Editorial
The Gist
- Balance CX and compliance. Striking a balance between customer experience and regulatory compliance is crucial for smooth customer onboarding and maintaining relationships.
- Leverage digital tools. Utilizing AI, ML, and other digital tools can enhance the customer journey while adhering to regulatory requirements in a rapidly evolving world.
- Prioritize data privacy. Companies must prioritize data privacy and transparency to build trust and ensure a seamless onboarding process without compromising compliance.
Striking a balance between customer experience (CX) and regulatory compliance often creates more friction for organizations regarding customer onboarding and maintaining existing relationships.
As more consumers are rethinking the companies they engage with due to privacy concerns and data breaches becoming more frequent, companies are left having to find alternative solutions that allow them to minimize bumps throughout the customer value chain, while remaining compliant and following the rules set out by industry regulatory bodies.
With the shift toward building more client-intimate and client-centric programs, organizations are left having to rethink their processes, leveraging digital tools such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities to further improve the customer journey, while adhering to regulatory requirements in a rapidly evolving world.
Compliance and Regulatory Matters in the Age of Digital Consumerism
Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the amount of data and information they are leaving on the table for companies.
Rapid Adoption of Technology
However, in recent years, due to the rapid adoption of technology both on the consumer and organizational front, compliance and regulatory structures have become more sophisticated, leading to greater challenges for businesses to create efficient customer onboarding and often missing key barriers within their value chain.
The Right Digital Tools
For companies, finding the right digital tools that help to smooth out these processes often comes with the uncertainty over whether they would actually improve the customer experience, or only add more barriers to entry.
Implementing New Tools
The implementation of new tools ensures that companies follow rules and laws outlined by regulatory bodies, although this has caused an air of skepticism among consumers. A report published by KPMG in 2021 found that a full 86% of respondents shared that they have an increasing concern regarding their data and privacy, while 78% said they fear the amount of data being collected by service providers.
Forward Thinking Strategy
Resolving the customer experience and regulatory issues requires companies to have a forward-thinking strategy that takes into consideration their current position and how they can leverage new developments in the marketplace to improve their customer value chain processes without falling victim to compliance pitfalls, data breaches or cybersecurity threats.
Related Article: Successful Customer Onboarding: A Quick Guide
Minimize Friction in the Customer Onboarding Journey
As competition in the consumer marketplace continues to accelerate with the introduction of advanced technology, customer onboarding remains a critical step in the customer journey. This comes at a time when nurturing existing relationships is often easier, and more affordable than engaging in customer acquisition.
Technology and the Customer Onboarding Process
However, despite the process often being complex, costly, and time-consuming, the customer onboarding process requires careful consideration in terms of the technology and digital tools organizations are willing to incorporate to help make the process more efficient while at the same time remaining compliant with regulatory standards.
Avoiding Friction
Using the right verification and authentication tools will ensure that customers only provide the necessary information, without causing friction in the onboarding process due to laborious or demanding data collection tools.
These actions play an important role considering that 90% of customers claim that they are not willing to buy products or services from a business without first knowing how their personal data will be used, according to one survey by Cisco.
Finding the balance between having the right set of tools and being able to go beyond traditional legacy measures enables companies to focus on the client while fulfilling their compliance needs.
Related Article: Boost CX With AI-Enabled Customer Onboarding
Create Understanding Around Regulatory Requirements
Collecting consumer information and data, at any point of the onboarding process or value chain requires organizations to better understand the appropriate measures to safeguard client information, and deliver a fulfilling customer experience while still being compliant.
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Although industry laws may stipulate the necessary protocols companies need to follow, adhering to both business and customer demand will help compliance teams and business leaders develop a set of best practices that have been customized to their overarching needs.
For instance, companies can approach regulatory compliance from a different point of view by outlining their objectives, and how regulations have been designed to help protect customers.
Similarly, it’s important to consider the intent of data collection practices, as this will enable organizations to provide further context to customers and help establish transparent practices that could make the conversations easier between customers and employees.
As a point of reference, before implementing any new compliance strategy, organizations should consider the following:
Industry Regulations
Learn about the industry regulations, and try to mirror these guidelines within the overarching objectives.
Invest in Cybersecurity Infrastructure
Remove any potential threats or data breaches by investing in the necessary cybersecurity infrastructure. This should include both internal and external security protocols, which should then be communicated with customers.
Have a Transparent Approach
Make an effort to be transparent about the data you’re collecting and the specific usage practices of the information. The majority of customers may understand that you’re collecting their data, but for what purpose?
Allow Customers Control Over Their Data
Following up on the importance of transparency, be sure that there are ways in which customers can access or review the data your company has collected. By communicating these actions, you are further improving your transparency measures.
Only Collect Necessary Data
Finally, make sure to only collect necessary data that allows you the appropriate amount of customer insight without breaching regulatory protocols. One McKinsey survey found that half of respondents often trust companies more if they ask for information relevant to its services or products, and limit the amount of personal information requested.
Remove legacy solutions
The correlation between customer experience and industry compliance comes together with the use of appropriate technological solutions that collect, store, and analyze data in the most efficient way possible.
By removing legacy solutions, your company can begin to look toward adopting innovative tools that meet client expectations, while creating simplicity and enhancing the service delivery aspect of your business.
Following the pandemic, reliance on innovative digital tools has rapidly become an essential part of any business looking to provide a seamless customer experience. In fact, 70% of compliance experts believe that the pandemic has only boosted organizations’ reliance on technology for decision-making, performance monitoring and risk management.
By leveraging the right set of tools — AI, ML, Natural Language Processing (NLP), big data, and analytics — companies will be able to gain better insights into customer behavior, which in return enables them to improve the CX journey and deliver a more personalized experience.
While technology can be the antidote to strike a balance between customer experience, efficient service delivery and compliance, finding the appropriate digital tools can help create simplicity for teams and allow companies to be more agile in an ever-changing market.
Concluding Thoughts
Technological adoption has become a game changer in more ways than imagined, allowing customers seamless access to various service providers and seeing companies better understand consumer behavior and deliver more personalized experiences.
Although these considerations are an important piece of the puzzle, having a clear understanding of compliance and regulatory matters could further benefit organizations to remove any unnecessary barriers throughout the customer onboarding process, while simultaneously remaining compliant with industry laws.
Building a strategy that works is about creating a balancing act that sees both components — CX and compliance — come together in a way that helps create more transparency surrounding data collection, simplifies the data collection process, and creates a seemingly homogeneous process that benefits both consumers and organizations.
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