Customer World

Building a personal data vault - so customer-control their data

I was reading an interesting article by Doc Searls on the data bubble where he makes interesting observations on how customers leave a lot of data and information across digital platforms and various devices that they carry, which is being exploited by business today and the need for customers to control the data rather than business controlling the data.  Quoting him:

Their understanding of our identity is not the same as our understanding of our identity. What they have are a bunch of derived assumptions that may or may not be correct; and even if they are, they are not ours.

I completely agree with him. For example, in many of the social network sites that I am member of, I may not necessarily want the data that I have left behind to be available to social media companies like facebook and twitter or make them available to crawlers or made public to everybody who I know in that list without my permission. Also, the invasion of privacy  of information by Location based service providers like foursquare, Loopt etc. is quite dramatic too. For example, I had commented on an airline service that I was unhappy about and some service issues I had faced and immediately I was besieged with a lot of travel offers thro' Google adsense, emails from other businesses etc. Not to mention, my mobile phone data(GPRS) is also open and I end getting junk messages that I would like to get rid of.  My page was covered with ads and I didn't want them anyway.  

In fact, I believe, there is a crying need to build a personal data vault service - a kind of a brokerage house that owns this information and drives memberships & permissions with individual customers. The customer controls the information that she/he gives permission to part with to the service provider. May be there is a revenue share that certain customers may expect in return of use of that information. 

Kaliya makes some interesting points on how to build a personal data ecosystem and what does it take to build one. She has a a vision document where she outlines core aspects of the emerging interoperable, open standards based ecosystem of personal data services – rooted in the core functionality of a Personal Data Store – the vault/locker/services/broker where all an individuals data is collected and stored and managed.

 

Information & relationships between people must be protected and to make information work harder & effectively, there is a need to give this control to the customer. 

 

How will search move to discovery for the empowered customer?

In the recent past, i had written saying that we will move in the near future from "search" engines to "do" engines. Looks like Eric Schimdt recently has been talking about serendipity engines as the future. 

Forrester writes about this.

As you look into the future, the distinction between “search” and “discovery” gets muddy.  While it sounds like science fiction to suggest that technology can help search for things you don’t even yet know you want, the opportunities to improve human discovery are very real.  Combining a person’s context—where they are, who they’re with—with their past opinions and actions and the opinions and actions of others can create tremendous value and relevance.

Imagine you’re someone who has positively rated Mexican restaurants in the past.  As you drive through town around lunchtime, your device alerts you to a well-rated Mexican restaurant that is nearby and likely to suit your tastes.  This information may not be welcome at 8 a.m. or 2 p.m., nor would it be welcome to someone who hasn’t expressed an affinity for Mexican food.  It is the combination of social media, individual preferences and context that creates the opportunity for proactive discovery rather than reactive search.

This isn’t about opening your Yelp application on your smartphone and seeing the same search results as everyone else; it’s about having hardware and software that intuits and presents the things you really care about.  There are already examples of simple "Serendipity Engines" available, such as Netflix's rating system—the more movies you rate, the better the recommendations you'll receive.

What is exciting about this future is the continued progress toward empowering consumers. 

How will this evolve over the next few years will be interesting to track. Service & solution providers will need to build and integrate their development around these trends.

Do you support data portability in your digital marketing initiatives?

I was recently reading an interesting view on  the need for an online data portability policy & the do's and don't for companies and marketeers to publish such a policy. This kind of a policy, I believe, is becoming very important as we leave a lot of personal information online and users like me must have control on the information that can be shared or ones that must remain private. So is the case with consumers who visit a company website or marketing microsites or social websites where they again leave information about themselves( this is just not an unsubscribe policy!).

Imagine that you are on a social networking site and their revenue model is targeted advertising. Social networking sites today use this information to link marketers to consumers with similar interests/views - both positive and negative across multiple websites. The economic value of such information is huge and it must be left to each consumer to let such sites enhance the online experience in a customized manner using customized content. One cannot assume everbody wants customization of digital experience and intrusion of such sorts is despicable.

With more and more Apps, APIs etc. growing in acceptance and usage, this is a very important step that marketers and companies need to be cognizant of.

 

 

Context and Analytics are key currency for tomorrow

We all know the mobile will become the centre of what consumers do. In the recently concluded Mobile Future Summit, the impact of this device has been summarized quite well. There were several good speakers and here is the essence of what some of them had to say:

Steve David, was a keynote speaker. Steve spent over 30 years at P&G , the final assignment as P&G’s CIO responsible for their Internet Strategy.

Steve laid out the case for Advocacy being the new measure of marketing. It has a lasting impact on the brand, the sales, and the relationship with the consumer. Companies who have a better understanding of the customer via sophisticated analytics and can quickly take the solutions and products that consumer want and need gain long-term competitive advantage. Insights from the market must be processed in real-time that can empower decision making at every level of the company. And mobile is central to this strategic shift. Mobile is being used to attack the counterfeit problem worldwide, in formulating personal recommendations as trust in brands erodes, in collecting analytics, and engaging interactions with products and services using NFC, etc. 

In the session of The Balance of Privacy and Monetization from Consumer Data,  advertisers like adidas want to move from 1-2-many to 1-2-1 relationship with the consumer that increases the volume and quality of the transactions. The valuable variables to track are location, propensity to buy, past actions, traffic inputs, etc. Discovery and recommendations also become important part of the whole process.

I do believe the next phase of customer engagement is on the mobile. The ability to build relationships using content, engagement & micro-transactional engagement using analytics & interaction studies are going to determine the success of brands.