Building Customer Trust in a Cookie-less Age

Trust isn’t built overnight. 

It’s a slow process that requires consistency, diligence, and transparency. We think about how to build trust in our own personal relationships, but it is just as important in the relationship a business has with its customers.

With the impending phasing out of third-party cookies, the when and how of customer data collection will set the tone for how comfortable customers feel about sharing their information.

Marketers need to identify the best places within their customer journey to ask for this data, whether this is at first contact with new leads or after a few interactions. They must also assess how they’re requesting data. Good practices include letting customers know how their information will be used in a clear, understandable way. As companies are encouraged to use first party data, this means asking for basic information, like names, birthdays, email or home addresses. In fact, 50% of customers are quite open to giving out this information to brands they feel they can trust. Part of receptivity is the way in which brands give customers a good reason to release information about themselves—letting customers know not only how this data will be useful to the company, but also how the customer will benefit.

Gaining consent shouldn’t have to take away from how a brand portrays itself. If anything, asking for consent should add to a brand’s image and be seen as a collaboration between company and customer.

However, part of any good collaboration requires that both parties willingly take part.

Even once customers opt-in, they should be given the ability to change their minds at any given point. This goes back to transparency and simply a brand’s image—specifically, coming across as having nothing to hide and not appearing desperate. 

According to a 2020 survey by McKinsey, 71% of consumers stop doing business with companies that give away sensitive data without consent. If customers even suspect their data has been collected and released without permission, any sense of loyalty the brand may have built goes right out the window, which is why giving customers open opportunities and access to how their information is being used is a must.

To combat any sense of doubt, companies can provide their customers with self-service methods to alter their data preferences or an easily accessible, on-demand way of making these requests to customer service representatives.

This accessibility can be taken a step further by sending out notifications on key changes in data privacy policies. Letting customers know what capabilities they have when it comes to blocking or revoking the use of their data allows them to feel more in control, especially if they can object to data collection completely or partially before any of it is processed. 

There’s also the age-old question of quality vs quantity to consider. 

When it comes to gathering additional insights from other parties, companies need to first access what they’re really looking for. Second and third-party data collectors may be providing information from a wide variety of sources. This doesn’t inherently mean that the data isn’t good, but if it’s too broad, it won’t do much good. Having information from people who aren’t part of a business’s target audience won’t provide value in the long-run, and it can often mean more tedious work for that company’s marketing and sales teams. More data, especially unnecessary data, will include more user preferences and potential compliance risks to consider. Doing business with parties that are intent on providing you the right audience to target will save time and frustration for both company and customer.

As we move into a new digital age with customers increasingly becoming more tech-savvy and security-conscious than previous generations, building customer trust will only become more essential. It is no longer enough to offer a great product, have stellar advertising, or a good social media presence. If the relationship between companies and customers is to be mutually beneficial, companies will have to ensure they are creating a foundation with flexibility, autonomy, and transparency for the customer.