Customer Identity – a dilemma, an opportunity

Personalization is at the heart of modern customer experience, and technology is at the heart of this world of personalization or even hyper-personalization. Technology is now so interwoven in our everyday experiences, that it is not far-fetched for customers to expect their bank, their telco or their retail outlet to provide a customized experience from the very first interaction; whether they are interacting with the brand through a website, a mobile app or even a brick and mortar store. As if mapping the journey of a customer isn’t hard enough, when different personas start taking a very unique path from the stage of awareness to the actual purchase, life becomes harder for the brands. The task of mapping this journey across multiple touchpoints and multiple channels is a nightmare, to say the least.

The Opportunity

Marketing teams have known the importance of mapping this journey for ages now, whether in the B2C (Business-to-Consumer) space or in the B2B (Business-to-Business) space. Technology has actually been playing catch-up for many decades in some ways. But billions of smartphone-equipped subscribers and a near-unlimited availability of compute resources in the cloud is changing all of that. In fact, this rapid technological advancement in mobile computing, cloud computing and AI has actually been a driver to re-imagine mapping of customer journeys. Netizens are pumping troves of personal data into the cloud. Machine learning, especially pertaining to its usage in social networks, has reached a point where it can predict our likes and dislikes much more accurately than our parents ever could! This presents a huge opportunity for organizations, especially their marketing functions, to offer more tailored offers to customers, whereby turning them into paying consumers and loyal advocates.

The Dilemma

Amassing data no longer seems to be a challenge. But when your social media, for example, snoops in on your trail or breadcrumbs of data (posts, shares, likes, dislikes, pictures, videos and what not); and starts to push the limits of using that data for unscrupulous gains; it turns into an opportunity at the cost of an individual’s privacy. Equally worse is the evident threat of data breaches. While some responsible companies are conscious of making sure that their consumers’ data is kept secure, countless others tend to overlook the most basic principles of data protection. Governments and regulatory bodies across the globe are cognizant of this problem, which is why we’re seeing the emergence of data privacy acts (e.g. GDPR, CCPA) across the globe. The dilemma for brands is how to continue to harness the power of data, all the while complying to emerging and evolving data privacy regulation. In fact, the more responsible brands don’t just look at privacy or data security merely as a compliance checkbox – managing and maintaining strict consumer data privacy is a core tenet of their brand!

Customer/Consumer/Citizen Identity

As simple as it may sound, identity can be a very difficult concept to grasp. Yet, it is at the very core of consumer data, and offers the backbone for the rather paradoxical realms of marketing and data privacy. On the one end, a single identity within a plethora of systems (CRM – Customer Relationship Management, Loyalty Management System, MDM – Master Data Management, etc.) acts as a glue that binds siloed consumer data into a unified view for commercial teams. On the other end, it serves as a glue for IT, security, privacy and compliance tools (Privacy & Consent Management, ITSM – IT Service Management, FRM – Fraud & Risk Management etc.) to not only prevent breach of consumer data, but also to thwart malign actors.

The notion of identity becomes even more complicated when seen in the broader context. In digital realms, an identity is used to differentiate users. If you want to use a new social network, you need to create a new identity. If you want to use a new digital bank, you need to create a new identity. Same goes for a new telco subscription. And so on. The result is a single individual having to deal with multiple ‘identities’ for their multiple digital services. Compound all these with digital identities issued by government institutions: identity cards, driver licenses, health cards so on. For service providers (public or private sector), the process of creation of these new identities is a time-consuming process. And for consumers themselves, managing multiple identities is a nightmare.

Customer vs. Workforce Identities

A critical aspect of identities is attributes. Whenever we speak of identities, the concept of attributes is almost always inherent to it. In the corporate world, you have employee directories that store information about the employee. Each piece of this information (e.g. first name, last name, email address, department, job title etc.) can be called an attribute. In most organizations, these ‘attributes’ follow a very set pattern. But when you enter the consumer world, the type of attributes can be extremely nuanced. For example, a shoe retailer could be interested in storing your shoe size as an attribute, or your insurance company could be interested in storing your contract in PDF; but neither your shoe retailer is interesting in your insurance terms, and nor your insurance company interested in your shoe size! This amalgamation of structured and unstructured data makes management of identities very different in business and consumer worlds.

From an administrative perspective too, managing identities in both worlds is quite different. Imagine the scale, for example, of managing identities of thousands of employees vs. tens of millions of consumers. Then multiply it with the attributes you’re storing against each identity. Also imagine how a consumer’s identity lives inside a plethora of business applications inside the IT department, spread across on-premise and cloud applications. This makes the task of privacy management and compliance a lot more cumbersome in the consumer world.

Finally, while employees can be inconvenienced into calling IT to reset passwords, to provision identities into new IT systems, or to change certain data (attributes); the same cannot be expected in the consumer world. Consumers want to be in charge of their data, and often change it at will on their own.

Enter CIAM – Customer Identity & Access Management

Managing customer identities is crucial for better customer experience, not just in digital ecosystems but in our day-to-day physical interactions too as they get increasingly intertwined with our digital worlds. Organizations of all sizes, especially those that interact frequently with their customers across multiple channels must implement a formal identity management layer to glue together the marketing, security, privacy and compliance realms. This glue is essentially what a CIAM platform is. A CIAM platform solves many of the identity management problems mentioned in this post, and then some more! The function of a CIAM platform is to help brands improve the user experience for users across multiple channels; while allowing organizations to easily embed identity management components across multiple information systems; all the while ensuring security across all interactions.

For years now, Thales has been leading the way in digital identities and security. Like billions of consumers worldwide, you (yes, YOU!) are very likely using some form of digital identity powered by Thales products and solutions. It could be your banking card, used to prove your identity to your issuing bank or payment network. It could be your SIM card, used to prove your identity to your telecom provider. It could be your driver license, your national identity card or even your biometric passport used to validated your identity to authorities. Today marks a critical juncture as Thales announces adding core CIAM and EAM capabilities to its existing roster of digital identity solutions. For Banking & Financial Services Institutions, telecom companies, government institutions and enterprises at large, it’s a great opportunity to jump start their secure digital transformation projects. Leveraging customer data and managing security and privacy may seem like opposite ends of the spectrum, but a CIAM platform enables this orchestration. Watch this space for more info!

DISCLAIMER:?All the cool views presented in this post are my own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of my past or present employers.

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