from COOL NEWS

"The U.S. system with regard to privacy is not working," says Marc Rotenberg in a New York Times article by Natasha Singer (5/2/10). Marc is president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and his point is that, unlike financial data, American consumers have no way of gaining access to their shopping data. The situation is different in the U.K., where shoppers can take "advantage of a data protection law ... that requires public agencies and private businesses to release a person's data file upon his or her written request."

David Bond, a London-based filmmaker made such a request and received "a phonebook-thick printout from Amazon.com listing everything he ever bought on the site; the addresses of every person to whom he had ever sent a gift; and even the products he perused but did not ultimately buy. He also received a file from his bank, including a transcript of an irate phone call he once made after the bank lost one of his checks. The transcript noted that he seemed angry and raised his voice."

David points out that when consumers are taped "for training and quality assurance purposes," the recordings could end up in their files. In today's "post-privacy society" we not only "have lost track of how many entities are tracking us" but also "what they are doing with our personal information, how they are storing it, whom they might be selling our dossiers to and, yes, how much money they are making from them." Perhaps some hope ahead: The F.TC. plans to introduce "comprehensive new privacy guidelines intended to provide greater tools for transparency and better consumer control of information" this fall.

So should this move towards greater transparency and accessibility of consumer information be of concern to businesses? Perhaps the answer is only if organisations have something to hide. It depends on what the information is being used for and ultimately whether it is in the best interests of the customer.

Most customers expect that businesses analyse their customer’s information and in fact it can demonstrate that they are truly ‘listening’ and learning from their customers. However the concern is when customers feel as if they have lost control of their information, in particular through on selling of their information to other organisations. 

Beyond issues around privacy, it is fair to assume that customers are far more happy for the organisations that they engage with to use their information however it is a whole other story when this information is used by third parties where they receive no clear benefit.

Customers may not just have concerns around privacy, but may also feel a little bit used and let down by an organisation who should have their best interests at heart.

Perhaps the biggest issue in all of this is why organisations would even think to hand over this information, driven by a mindset that customer information is a commodity and not a vital piece of business IP to be protected and used exclusively for their own benefit. 

This mindset may be symptomatic of the lack of truly insightful customer information that they have and/or the ability to best utilise this data to guide business decision making.

If customer information was collected, sorted, analysed and reported in a truly meaningful way businesses would surely not want to sell this off to the highest bidder. The greatest value would be in how this information is used to drive its own business decision making.

If customer information was collected, sorted, analysed and reported in a truly meaningful way businesses would surely not want to sell this off to the highest bidder. The greatest value would be in how this information is used to drive its own business decision making.

Would Microsoft want a third party direct marketer to know how their customers use Windows and what ‘they want from their Windows Vista’ before it was developed?

In this light, perhaps the measure of a truly valuable customer information system would see an approach that at an individual level businesses proudly make its information available to demonstrate how it is being used to deliver greater customer benefit, while at an overall level sees them jealously guard it for the benefit of that business alone.

Implications:

Organisations need to acknowledge the emerging critical issue of customer information management, what is their stance on how customer information is collected and used

Organisations need to ensure that any stance on privacy, security, utility of information is delivered and the practices and protocols are clear for customers to see

The value of this information needs to be not only to the organisation but to the consumer, organisations need to demonstrate what customers 'get' out of this process