How respecting data privacy will increase trust in you?

Most of those browsing online want their online experience to be something that doesn’t annoy them. For instance, after having looked for a particular product online you don’t expect 10 different websites to contact you with their offers. Yes, collecting data about those browsing your websites or apps will be beneficial to you, from the point of view of increasing sales, but you need to make sure that the customers don’t feel harassed in any way. Some people will want to make sure that you know nothing about them and now there are government laws and international laws that are there to protect them from predatory data collectors.

So, seeking the customer consent before collecting any information about them will make them trust you more. You should also tell those coming in contact with you about how the data collected from them will be used. You should also give them the option of deleting the data that you have collected as and when they may want to do so. You can also devise methods that will make the data collection transparent, like customer reviews about your products or you can have loyalty programs which means that customers are offering you their details with their full confidence, with no chance of the complaining later of the data having been collected in an unfair way.

Also, if you have made an online sale, you will have lots of information about your customers. But, you should make sure that all the data that you have is used the right way, for instance you don’t sell it to others in the businesses who may be offering products related to what you are offering. Also, you should send emails or SMSs or WhatsApp messages only as long as the customers give their consent to receive these. The customer data in a way make each company a government in its own right but you need to look after your citizens too! Yes, the scale of data you will get will depend on your customer or prospective customer base is. The more data you have the more careful you will need to be with making sure it doesn’t go to wrong hands.

Yes, you will be able to personalize the offers to your customers with the more data you have about them, but it should be collected with their permission, in a fair way. Any consumer complaints can prove to be disastrous for your business, not just in short term but in long term too, wasting all the good work that you have been doing to build yourself as a brand name to be reckoned with in the industry you are in.