How Enterprises Can Resolve Data Privacy Issues to Gain Consumer Trust

Data collection provides businesses with valuable insight that allows them to target advertising, improve their products, and predict sales trends. However, data collection by corporations is a growing concern for more and more consumers. With data privacy issues at the forefront of consumers’ minds, companies must demonstrate trustworthiness to gain—and reinforce—their trust. Let’s learn how.

How To Overcome Data Privacy Issues

According to Cisco’s 2022 Consumer Privacy Survey, 79% of respondents say they don’t understand what companies are doing with their personal data. This doesn’t mean, however, that consumers don’t want to share their information. On the contrary, many customers are willing to share personal data to get something of value in return—provided that companies are trustworthy about handling their information and keeping it private.

Surveyed consumers in Cisco’s report said the most important actions businesses and organizations can take to build trust include:

• Clarifying how personal consumer data is being used (39%)
• Refraining from the sale of consumer data (21%)
• Maintaining compliance with privacy laws (20%)
• Giving consumers control over configuring privacy settings (10%)
• Avoiding data breaches (9%)

These are just a few concrete steps businesses can take to earn consumer trust while maximizing their data potential. Below we discuss five primary protocols companies can use to overcome data privacy issues.

#1—Be Transparent

As the report indicates, most consumers are unaware of how companies collect and use their data. Businesses can take the first step by being transparent about data practices and proactively communicating these through a clearly worded data privacy policy. A privacy policy should include:

• Information about the company collecting the data, e.g., legal business name, headquarters, contact details, etc.
• The types of data being collected from consumers, e.g., personal identifying information, website activity, background data
• How consumer data is collected
• How consumer data is used, e.g., marketing purposes, personalization
• How consumer data is shared, e.g., with advertisers or third-party buyers
• Consumers’ options for deciding what personal data may be collected and how these are used or shared

Privacy policies should be reader-friendly and housed in a web page with direct visitor access.

#2—Collect Data Responsibly

Next, companies need to get consumers’ consent before collecting their information. Many privacy laws make it mandatory that companies obtain and document user consent before collecting and using consumer data. Failure to collect data responsibly puts companies at risk of violations and regulatory fines. In addition, companies may face legal action from data subjects whose unethical use of personal data leads to proven material or non-material damage.

Part of responsible data collection is using consumer insights (gathered from user data) responsibly. Let’s say a brand successfully identifies the optimal hours for pushing notifications to a loyal user based on their online activity patterns. The brand should refrain from abusing this knowledge and, instead, use it to deliver value to the consumer by personalizing their experience or resolving user pain points.

#3—Make User Data Anonymous

Once user data has fulfilled its function (as in customer behavior analysis or targeted marketing), companies can consider making user data anonymous. This helps protect customers’ identities while retaining the utility of their data.

Companies can set a time period, e.g., 30 days, during which consumer data can be used before it becomes anonymous for further marketing purposes.

#4—Give Consumers Control

Your business can go a long way in earning consumers’ trust by giving them control over their data. Consider giving consumers the option to:

• Request access to any personal data and records the company holds
• Correct personal records
• Request to stop processing their personal information
• Inquire about company policies on data management and sharing

By empowering consumers, companies demonstrate mindfulness about user privacy and consumers’ rights.

#5—Own Corporate Data Responsibility

Lastly, companies can resolve data privacy issues by owning corporate data responsibility. Approach this by completing the following steps:

• Establish guidelines in data governance and management that reflect industry best practices. Protect private data by regulating access and choosing the right security processes and solutions.
• Exceed minimum compliance by staying up-to-date on regulatory requirements. Choose privacy-by-design solutions to uphold data privacy and security.
• Avoid data breaches by fortifying security safeguards. Prepare a contingency plan for data emergencies and damage control.

In summary, companies can surmount data privacy issues by owning corporate data responsibility, being transparent, collecting data responsibly, making user data anonymous, and giving consumers control over their personal information. By doing so, companies demonstrate their dedication to building consumer trust and protecting their privacy.

Build Trust With Treasure Data

Here at Treasure Data, we take data privacy seriously. Our enterprise-grade customer data platform, Treasure Data Customer Data Cloud is trusted by Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies around the world to keep data private, secure, and privacy-regulation compliant. Additionally, Treasure Data maintains compliance with the latest regulations (see Figure 1) and continually builds on a strong data foundation.

Figure 1. Treasure Data’s security certifications

Use Customer Data Cloud to:

• Collect and centralize customer data from all sources in one powerful platform
• Unify customer profiles using online + offline data
• Keep customers’ personally identifiable information (PII) safe
• Automate workflows for DSARs and privacy requests
• Keep global teams privacy-regulation compliant
• Manage permissions by region, organization, role, and more
• Integrate with authentication services for secure identification
• Create premium audit logs for monitoring activity
• And more

To discover how you can use Treasure Data’s customer data platform to apply data privacy principles, download our white paper today. Want to learn more? Request a demo, call 1.866.899.5386, or contact us for more information.