• May 22, 2023
• Anthony Lynch
• no comments

A note to enterprise data owners – Don’t Worry! There is so much to look forward to in a post-cookie world.

Broadly speaking, enterprises have two ways of gathering data about their customers:
Via the operational touchpoints with their customers – referred to as first party data
Via data brokers – referred to as third party data.

The coming demise of the cookie and accelerating regulation on data privacy will see a significant reduction in the latter data flows into enterprise environments.

So it would seem that the challenge of developing a more rounded view of your customers will increase dramatically. The ability to deliver appropriate offers of products and/or services will be no better than it was over a decade ago.

Collecting personal data began with credit bureaus in the mid-1960s in the USA. These data brokers served the finance industry with credit checks to reduce lending risk. The Internet giants arrived in the 90’s and seized on the opportunity to use personal data (permissioned but not overtly) to understand what will monopolise people’s attention (ads).

Types of data: zero, first, second, third.

Reasons To Be Optimistic

So why do I say there is much to look forward to?
1. Better quality data and
2. Happier customers.

Because sharing of customer data will require permission by the customer – via explicit opt-in vs small print guidance to opt-out – the data will be of superior quality as it will be used in an exchange – to reward the customer in some way with e.g. cash, coupons, personalized offers. This has been given the name Zero Party Data, or ZPD.

For me third party data has always been a real disappointment – I am still receiving offers at my home address of two years with a title and employer that has not been current for over 10 years. So I will be glad to see the back of it!

To ensure data veracity and regulatory compliance, customer data must be under the control of each customer. The most practical way to achieve this is to store a copy of all personal data on the customer’s smartphone. This is not something the great majority of enterprises would choose to do – this will seem counterintuitive to most of them. However, psychological research has shown that ceding full control (opt-in and on-device storage) to the customer will cause them to share more readily (see reference). This combination of customer control of their personal data and a contractual consideration (exchange) for their “permissioned” data is the enabler for increased trust in the enterprise and happier customers!

Positive Steps

So how can this be achieved?

CitizenMe is a solution built around the customer (citizen). CitizenMe allows the citizen to control her 360 life data – gathered from apps, APIs and AI on the smartphone (health, financial, social, entertainment, psychometrics, i.e. “Human Data” – https://www.citizenme.com/human-data/). This data can be appended to Enterprise CDPs, without disrupting the existing architecture. The result is a massive deepening of the customer data; data enabling enterprises to delight their customers in our new AI era.

The future can be brighter with cleaner data. Don’t worry!