Four steps to gaining consumer trust in your tech

But that type of consumer loyalty could be a thing of the past, according to a global survey (part of PwC's Consumer Intelligence Series) of more than 5,000 consumers and 2,000 executives.

If consumers are staying loyal to breach-affected businesses, it’s not because they don’t care about privacy. It’s because they think they have no choice. Skeptical that their data would be better protected if they were to switch to a different company, consumers feel trapped. Still, they yearn for an alternative and would take it if they could. Faced with few better options, some consumers are simply dropping out: One in ten expected their overall engagement with technology to decrease in the next six months.

As a business leader, are you willing to bet your company’s future on the hope that no competitor will give consumers a better option tomorrow? Or will you be that better choice?

You may not be a trusted partner — but a necessary evil

No one can call global consumers naive. They increasingly recognize the price of the implicit contract by which they willingly provide their data to “free” apps and sites. When it comes to privacy, for example, 67% say they have little to no control over how their data is used. On security, 60% say they expect the companies they do business with to suffer a data breach someday. That’s likely because 34% say that one or more companies that hold their data have already suffered a breach.

Yet when it comes to words and actions, consumers offer an apparent contradiction. Sixty-six percent call data breaches “unacceptable,” but in practice most do accept them: 55% have continued to use or buy from companies, even after learning that those companies had suffered a breach.

Consumers aren’t hypocrites. Nor are they fooling themselves. They’re rational. Sixty-seven percent say that despite “nervousness” over sharing data, the benefits outweigh the risks, and 76% call sharing personal information with companies a “necessary evil.”

While a majority stick with companies despite their qualms, they want a better option. Eighty-five percent say they wish there were more companies they could trust with their data. Eighty-three percent want more control over their own data.

Consumers want companies to provide that trust and offer them that control. Eighty-six percent call it the responsibility of business to protect consumer data, in part because consumers know what they don’t know: 59% call themselves “novices” at protecting their personal privacy, perhaps because privacy documents can stretch to dozens of pages, which few have time to read. When it comes to security, only 27% of consumers understand the workings of hardware and software tokens. Only 35% know the meaning of identity theft monitoring.

Consumers aren’t finding businesses they can trust, but if they do so in the future, they’ll choose those companies instead. Social media platforms, for example, are famously “sticky,” but 52% of global consumers say they would leave the platforms they now frequent for one that better protects their data.

You may think you’re making progress — but you’re not

“There’s a problem, but it’s not mine.” That’s the attitude of many business leaders around the world regarding consumer trust in data safeguards. Seventy-six percent say that companies on the whole are facing a crisis of consumer trust, yet that mistrust apparently is caused by someone else: 80% give themselves an A or B grade for protecting consumer data. 

Businesses also think things are getting better: 55% point to increasing consumer trust in their technology. Do you agree? If so, you’re not alone. Most corporate leaders say the same.

One catch: Consumers beg to differ. Only 21% of global consumers actually report such growing trust. A larger proportion (28%) say their trust in businesses’ technology has actually been falling.

It’s understandable that businesses expect greater trust from their customers. Many are genuinely making serious, praiseworthy efforts to improve data security. For a start, they're accepting responsibility, with 58% of global leaders saying it’s primarily the job of business (not consumers or the government) to improve data privacy and security. Eighty-five percent say they comply with the strictest privacy and security regulations around the world, whether that’s GDPR, CCPA, the China Cybersecurity Law or Brazil’s General Data Protection Law, rather than shopping for less stringent rules in individual jurisdictions. Fifty-four percent of business leaders also say that encryption is a top priority.

Yet businesses also acknowledge challenges, especially internally. Seventy-three percent report that “privacy and security are hard to prioritize among all the other things that we must accomplish at my company.” That may be because 72% say they’re reluctant to invest in something that “feels invisible,” like behind-the-scenes security. By comparison, investments in monetizing consumer data without consumers’ explicit permission may offer an appealing, short-term revenue boost.

Even if it can be hard to win organizational buy-in for investments in privacy and security that exceed regulatory requirements, and even if existing efforts often are inadequate to win consumer trust, businesses shouldn’t give up. Consumers are clear about what they want — and they’re not demanding anything that businesses aren’t capable of giving.

A tipping point is near. This could be the time of reckoning in trust.

Nine in ten business leaders say that building and maintaining customer trust will be the competitive advantage of the future. But right now, few are prepared to seize that advantage, and the odds of consumers trusting companies’ technology are falling, not rising. Thirty-six percent are less comfortable sharing information now than a year ago. Only 17% are more comfortable. And though customization is one of the greatest business opportunities, most consumers are planning to stay away: 56% would rather keep their information private and settle for generic products and services, rather than sharing personal information to enable products and services tailored to their needs.

Companies can no longer assume that consumers will tolerate subpar privacy and security practices. Consumers are learning more about the different ways their privacy can be breached, thanks to citizen activists, investigative journalists and scholars. And regulators are studying how current and emerging business models and practices enabled by the internet of everything can lead to increasing violations of consumers’ privacy.

Since consumers want a better choice, sooner rather than later a company will provide it — and business leaders increasingly recognize the imperative, with 83% saying, “We have reached a tipping point in which customers are demanding control of their data.”

Even if consumers are skeptical, they haven’t lost hope: They are looking for companies they can trust. The road is therefore wide open for forward-thinking companies to give consumers the privacy, security, transparency and control that they crave, in a way that truly will create a competitive advantage.

This road will not be easy. It also has no end. Designing privacy and security throughout the organization is an ongoing responsibility. Technology evolves at a breathtaking, accelerating pace, as do the business opportunities that it supports, leading to ever-new practical and ethical questions.

How should businesses use publicly available data on consumers? How far should you go in subliminally “nudging” behaviors? What’s the right balance to strike between national security concerns and personal privacy? New questions, unimaginable today, will surely appear tomorrow. Regulators’ requirements, too, are constantly changing, and consumers’ values — what data they are willing to share, and at what price — are also in flux.

The target, already hard to hit, is always moving, but the reward for success is tremendous: consumers who will give you loyalty and willingly share the data that is the basis for the business models of the future.