Many business owners are conflicted by the idea of data transparency. This may be due to its apparent threat to their business’ intellectual property, company privacy and exposing crucial information to competitors.
But data transparency is the new normal and, with the right approach, your business can take advantage of a more open approach to data.
In this article we’ll explore the benefits of data transparency for your business and how to best manage it.
In a nutshell, data transparency means making information and knowledge available to customers, employees and key stakeholders in your business.
The practice of gathering customer data is chiefly to provide a personalised customer experience, however many businesses fail to explain this benefit effectively. While many customers enjoy the perks of a customised approach, many are understandably suspicious of giving their information away. Being open about your data, how it’s collected and how it will get used, can solve this potential issue.
It’s also not unusual for companies to collect personal data they have no use for currently, believing it might be valuable further down the track. However, as with all relationships in life, authenticity and communication is key.
Best practice data transparency means that customers and stakeholders have access to data in a clear and easily digestible format; as well as seeing its sources, methods and any limitations that data may carry.
Data transparency increases productivity
Data transparency isn’t just about the relationship with customers, it’s also essential for driving internal business relationships, strategies and decision making.
- In customer service centres, it’s important to have an administration interface that presents real time data in a way that makes it quick and easy for staff to access and review. Customer Service team members can review customer history immediately and deliver faster answers and help.
- For service centre supervisors, having access to operational data that is relayed in real time, means they’ll be on the front foot when it comes to managing peaks and troughs in inbound traffic.
- For marketing teams, having access to real time data or recent campaign insight reports enables them to identify issues and make adjustments to campaigns as they happen.
It also enables informed decision-making so key players can understand complex issues, identify trends and respond intelligently.
Premier Contact Point delivers real time data and powerful insight reports for customer service teams and marketing teams, and management. Premier Contact Point can also be integrated with other inhouse systems to provide a single powerful overview of all the key data that is needed for analysis and decision making.
Data transparency improves trust
These days people are familiar with cookies tracking their every movement online, or being served ads for products they only mentioned to a friend in passing etc. For many this is not just spooky, but also quite threatening. It throws up the usual questions; where is my data going? Who is using it? Am I safe from fraud etc?
Data transparency is absolutely fundamental to building trust for your business. Businesses who are upfront and honest about the data being collected, and the motives for doing so, can alleviate these fears and secure trust.
Best practices to implement now
- Be open
Disclose the type of data you collect and how it will be used in your business to the consumer and internal parties. Building trust with customers also means you’ll be in a better position to encourage them to share their information.
- Stringent internal processes
Ensure that you have efficient and secure internal processes in place to collect and store data. Establish clear policies and procedures on how data will be collected, how it will be securely stored; who will have access; and how it will be used. Your policies, processes and systems must comply with the Privacy Act. The Privacy Act also governs the privacy rights of consumers and gives everyone the right to know why their personal information is being collected, how it will be used and who it will be disclosed to and what they don’t have to share.
- Avoid collecting more data than you need
With today’s sophisticated data analysis capabilities, it’s easy to get carried away collecting a huge amount of data so you can one day use it to analyse all kinds of things. Ironically less is more when it comes to data collection. People are more likely to divulge information and be less suspicious if you stay with collecting only essential and relevant data. As much as your marketing department might want to see data on hobbies or favourite TV shows to assist with psychographic analysis and choosing “audiences” for ads, this level of personal information is irrelevant in most transactional or customer service situations.
So make sure you identify what your essential data points are before you design your customer forms for your customer service centre, or your website. Not only will it make data collection a less onerous task, it has been proven many times that shorter online forms will improve the completion rate. If you do want to collect non-essential data, make it clear during the call, or on a form, that it’s optional.
How can Premier Contact Point help with data transparency?
In your customer service and sales centres, data transparency is key to providing outstanding customer experiences. You want your teams to have instant access to all the customer data they need to be helpful and to build relationships.
Premier Contact Point can be integrated with data from any source to access important customer information.
Our real time dashboards and powerful Business Intelligence reports can be customised to view the data and gain insights that are easy to understand and digest.
Visit our Premier Contact for Business Insights page for more information.
