Today’s Digital Customers Demand Exceptional Customer Experience
As more organisations embark on their digital transformation journey, customer expectations for all companies and businesses increase. When a consumer learns how easy it is to hail a cab or book an overnight stay for a short break away, that ease of use and overall convenience becomes an expected part of every digital interaction.
The quality of user experiences affects life both as a consumer of digital services as well as in the workplace. After all, if someone can sign up for travel insurance with just a few taps on a cellphone screen, how come it takes remembering three separate usernames and passwords to access the applications essential to get a day’s work done?
Identifying and recognising users of digital services and allowing them the right levels of access quickly with as little friction as possible is a cornerstone of the modern customer experience. However, this low-friction must be balanced with security — ensuring that people online are who they claim to be and are not being impersonated. Unfortunately, many organisations are not as vigilant as they might be, with online fraud incurring costs of around $42bn between 2018 and 2020, according to PwC (PDF).
Part of building ongoing loyalty among customers is ensuring that signing into and using online services is a pleasant user experience; a significant other component is building and keeping trust. The balance between security and a seamless user experience is the aim of today’s CIAM systems (customer identity and access management). Like all good technology, a great deal goes on “under the hood” to achieve great customer experiences with a high level of security.
World-leading Identity & Access Management vendor ForgeRock describes the digital customer journey as a five-step process: registration, authentication, self-service, personalisation, and privacy. Each step can be handled slightly differently according to context and choice of delivery methods, but the basic tenets remain the same. Let’s break it down:
Registration means adding ease of use to any registration facility: The key here is simplifying options. Many users today prefer to use pre-existing account details, registering using Facebook, Apple, or Google credentials. In other environments, users might prefer device identification methods or “traditional” email and password with or without MFA (multi-factor authentication). For certain types of services, registration also entails a full digital eKYC flow — especially in financial applications, for example.
Authentication on return visits to a service keeping friction as low as possible. ForgeRock offers passwordless and username-less authentication, single sign-on, or authentication via mobile among the options. A fingerprint on a phone can grant access in seconds, is highly secure, and helps the customer journey flow. Compare that with entering username and password on a smartphone during a busy commute, for example!
Self-service when allowing customers to reset their passwords or retrieve forgotten credentials, update their profile and re-authenticate helps develop trust in the organisation and significantly lowers support costs, allowing staff to dedicate more time to improvements elsewhere in the organisation.
Personalisation will allow users to tailor and control how services are delivered to them based on explicitly shared or automatically derived information. For example, a streaming service can be optimised for a mobile device experience when the user is on the go and for a big screen experience when seated on the sofa. Personalisation with ForgeRock also extends to allowing the user to choose how they authenticate and authorise with services. Some users may fully embrace mobile biometrics whilst others prefer to use an OTP (one-time password) for their 2FA requirements.
Privacy is a major part of establishing trust. The ForgeRock solutions allow users to operate a centralised dashboard where they can enter details about privacy preferences, data sharing, and personal information. Such consented information will drive the service delivery, and importantly, the user can manage and control what is shared, with whom and under what circumstances. For an organisation it is important (from compliance and trust-building angles) to ensure that customer data that drives the business processes is willingly shared and available for the user to manage (e.g. un-share, revoke etc.).
Conclusion
The twin aims of first-rate customer experiences and highest-grade security can be achieved for customers, partners, and employees by clearly understanding and articulating user journeys and applying modern CIAM technologies across customer touch points.. Frictionless, modern and secure authentication and authorisation experiences to services are just the first step. From there, providers should continue to innovate and adjust. User requirements are never static, technology keeps evolving and your path to success and customer satisfaction has to adapt to change. You need to keep delighting customers, give them means to control the data about themselves, allow them to personalise services, and importantly, strive to make it easier for them to interact and engage with you.
Your CIAM strategy starts today, with legacy systems being brought into the realm of modern CIAM with ForgeRock. Your customers, employees and partners deserve it and your success requires it.
Some of the world’s biggest organisations rely on ForgeRock to provide these experiences for their users.
To learn more about the options available for the entire Identity stack, take a look at this exclusive whitepaper available from ForgeRock. And when you’re ready to run some tests, download the free trial right here.
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