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New ecosystems arise in which customers share large amounts of their personal details. How and what data is shared largely depends on the context, how comfortable we feel online, and how much value we attribute to our personal data. As a result, online consumer behaviour varies and is unpredictable. Although consumers claim to value their online privacy over optimal service provision, this is not reflected in their digital behaviour[1]. Consumers take on different digital identities, the so called privacy paradox.

Getting consumers to willingly share their personal data without a clear prospect on what is in it for them proves to be a tough challenge for retailers and service providers. Online conversion rates are lagging as current onboarding processes especially represent the need for attributes from the retailer or service provider's perspective. They are not designed to capture the multiple digital identities of online consumers.

This blog presents a model (developed with the ‘Digital Identity’ experts) that will help organizations to better understand their own context in relation to the behavioural context of their preferred consumers. Enabling them to define and deliver on a customer centric digital strategy and onboarding process by putting the customer in control of their identity.

Data maximisation versus data minimisation

The majority of current digital onboarding processes reflect the organizational belief that the holy grail in customer loyalty still rests on the principle of gathering customer data[2] as much and as quickly as possible. The principle that a better understanding of customers drives better services and deeper relationships, still stands. However, consumers are becoming more aware of their online privacy and therefore more reluctant to share data. Additionally, customer data management yields increasingly more responsibilities for organizations driven by new regulation like GDPR. As a result, the discrepancy widens between the traditional organizational approach of 'data maximisation', and the consumer behaviour and regulatory trend towards 'data minimisation'. As for the model in figure 1, organisations currently tend to have a high need for attributes, while customers not always have a high willingness to share these attributes. Each quadrant in the model describes how organizations should act in that context.

Consumer behaviour versus the organizational requirements

In building relevant online customer relationships, it is essential that organizations understand what data elements, or attributes, are needed to determine the identity of their customers and whether they are willing to share them and how.

Main factors for consumers to share data are:

• Type of product or service the customer intends to buy
• Trust of customer in organization and brand
• Value assigned by the customer to own attribute

From an organizational perspective, the personal data (identity attributes) required by organizations during onboarding can be categorised as follows:

• Legal: attributes that enable the service provider to comply to regulation related to products and services offered (i.e. duty of care, KYC, Telecommunications Act, AMLD[3])
• Operational excellence: attributes that are required to (optimally) provide a specific service level and manage internal risk policies (financial and reputational)?
• Commercial: attributes that contribute to the commercial agenda of an organization and particularly focus on building long term relationships with (potential) customers

The expert group concludes that the digital identity of consumers, and its required data-richness, is always contextual and particularly defined by consumer behaviour, trust in brand and the complexity of the product and service involved.

A one size fits all approach will therefore no longer suffice in becoming and staying relevant to consumers. Onboarding needs to become personal and flexible while meeting legal, operational and commercial requirements.  

Getting a grip on conversion rates

To improve conversion rates, it is important that organizations get a grip on the context of their onboarding process.

In our research paper, the model in figure 1 has been tested on three onboarding use cases with differing product or service complexity. Overall, we see that all three processes are not customer centric as they:

• primarily aim at addressing the organization’s need (or want) for especially commercial attributes
• are not able to handle variations in digital identity requirements and consumer behaviour, and
• are designed to handle the 'happy flow', exceptions are dropping out entirely

In short, whether the customer is willing to share the requested attributes is of inferior importance. Not surprising conversion rates are lagging.

How to put the customer in control

First, organizations should critically (re)consider whether all attributes requested are really necessary. Second, where organizations used to segment their (potential) customers demographically, in current digital context, behavioural segmentation is required. For instance, segmentation in terms of ‘willingness to share personal attributes’, i.e. ranging from anonymous towards a full digital identity profile, will enable organizations to better align their services and address the customer’s ‘privacy’ preference. Not just in terms of what a customer likes or wants, but based on what a customer really is willing to share in acquiring a certain product or service. By providing the customer different options, the customer is put into control of its own digital identity. And when your service is aligned with the varying willingness to share attributes of customers, you will be able to service more customers and increase conversion.

Retailers and service providers therefore have a lot to gain when they start working towards a more customer centric digital identity strategy and onboarding process. And this model helps them shape and deliver on this strategy on the short term and longer term. Stay tuned for our follow-up blog where we will deep dive on how different customer profiles and their ‘willingness to share’ will put both organizations and customers in control.

The full Shopping Tomorrow research paper can be found above and will further elaborate on the model and important trends. Feel free to contact us for additional information, or when you are evaluating your digital identity activities.

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[1] Shopping Tomorrow 2017 Consumer research, carried out by GfK
[2] Research into current onboarding processes, carried out by expert group 'Digital Identity' as described in the full research paper
[3] AMLD (Anti-Money Laundering Directive) is a directive focussed on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purpose of money laundering and terrorist financing