Managing Customer Identity in the Cloud
Customer Satisfaction is the most critical aspect of a consumer journey. The result of an experience defines the consumption path that your customer will be willing to follow. It’s how they will determine whether to consume your product or service once, a few times, or if they will become loyal customers and build strong relationships with your Brand.
Building relationships is crucial not only for customers to come back, but also to actively interact with new offers, refer people in their circle of trust, and expand the possibilities of new business.
Managing all of these relationships in the cloud provides the ability to be agile with customer data, in a way that provides the best user experience across multiple digital platforms, so you can truly get to know customers.
Build relationships
Building strong bonds in times of digital transformation with the evolution of B2B or B2C communications requires data-driven personalization as an integral and crucial strategy to reach customers with relevance, precision, and great user experience.
An SAP Customer Data Cloud (CDC) solution, that powers your Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) can help provide the foundation of a dynamic customer experience, across the user journey. Relationships begin with facilitating seamless authentication, clear consent management, personalized preference management, emphasis on data privacy, and working with a fully integrated system to build feature rich customer experiences.
With the right amount of trust, information, and flexibility in managing customer data, relationships can thrive. Therefore, it is typically recommended that a customer journey begins with an easy path to authentication and registration when your users are browsing a website on the internet, on their mobile device, in store, or even when interacting with IOT devices; seamless login and registration that removes lengthy processes of barriers to a fulfilled experience can be designed to make access, simple. Some examples would include lite registration where providing only an email unlocks the door, or further, the concept of passwordless registration to make things even more simple.
Other examples of seamless registration and login can be seen in all to familiar social login, whereby your users are able to register or login to applications using their preferred social media platform, something they already trust and will present them with some controls on the data they decide to share with you.
Speaking of data being shared, building trusted relationships with your users means not only making the process simple, but also reassuring them that their data and information is secured, safely stored and will be used only when necessary; capturing their consent to the use of this data and making that promise with your users is critical to a Brand reputation.
With SAP Customer Data Cloud (CDC), this privacy and security is enhanced by putting privacy at the forefront of design. Placing privacy at the core of the platform, you are able to ensure that your policies are transparent, accessible, and consented to for users during each stage of their journey. As a result, consent management not only becomes simple for documenting in your organization, the data is compliant to global standards that users trust and rely on to protect their information.
With strong trust in the protection of their data, users can confidently share what they are interested in the most, and what is important to them when interacting with your Brand, so you can build the best experience.
Building Experiences
With an infinite number of attributes we can learn about customers, meaningful touchpoints help impact and influence your customer decisions throughout their journey, guiding their experience into a deep connection.
A practical example of putting CIAM at work is evident when users can access their accounts via social login. A feature of the SAP CDC platform, social login provides a secure and easy method to access experiences with one click. Seamless friction to customer acquisition also helps effectively collect key attributes about a customer to enhance their profile, and unique identity. But what does all this mean behind the screen?
What this means behind the scenes is that where we connect with users, customers, and subscribers; data is being created, opportunities are passing by, and it is up to you to ensure it is captured so that the user can benefit from your prowess.
When the dots are connected, and this translates into unique, personalized experiences that users may never have dreamed of, you are building a memorable experience that they will cherish. It builds loyalty, and demonstrates that your Brand cares. This is why when we connect attributes, data, relevance, and a happy path for users across applications online and in the real world through a data driven approach, you are redefining and evolving your relationships with the user, through experience. Ultimately building satisfaction.
If you are asking yourself “okay, but what is the difference between IAM and CIAM?”
IAM is a security process that determines who the user is and what access levels are dedicated to them and involves authentication in a very structured manner. The strategy is primarily used in highly scaled corporate environments where different groups manage specific levels of information, access to internal data, documents, files and privileged information. It is a way to manage a particular set of digital identities through pre-determined authentication factors and the privileges associated with each identity, usually in a small-large enterprise.
This is the “umbrella” term for the technology that spans multiple products and mixes between processes, software, cloud services and hardware. Underneath this umbrella is CIAM, which combines security and authentication protocols with bold marketing strategies that focus on brand management and digital initiatives, for end users like customers.
At its core, CIAM examines and verifies user identity to secure applications and devices such as IAM does, but can be much more unstructured in the way data is captured and managed for downstream systems to consume. Its functionality is enhanced when the data associated with the user’s identity can provide a comprehensive view of online preferences, activity, and real world behaviours, helping to customize digital experiences and promote relevant interactions that are consistent across digital platforms and applications. In addition, CIAM solutions swell consumer confidence and drive efforts to increase revenue by applying the known user data in critical points of intersection.
CIAM ultimately becomes the connection for customers with your Brand, and a vehicle to capture and share data across systems to help marketing, revenue, and customer satisfaction.
However, not all CIAM solutions are the same. Sophisticated options provide a full range of consumer services, including privacy protection and anti-fraud features, data collection, data analysis, and more. But finding the solution that meets your business needs doesn’t have to be a treasure hunt.
“Turn Unknown Online Visitors into Loyal Customers”, that’s what SAP says
Back in 2015, after a couple of years sharing results of successful teamwork, Trew Knowledge was pleased to join SAP CDC, formerly Gigya, as Canada’s first Solution Partner. As a solution provider, Trew Knowledge offers implementation and consulting services for SAP’s complete Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) platform and its products, including Social Login, Registration-as-a-Service (RaaS), Profile Management, Data storage, Consent Management, and Customer Insights.
The world’s leading brands rely on SAP to build identity-driven relationships with their customers while powering scalable, secure customer identity management. Organizations such as Air Canada, Manchester United football club, Hawaii tourism, Ferrari, Barnes & Noble, Walgreens, Loblaws, Telus, L’Oréal, ASOS, and the Canadian Olympic Committee are just some of the brands that understand their customers on a deeper level and create relevant, unique experiences with SAP CDC’s platform.
Speaking of Canadian Olympic Committee
Trew Knowledge was pleased to work with SAP as part of an ongoing project for the Canadian Olympic Committee on Olympic.ca & Olympique.ca, which has seen a significant transformation and success for getting to know their biggest and most engaged fans. In advance of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, the COC implemented SAP CDC’s Social Login, Registration-as-a-Service, Commenting and Sharing products to unify the user experience and create a single view of its fans.
With the insights gained from analyzing fans’ permission-based identity data and on-site actions, the Canadian Olympic Committee simultaneously boosted user registrations from Facebook promotions by 106%, while decreasing its Cost-per-click to acquire new users by 51% during the Winter Olympic Games. The outcome of the implementation and the project’s future direction solidified Trew Knowledge’s interest in helping other brands achieve the same level of success.
Building on the success of the initial implementation, Trew Knowledge later programmed and implemented the Canadian Olympic Club — the official fan club of Team Canada. Powered by SAP CDC’s Loyalty / Gamification products available, the experience created a one of a kind experience that rewarded fans for interacting with the site and its features.
The interactive fan experience included fun activities where users can complete challenges, perform actions, earn points, achieve status, and even earn their own medals on a leaderboard of top fans. When customers achieved enough points through actions, they were able to cash in their earnings for real world swag, prizes and contest entries for signed memorabilia and more.
The insights gained from fan engagement helped the Canadian Olympic Committee create more relevant programs and custom experiences that encourage new registrations, and rewarded customers for being a true Canadian Olympic patriot.
Ready to Get to Know Your Customers?
The Trew Knowledge team is excited to offer SAP CDC’s platform implementation, for businesses looking to make identity the core of their marketing programs, achieve real ROI from data-driven programs, increase engagement and reward their most loyal brand advocates. Speak with our experts and learn more about how we can transform your experiences Start a conversation with our experts.
