How to Balance Customer Experience With Customer Identity Management?

The world is going digital, and it doesn’t come as a surprise that people love getting online but there is a condition, they want to get there too soon! Yes, without any hassles without any barrier. They want more mobility but fewer hassles, and they want more security but fewer efforts in authentication. Isn’t it confusing and undoubtedly leaves businesses with one question, how can they balance customer experience with customer identity management?

Customer identity management is the latest business imperative of today. If the customers are not able to find a quick entry to your website, they don’t hesitate to go to your competitors. Growing competition and reducing patience has made every business worried. The article deals with why customer identity management is a must to customer experience and how you can balance out the both.

Present day scenario

Just like no human relationship stays the same throughout the journey, the relationship with your customers also keeps changing. That loyal customer you have from past five years, can’t be guaranteed to stay loyal in future as well. The growing technologies and increasing options have made your customers more vulnerable. The only thing that can come to your rescue is the experience you are providing to them. So my next question is, Is your customer identity management solution effective enough?

If you are also like other businesses, I’m sorry to say, but you are in a mess. Following are the reasons why:

Risk of identity theft

Did you know identity theft was the main plot of a comedy movie in 2013? Need I say anything more? Identity theft or data breaches have become regular fixes in the digital world. Customers are concerned about their privacy with the news of breaches keep coming. Moreover, the frustrating password policies and less transparent security terms are making customers leave.

Increased password fatigue problem

We hate passwords, your customers do too. There, I said it! Because c’mon, somebody has to say that, right? The result of password fatigue is the usage of easy to guess passwords or same passwords. Also, be ready to be abandoned by your customer if he has forgotten his password, because, of course, why bother resetting when you can create a brand new one on one of your competitor’s website, right? The process of resetting is time-consuming, and the process of creating a new account will provide them the headache of remembering it. So what do you do? The complicated registration process will make your customers secure but will create friction in the customer journey. Anyway, you are going to lose customers.

Introduction of mobile imperative

Mobiles, yes, those small objects have taken the whole business world on a troll. The customer of today is juggling between multiple screens in a single day to accomplish a single goal which means separate registration and login headache. While customers want their interactions and experience to be smooth, businesses want them to use a stronger password to get access to their apps. Tell me, how many times did you get frustrated when you had to submit that long string of password to access an app with those tiny keys of smartphone? Totally unacceptable, right? Especially when you are in a hurry.

Growing dependence on the cloud

We are living in a world where everything is connected. The need of unified customer profile made brands rely upon a third party sign on to provide authentication. Every customer expects personalized services based on their choices, interests, and personality but what many people don’t realize is that with everything going online, everything is exposed to the possible breach as well. Moreover, the responsibility of an IAM solution is not just limited to keep customer data secure, but the solution must bring together multiple services to support processes like customer retention, omni-channel marketing, customer loyalty, etc.

In short, here is the condition of your brand, or I should say, most of the brands:

• Frustration policies, poor customer experience
• No centralized identity management
• No unified customer view
• No control over customer access points

What should be the future scenario and how we can get there?

Unlike previous ones, the customer facing brands of today are dealing with multiple access points including web portals, social media, apps and what not! This imposes a big challenge in front of businesses to identify their customers truly, and the situation will become worse in future with more and more channels diving in.

So how can you help it? And above all, what are the tools that will lead you to the right path?

If you want to build a long-lasting relationship with your customers and want them to stick around, you need a next generation customer identity management solution that can:

• Provide customers ease access across all the channels and devices
• Create and manage the unified digital identity from across all access points.
• Centralize identities and provide quick access to every app, device, and service.
• All this while maintaining scalability and security.

The ideal customer identity and access management solution not only enable multiple customers facing properties but also address the security concerns and support scalability.

So friends, gone are the days when the sole purpose of every business was to generate a sale, the next generation businesses want to make customers stick around, build a relationship and nurture it to convert them into loyal customers. And that’s where a next generation customer identity management platform is a must.