Data—Handle with Care!

When we were young, we trea­sured cer­tain things: a spe­cial ‘My Lit­tle Pony’, a beat­en-up foot­ball, a stuffed ani­mal cud­dled until it fell apart. Who­ev­er thought that what we trea­sure would change so dras­ti­cal­ly as we grew up? Because data—that amor­phous and intan­gi­ble thing—is now one of our most prized pos­ses­sions. And we as con­sumers don’t want to share our data toys with just anyone.

Accord­ing to a recent YouGov sur­vey report­ed on in Cam­paign mag­a­zine, sev­en out of ten con­sumers would boy­cott a brand that mis­han­dled their data. A sim­i­lar vol­ume of respon­dents to the sur­vey (70 per­cent), which was con­duct­ed among 7,500 con­sumers across the UK, France, Ger­many and Italy, claimed they were more aware of data threats now than they were five years ago.

What does this mean for brands? Con­sumers are increas­ing­ly weigh­ing their deci­sions based not only on the qual­i­ty of the end prod­uct or ser­vice pro­vid­ed, but also judg­ing the expe­ri­ence the brand gives them in oth­er ways. If a con­sumer thinks their per­son­al infor­ma­tion will be manip­u­lat­ed or used mali­cious­ly, they sim­ply won’t part with their funds, no mat­ter how much they want to trans­act with a company.

Poor­ly designed web­sites filled with typos, requests for over-the-top amounts of per­son­al infor­ma­tion, bad­ly tar­get­ed emails or spam all ring warn­ing bells in the minds of cus­tomers say­ing: “Do not shop here.”

Even social media sites are being attacked for allow­ing data breach­es to occur in very sneaky ways. Have you ever post­ed your “drag queen name” or “Christ­mas elf iden­ti­ty” as a com­ment under one of those name-gen­er­at­ing posts based on the month and day of your birth? It might seem fun and sharable at the time, but guess what, you’ve prob­a­bly just broad­cast your birth­day (and one of the most com­mon­ly used pass­words peo­ple use to access their accounts) to mil­lions of peo­ple around the world.

What is your brand doing to pre­vent data breach­es? Have you ever thought twice about work­ing with a busi­ness because of data con­cerns? Is data the next big chal­lenge for your com­pa­ny on its jour­ney to becom­ing an expe­ri­ence busi­ness? Add your com­ment and ques­tions below to share your story.