CX technology: How to balance innovation with privacy and security

Customer experience (CX) encapsulates everything a customer goes through while engaging with a business—from inquiries to sales and marketing and closing of orders. It is an integral part of business operations because, at the end of the day, the customer is king.

And, if the sum of all the interactions that a customer has with your brand is negative, then that can spell trouble for your growth.

On the contrary, if the CX is positive, there is a chance that the customer will turn into a loyal patron, and your business will flourish.

According to a recent report by Zendesk, 60% of customers purchase from a brand based on the customer support they expect to receive, and 73% of people will switch to a competitor after multiple bad experiences with a brand.

A company can elevate its CX by employing technologies that can guarantee customer satisfaction and make operations more efficient and streamlined.

Many companies are adopting new approaches where traditional and digital methods converge. For example, omnichannel and multichannel contact centre support can flourish and work side-by-side via optimised channel orchestration.

Asset management and delivery of services are also taking place through these CX enablers, which put the customer above everything and make their interaction with the brand as easy as possible.

Powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), brands are banking on predictive insights and personalised interactions that make human involvement close to negligible.

While this shift has led to swift issue resolution, the adoption of a smooth feedback mechanism, and made CX more intuitive—it presents ethical concerns regarding data privacy and security.

For example, a business uses AI and ML to suggest products to a customer and improve CX based on past online behaviour. While this may seem harmless, it may very well be that the customer does not have a say in what’s happening and has not consented to be targeted by a business like this.

This is why privacy experts believe that first-party data collection is important. This type of data collection works by asking the user’s permission before enabling product recommendations, and therefore, the potential customer can choose in this regard.

Generative AI (GenAI) technology is increasingly used in CX, as it enables brands to build meaningful, human-like dialogues with every interaction without employing real humans. 

However, GenAI started to become a cybersecurity concern in 2023, and it's likely to become a much bigger issue in 2024. According to the Hacker-Powered Security Report 2023, 61% of hackers plan to use GenAI for hacking tools and to find more vulnerabilities.

GenAI is also used for phishing, as it has made it easy to trap potential victims based on their online activity.

Companies using innovative CX technologies should train their leaders in ethical compliance, given the number of lawsuits filed daily for breaching user privacy.

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These are mostly related to transparency, purposes of obtaining information and retaining it, the time for which the information is retained, and the identities of the parties to which the information is forwarded.

Stricter policies and shields need to be put in place at the organisational level because we have seen mass data leaks happening, where malignant forces can find loopholes in the system and steal the private data of customers, leading to a lack of trust.

In case these breaches do happen, brands should take full responsibility and communicate what happened openly and transparently. It should be remembered that brand loyalty is something that AI and other new technologies have yet to master. Human elements are also an essential part of CX, especially when it comes to matters of privacy.

Ensuring that ethics is a significant part of a brand’s CX technological ecosystem is a commitment it makes to its customers. Making ethical decisions may come at the cost of profits in many instances, but if the brand values its customers, it should be ready to uphold data protection and security.

Companies should implement mechanisms to track the performance of AI systems, identify potential issues, and make necessary adjustments. Additionally, regular security audits of data systems and feedback repositories are essential to ensure that AI-driven customer experiences do not cross into unethical territory.

Many companies have realised this already, and while they are integrating newer CX tech, like contextual experiences, they are also focused on investing in data protection tools.

Gaurav Juneja is the CRO of Kapture CX.