Some of you might know that I am learning to play guitar. However, almost none of you will ever hear my covers of Pink Floyd. In fact, that audience is quite exclusive, and includes only me and my wife Lorraine. That is because my guitar playing is something that I do in private, not public. 

In this episode, we talk about privacy, or rather, the lack of it in today’s online environment. Your customers probably also have some things they would rather keep private, and finding out that you are invading their privacy with undisclosed data collection is not going to do good things for your Customer Experience.

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

There is a bit of a duplicity in this topic for me. On the one hand, I applaud organizations that use the data they have about customer behavior to anticipate customer needs and provide an elevated, personalized experience for them. However, if customers don’t know that you are collecting data about them and then learn that you have without their explicit permission, it can feel creepy—and creepy is not a good emotion to evoke with your Customer Experience. 

We discuss this conflict of interest and some ways that you can address it. Here are some key moments in the discussion:

• 04:22   Ryan explains the psychology of privacy and the differing needs of it amongst individuals. 
• 06:56   We talk about a TED Talk by journalist Glenn Greenwald who explained that we wouldn’t give our ATM PIN to a company if they asked for it, but we give them plenty of other data about ourselves.
• 10:50   Colin discusses Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency function and what it revealed to me about some of his apps.
• 14:35  Ryan talks about how discovering that apps are tracking your data might lead customers to wonder about the safety of it.
• 19:29   We discuss whether some organizations are collecting data they don’t intend to use. 
• 21:36  Colin shares a shocking story about the vacuum robots, which leads into a discussion about what could happen with data collection at a legislative level.
• 28:47   We share our insights on how you can manage this situation moving forward to a positive outcome for your Customer Experience. 

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Customer Experience Information & Resources

LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. 

Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers. 

Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more. 

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