How to stimulate digital engagement with customers

Customer Experience    | March 9, 2019

In the offline world, organizations build their customer base slowly over time and these customers generally become and stay loyal to the company—unless there’s a major screw up. But that’s not how it goes in the digital world; though competition is fierce, digital customers are easy to get but hard to keep. Even the smallest user-experience blip can send them packing.

Digital customer engagement—which relies heavily on digital communications—plays an important role in customer experience and satisfaction. Organizations must create an inviting digital environment that encourages engagement and builds digital trust. While digital trust is easy to gain, it’s easier to lose and impossible to get back.

With that in mind, we suggest your digital environment supports these four elements: security, user experience, cost mitigation and compliance. With these in place, it’s easier and safer than ever to stimulate digital engagement with your customers.

Secure communications

Customers expect built-in data security and yet 69 per cent of customers don’t believe organizations do everything they can to protect client data. Your organization can differentiate itself from the competition by delivering on the promise of secure communications. One way to ensure secure communications for all senders and receivers is by using an encryption solution with flexible delivery methods including TLS, S/MIME, PGP and secure web portals. Encryption is a value proposition for businesses that want to gain customer trust while protecting themselves against costly data breaches.

User experience

Customers get a good user experience when data protection is built into the process. Making encryption the default option takes advantage of the human condition—we tend to follow the path of least resistance. Save your customers the trouble of adding an extra step—if they remember or find the time—without leaving encryption to chance. Your choice of encryption can also protect your customers from phishing and spear phishing attacks, where malicious parties mimic your brand via email to steal private information or install malware. Encryption that can support multiple brands with multiple delivery methods in multiple languages assures customers that your secure messages are from a trusted source—not spam.

Cost mitigation

Customer engagement is desirable as part of a streamlined service that helps your clients and supports your business model. But if customer engagement systems chain you to the same old clunky hardware, more IT resources and more customer support staff, the costs can soon outweigh the benefits. The good news is it doesn’t have to be this way. For example, according to a recent study commissioned by Echoworx, moving your PGP system to a cloud-based encryption environment alleviates nearly $800K of on-premise legacy system costs—without any disruption to your customers.

Compliance

Organizations are subject to multiple privacy regulations—including GDPR, PIPEDA and HIPAA—depending on where they operate and where their customers live. Violating these regulations leads to fines and penalties. For example, GDPR violations can cost up to $20 million or four percent annual turnover (whichever is greater). These regulations also make it mandatory to report any data breach. To give you an idea of how fleeting digital trust is, most digital customers will leave forever once they hear about a breach. When you choose an encryption platform, make sure it includes features to keep you on the right side of compliance—and helps your customers feel secure during their online engagement with you.

It’s harder and more important than ever to maintain digital trust. Set yourself up for success by implementing systems like encryption to support and stimulate your online customer engagement activities.