advent of the cyberspace, companies should adapt to present demands and see Big Data as an important matter of security. The future of a business success will depend on the implementation of a Big Data environment.

Data security may be just an afterthought for today’s marketing activities, but all the signs and survey results indicate that, in the future, companies will have additional security teams that will handle the security of customer data and predictions of security breaches through analyzing techniques.

As a takeaway of this article, the level of data security is responsible for customer retention. There are many strategies to ensure customer retention nowadays, but a transparent and safe data environment is a clean and simple key to maintaining a long-lasting relationship with the client based on trust.