By-Gaurav Janeja
Balancing Innovation with Privacy and Security in CX Technology Customer experience (CX) is the holistic journey that customers undergo when interacting with a business, encompassing all touchpoints from initial inquiries to post-purchase support. Its significance lies in its direct impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty, ultimately shaping the success or failure of a business. A negative CX can lead to customer attrition and damage brand reputation, while a positive one fosters loyalty, advocacy, and sustainable growth.
Leveraging technology is pivotal in enhancing CX, allowing businesses to optimize processes, personalize interactions, and deliver seamless experiences across multiple channels. A notable trend in CX enhancement is the integration of traditional and digital methods to create cohesive and omnichannel experiences. By strategically combining offline and online touchpoints, businesses can meet customer’s needs more effectively while maintaining consistency and continuity in service delivery. This convergence enables brands to adapt to evolving consumer preferences, maximize engagement, and build enduring relationships that drive long-term success.
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Management of assets and delivery of services are also taking place through these CX enablers, which put the customer above everything and make their interaction with the brand as easy as possible. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML), brands are now banking on predictive insights and personalized interactions that make human involvement close to negligible.
While this shift has led to swift issue resolution, and adaptation of a smooth feedback mechanism made CX more intuitive, it presents ethical concerns regarding data privacy and security. For example, suppose a business uses AI and ML to suggest products to a customer and improve CX, based on past online behavior. While this may seem harmless, it may very well be that the customer does not have a say in what’s happening, and has not consented to be targeted by a business like this. This is why privacy experts believe that first-party data collection is important.
This type of data collection works by asking the user’s permission before enabling product recommendations, in this regard the potential customer could choose GenAI or generative AI, which is increasingly being used in CX as it enables brands to build meaningful, human-like dialogs with every interaction – without employing real humans. But GenAI started to become a cybersecurity concern in 2023, and it’s likely to become a much bigger issue in 2024. According to the Hacker-Powered Security Report 2023, 61% of hackers plan to use GenAI for hacking tools and to find more vulnerabilities. GenAi is also being used for phishing as it has made it easy to trap potential victims based on their online activity.
Companies using innovative CX technologies should train their leaders in ethical compliance, given the number of lawsuits filed daily for breaching user privacy. These are mostly related to issues surrounding transparency, purposes of obtaining information and retaining it, the period for which the information is retained, and the identities of the parties to which the information is forwarded. Stricter policies and shields need to be put in place at the organizational level also because we have seen mass data leaks happening, where malignant forces can find loopholes in the system and steal the private data of customers, which then leads to a lack of trust.
Breaches do happen, brands should take full responsibility and communicate what happened openly and transparently manner. It should be remembered that brand loyalty is something that AI and other new technologies have yet to master, so human elements are also an essential part of CX, especially when this comes to matters of privacy.
Ensuring that ethics is a significant part of a brand’s CX technological ecosystem is a commitment that it makes to its customers. Making ethical decisions may come at the cost of profits in many instances, but if the brand values its customers, then it should be ready to uphold data protection and security. Companies should implement mechanisms to track the performance of AI systems, identify potential issues, and make necessary adjustments.
Additionally, regular security audits of data systems and feedback repositories are essential to ensure that AI-driven customer experiences do not cross into unethical territory. Many companies have realized this already, and while they are integrating newer CX tech like contextual experiences, they are also focused on investing in data protection tools.
(Gaurav Juneja, CRO of Kapture CX)
(Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal and do not reflect the official position or policy of Financial Express Online. Reproducing this content without permission is prohibited.)
From: financialexpress
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