Solution Brief: Creating a Secure, Seamless Customer Experience

Executive Summary

Digital transformation has become a modern business imperative. Today’s consumers are more technology savvy than ever, and expect rich, meaningful digital engagement with the products and services they consume.

But those experiences require trust, something that is not always easily gained. With data breaches and security incidents so prevalent in the media, customers are reluctant to share information, which impedes meaningful engagement.

Seizing control of identity offers a unique opportunity for brands to regain that trust. By crafting a forward thinking identity strategy, businesses are able to secure customer information, increase marketing effectiveness and deliver a superior customer experience.

Trust is Paramount to Customer Experiences

In an ever more competitive business climate, superior customer engagement through digital channels present a unique opportunity for differentiation. In fact, 76% of recently surveyed executives identify digital transformation as a critical or very important priority.1

While customers are eager to engage digitally, they increasingly exercise caution. And with good reason. Data breaches are everywhere, and it’s no secret that identity and access issues are usually the root cause.

A number of security issues arise from credential harvesting. First, contextual information gained can increase customer exposure to social engineering and malware attacks. It increases the risk of personally identifiable information being compromised.

Today’s digitally fluent consumers are more security aware than ever. They recognise these risks are inherent with the digital real. They lack confidence in an organisation’s ability to safeguard their information and are therefore reluctant to share it.

When confidence is low, it leads to a rash of issues that impede digital transformation initiatives. These issues include:

• Customers not sharing personal information. Consumers leave optional parts of blanks, and resist signing up for newsletters, loyalty programs and social media sharing unless they deem something highly important.

• Customers creating fake profiles. Taking this a step further, some consumers will even create fake identities to attempt to get at gated content without putting their information at risk.

• Customers reusing passwords. With so many different sites asking the same consumer for a login and password, many people resort to reusing a “disposable” password. If it’s compromised, nothing the customer deems overly valuable is at risk.

The Vicious Cycle of Mistrust, Faulty Data and Poor Experience

Ultimately, trust issues lead to real impacts to the business. They make it difficult to engage with customers, and make customers less willing to consume your product, services and trust your identity. Consequently, this makes it difficult to capitalise on revenue opportunities for your business.

Without accurate customer data and a clear picture of preferences, buying patterns and habits, marketing effectiveness and customers service initiatives are crippled.

Without trust, there is no data, and without data, there is no customer value. When businesses fail to deliver value, customers are even less likely to trust them, and many organisations get trapped in a vicious cycle.

Identity: The Foundation of Secure, Seamless Customer Experience

The good news is that while mistrust creates a vicious cycle, trust does the converse and creates a virtuous cycle. Consumers that trust brands engage more, which allows businesses to deliver more value, which in turn makes customers even more willing to engage.

The key to restoring that trust is to excel at understanding, managing and securing customer identity. A strong identity management strategy allows organisations to:

• Secure customer information. A modern, coordinated identity management strategy helps to drastically mitigate many of the credential harvesting vulnerabilities discussed earlier. Customers that feel secure are more likely to engage.

• Increase marketing effectiveness. As customers engage more with a brand, identity management helps create a rich, cross-service and product view of customer preferences. It helps marketing organisations deliver more strategic promotions and highly tailored offers that lead to better return on investment.

• Deliver seamless, branded experiences. A highly coordinated identity strategy helps businesses build customer experiences across brands and product/ service lines. Experiences can be highly integrated and personalised, which means better loyalty and satisfaction.

Why Okta?

Okta’s approach to identity and access management is uniquely positioned to help businesses take control of identity and access management across these three pillars of value.