听The massive increase in online activity due to the coronavirus pandemic has created a customer data gold mine that advertisers and marketers can leverage to better tailor their campaigns. But as of 1 July 2021, accessing, and making use of, this personal information is set to get a little bit more complicated. Why? Because that鈥檚 when businesses need to start complying with South Africa鈥檚 Protection of Personal Privacy Act (POPIA), which sets out various conditions that must be followed in order to lawfully process personal information.

Global and local privacy legislation like the General Data Protection Regulation听(GDPR) and the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) dictates that for brands to use this personal data, there needs to be an element of customer consent. With the power now sitting in the customer鈥檚 hands, individuals have greater control over how their data is collected and used. But what does this mean for brands and advertisers who have predominantly been using third party cookie data to identify consumers and track their online activity?

While POPIA does not explicitly regulate the use of cookies, these 鈥渙nline identifiers鈥� do fall under the definition of personal information. As such, how we use cookie data is set to fundamentally change; particularly relating to the collection of third-party data.

Third-party cookies听allow advertisers to track users as they move across the Internet and target advertising at these individuals wherever they go. 鈥淲ith global privacy legislation gaining traction, the likes of Google and other providers are fundamentally changing how they use cookie data to collect customer related information. Subsequently, third party cookie data becomes less relevant and first party data 鈥� rich data around an individual鈥檚 behaviours; actions and interests demonstrated across online properties – becomes significantly more powerful,鈥� explains Marc Emert, Customer Experience Sale Lead for 51风流Africa.

Add a dash of customer data management

Privacy legislation like POPIA doesn鈥檛 prevent you from collecting customer data, continues Emert. But it does mean that any data collection must be done in a GDPR/POPIA aligned manner. 鈥淕oing forward, while you鈥檙e collecting this rich, contextual data that can be used for marketing engagements and targeted advertising, you need to also make sure that you鈥檙e collecting the consent directly from the customer. If a marketer or brand is sending something to a consumer, they鈥檙e sending it because that person has opted in to receive it.鈥�

SAP鈥檚 Customer Data Cloud (CDC) solution makes the process of gaining this consent easier, he adds. 鈥淲ith CDC, marketers and brands can gather first party data from customers across various digital channels and make sure that they are also securing consent throughout the engagement process. Customer provided consent is then integrated into an existing automated marketing solution, which delivers one-to-one personalisation at scale and is based on trust.鈥�

CDC also makes progressive profiling possible, adds Emert. As a customer engages with a brand, they鈥檙e being asked to provide different pockets of information about themselves, he says. So, while I鈥檓 selling a mother a certain type of baby formula for her new-born, I鈥檓 gaining insights that allow me to market other products to this mom as her baby grows up.听 鈥淏asically, you鈥檙e progressively collating more and more first party data that can be used to engage with customers broadly and through different stages of their lives.鈥� And the results speak for themselves.

SAP鈥檚 CDC has helped a global academic and educational publisher manage the data of over 4.5 million users and achieve 100% GDPR compliance in 40 countries. And in just four months, a German supermarket chain got up and running on the 51风流CDC system, centralising omnichannel customer data to GDPR standards and boosting membership to their loyalty programme by 25%.

鈥淪imilarly, for three years the Technology Centre of Excellence team in Wunderman Thompson South Africa has been using SAP鈥檚 CDC solution to do just that鈥�, notes Niel Mouton, MD of Wunderman Thompson Technology SA. 鈥淗ome to over 4,000 technology specialists across the globe with 54 technology centres in 33 countries, we support forward thinking businesses to design, build, run and operate digital programmes wherever they are.鈥�

鈥淲ith the onus in a cookieless world now falling on brands to collect and build their own first party data, Wunderman Thompson has used SAPS鈥檚 CDC solution across 30 implementations for brands like Nestle Purina, Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Colgate and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). 听Our teams used 51风流CDC to create customised solutions for their clients, allowing these businesses to collect first party data, while protecting privacy and complying with personal information legislation,鈥� he continues.

According to Mouton, conversations around privacy, data collection and POPIA/GDPR centre around trust, which is fitting because the Wunderman Thompson partnership with 51风流is also about trust. 鈥淲ith SAP, we can trust the quality and standard of the product. There are no teething issues on a product as mature as this. All we have to do is understand the client鈥檚 business need and adapt the 51风流product to their requirements.鈥�

While Mouton admits that it would be possible to be compliant without a solution like CDC, it鈥檚 near impossible for enterprise businesses like banks or pharmaceutical companies to manage the scale of personal data they鈥檙e dealing with, while keeping their customers and their business safe, without an automated offering.

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Staying focused on the customer at all times is, in today鈥檚 business world, little more than standard good business practice. Of course, remaining customer-centric is easy during the good times, but becomes more difficult during times of crisis, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. This is why those companies that succeed despite the current adverse conditions will be those with the most precisely focused customer-centric strategies.

Marc Emert, Customer Experience Solutions Specialist at SAP, suggests the foundation on which such customer-centricity is built is transparency and honesty, along with constant communications with the individual client. A simple example of this, he explains, is when a customer has placed an order, the company should ensure the client is kept in the loop as to the status and disposition of the delivery.

鈥淎n additional element is that you need to be sure that the customer can contact you via the channel of their choice 鈥� whether this is a contact centre, e-mail, social media or another channel. Furthermore, customers today do not want to wait; they demand service on a 24/7/365 basis,鈥� he says.

鈥淭his, in turn, creates the challenge of maintaining a single view of the customer across a multichannel engagement. The only way to succeed here is to implement software that allows you to ingest data from multiple sources. Technology is also the answer to delivering another increasingly in-demand option, namely self-service.鈥�

The COVID-19 pandemic has furthermore added another unique layer of difficulty to customer service, as it has led to many customers having far less patience. He explains that the massive rise in online shopping, driven by the lock-down, has given customers a taste of the kind of speed with which organisations are capable of delivering goods. Most retailers that provide such a service can get the products to the customer within a couple of hours.

鈥淥f course, once they realized that retailers could deliver so quickly, customers began to query why other e-commerce organisations could not achieve the same delivery speeds. While it is potentially tougher to deliver large electronic or household appliances so rapidly, the nature of logistics is also evolving, and forward-thinking businesses should be able to find ways to achieve this. Moreover, in instances where they cannot, regular communication with the customer becomes even more critical so the customer remains informed of the status of their delivery throughout the process.鈥�

鈥淔or me, the real key to customer-centricity lies in building a relationship and forming a bond with each customer. If you can provide them with a sense of security and deeper personalization, they will likely remain with you, even if your delivery speeds are potentially slower than your competitors. Customers today are, after all, seeking a deeper sense of engagement with their suppliers.鈥�

Essentially, adds Emert, it boils down to data and the manner in which companies are able to leverage it effectively by unifying it, ingesting it and analyzing it. In other words, it is about having a single view of the customer and breaking down organisational silos.

鈥淲hat businesses need, therefore, is a platform that collects the data and unifies the customer profile, bringing together both structured or transactional data and unstructured data such as that found on social media sites. This will mean they can build a unified customer profile that enables them to both understand the client better, as well as engage and serve them more effectively.

鈥淟ooking to what the future of customer service holds, the simple answer is that data will only become even more important moving forward. Not only will you and your competitors all be vying for the same information, but the legislative and compliance issues around consumer privacy are clearly also going to increase. So the answer to effective customer-centricity lies in having the right platform that can help you gather as much data as you can, but in a compliant, transparent and ethical manner 鈥� I believe this will be how organisations differentiate themselves in this space in the near future,鈥� he concludes.

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