[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BlogPosting","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2020\/01\/28\/customer-data-corporate-responsibility\/#BlogPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2020\/01\/28\/customer-data-corporate-responsibility\/","headline":"Customer data\u2019s starring role in corporate ethos and innovation","name":"Customer data\u2019s starring role in corporate ethos and innovation","description":"The power of customer data is growing at a breakneck pace. Most adults don't think they can go through a day without data being collected on them. What happens now?","datePublished":"2020-01-28","dateModified":"2021-03-01","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/ratul-shah\/#Person","name":"Ratul Shah","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/ratul-shah\/","identifier":305,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/18781ab115e32031df4d1cbc3baffb8fb9bc77288c20e05eb447f4e9739062f4?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/18781ab115e32031df4d1cbc3baffb8fb9bc77288c20e05eb447f4e9739062f4?s=96&d=mm&r=g","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The Future of Commerce","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/logo-foc-schema-app-1.png","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/logo-foc-schema-app-1.png","width":172,"height":60}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/thumbnail-bf1840504dc6d358340b650ed7c74cac.jpeg","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/thumbnail-bf1840504dc6d358340b650ed7c74cac.jpeg","height":375,"width":1200},"url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2020\/01\/28\/customer-data-corporate-responsibility\/","about":["Consent data management",{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/customer-experience\/customer-data\/","name":"Customer Data","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Customer_data","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q56278300"]},{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/customer-experience\/","name":"Customer Experience","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Customer_experience","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q984142"]},{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/sustainability-in-business\/","name":"Sustainability in Business","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sustainable_business"]}],"wordCount":1018,"keywords":["Customer Data","Data Privacy"],"articleBody":"\u201cWith great power comes great responsibility.\u201d\u00a0This quote, made famous in the 2002 Spider-Man movie, is a prescient warning for organizations with regard to their corporate ethos and customer data strategies.\u00a0\u00a0On one hand, the power of customer data is growing at a breakneck pace.\u00a0According to Pew Research,\u00a0roughly six-in-ten U.S. adults say they do not think it is possible to go through daily life without having data collected about them by companies or the government.\u00a0As organizations process this mountain of data, they can gain the deep insights necessary to innovate at a scale few could have predicted just a few years ago.\u00a0On the other hand, the responsibility to collect and process this data in ways that adhere to government regulations and strengthen consumer trust has never been heavier.\u00a0Like the\u00a0Greek Myth of Pandora, there\u2019s no way to put the trouble back into the\u00a0jar\u00a0once the lid has opened. And thanks to data breaches and the\u00a0Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018, awareness of\u00a0privacy threats\u00a0has led consumers to ask one key question before making\u00a0their\u00a0buying\u00a0decisions: \u201cWhat do you do with my data?\u201d\u00a0Power vs responsibility: A corporate ethos primer\u00a0Let\u2019s look at three instances of this \u201cpower vs responsibility\u201d paradigm as it crosses the boundaries of politics, business, and medical science.\u00a0CustomerData\u2019s\u00a0Major Role in Principle-or-Profit Decisions\u00a0In late October of 2019,\u00a0Twitter made the decision\u00a0to stop running political ads just days after Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook defended the practice in testimony to the U.S. Congress. Just a few weeks prior,\u00a0the National Basketball Association became embroiled in controversy\u00a0because it appeared to appease the Chinese government after the Houston Rockets\u2019 general manager spoke out in support of the Hong Kong protests. These explosive issues foreshadow even more upheaval to come.\u00a0Between\u00a0Brexit\u00a0and the\u00a0U.S. presidential election, 2020 will no doubt be tumultuous, and consumers are paying close attention to the reputation of the brands they frequent. These events pose major questions to businesses about their brand values. And increasingly,\u00a0businesses are being asked to respond\u00a0by investors, media, and customers.\u00a0\u00a0Responses\u00a0will be decided at the C-Suite level, yet customer data will play an integral role in helping businesses gauge the success of those responses. Through the ability to centralize\u00a0customer data spread across organizational silos into unified profiles, a business can gain deep insights into their customer\u2019s sentiments well before any impact shows on their balance sheets.\u00a0\u00a0For example, linking a customer\u2019s social media account to her profile will help indicate how that customer reacts if\/when the company takes a controversial stance. At the same time, connecting data from call centers \u2013 often the front lines of response when a company makes news \u2013 into unified profiles will help make customer sentiment more apparent.\u00a0There\u2019s little doubt that the consumer\u2019s voice will grow loud in 2020. Through customer data management, businesses\u00a0can\u00a0listen carefully and act accordingly.\u00a0Looking in by looking outInsight-Driven Decision-Making\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cKnow Your Customer\u201d Strategies\u00a0\u00a0Deriving actionable customer insights\u00a0remains a major challenge\u00a0for many businesses around the globe, so it’s no wonder that their corporate ethos around data isn’t quite cemented.\u00a0The challenge is so daunting that many business leaders still rely on gut\u00a0feelings when making decisions\u00a0as opposed to quantitative information and analysis.\u00a0\u00a0There are three\u00a0innovative\u00a0solutions\u00a0that are gaining traction\u00a0to address this customer insight challenge.\u00a0More and more, businesses\u00a0are\u00a0teaming\u00a0with consultants and system integrators\u00a0to adopt one of the following:\u00a0\u00a01)\u00a0\u201cKnow Your Customer\u201d initiatives that seek to break down organizational data silos to accurately identify customers and deliver exceptional omnichannel experiences at scale.\u00a0\u00a02)\u00a0Artificial intelligence \/ machine learning\u00a0solutions that deliver the necessary insights at scale.\u00a0\u00a03)\u00a0Customer data platform (CDP) solutions that\u00a0create\u00a0a\u00a0persistent, unified customer database that is accessible to other systems.\u00a0The need for massive amounts of customer data is the common element between these three solutions. Yet collecting and processing this data\u00a0needs to be done\u00a0with the consent of the customers who own\u00a0it.\u00a0The businesses who can figure out how to balance this\u00a0\u201cpower vs responsibility challenge\u201d will be better positioned to benefit from these technologies, compared to\u00a0those that don\u2019t.\u00a0First, do no harm: Medical privacy mattersMedical InnovationIs\u00a0Sparking\u00a0Massive Consent Data Management Debate\u00a0Newsfeeds\u00a0have recently\u00a0filled with stories of medical innovation and corporate ethos around data collection. Here are two prime examples:\u00a0The UK Health Secretary laid out his hope to\u00a0enable genome sequencing\u00a0for all\u00a0British\u00a0children at birth.\u00a0U.S. researchers\u00a0used the gene-editing tool CRISPR\u00a0to fine-tune the DNA of people’s immune cells, in hopes of fighting cancer.\u00a0Yet this is hardly a \u201cgolden age\u201d for medical innovation. Such ambitious projects require vast amounts of patient data, and data privacy is a major concern.\u00a0\u00a0The issue has already reared its ugly head.\u00a0Google recently had to shut down a joint project with the National Institutes of Health\u00a0to\u00a0publicly post more than 100,000 images of human chest X-rays. Some\u00a0of the\u00a0images\u00a0contained details that could be used to identify the patients, a potential privacy and legal violation.\u00a0\u00a0And in Florida,\u00a0a state judge has forced a public genealogy site,\u00a0GEDmatch,\u00a0to allow police to search its entire database of DNA profiles.\u00a0Despite\u00a0the 1.3 million people who have shared their DNA data with the site\u00a0who\u00a0haven\u2019t agreed to such a search, the judge made the ruling so a detective could\u00a0find distant relatives of a serial rapist in hopes that their family trees could help him\u00a0find\u00a0a suspect.\u00a0The collisions between medical innovation and data privacy will intensify and shine a spotlight on the role of consent data management in the health industries. While some health organizations are working hard to modernize their records, many are still burdened by paper filing systems and hand-written records.\u00a0As more medical innovations come to light, the questions surrounding consent and data privacy will only grow louder.\u00a0\u00a0  59% more contactable customers. 100% data security compliance. 10%-20% above average email open rate. Find out how it’s done HERE."},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"2020","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2020\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"01","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2020\/\/01\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"28","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2020\/\/01\/\/28\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"name":"Customer data\u2019s starring role in corporate ethos and innovation","item":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2020\/01\/28\/customer-data-corporate-responsibility\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]