Preference Management and Customer Experience

For any organization operating in the current data privacy climate, managing consumer consent is just one piece of the puzzle. In order to maximize transparency and build consumer trust, it is critical to consider how to manage and adhere to the preferences that consumers have communicated.

Companies impacted by the emergence of recent data privacy laws understand that a proactive approach to transparency can be beneficial, since building consumer relationships on trust drives customer loyalty and impacts buying decisions. Additionally, companies today are incorporating personalization into their marketing tactics to maximize consumer engagement and support sales. Teams that are unable to embrace preference management in their customer experience strategy risk losing market share to competitors that do.

Introducing Customer Experience

What is customer experience?

Customer experience is how customers view their direct and indirect interactions with companies. Direct interactions include anything customers actively do to purchase and use a product or service. Indirect interactions are unintentional encounters with companies. For instance, seeing an ad for a product before playing a YouTube video is an indirect interaction.

Everything companies offer—advertising, products, customer service, and more – contribute to the customer experience.

Why is customer experience important?

Organizations care about customer experience because it can be the “X factor” that drives tremendous revenue and growth potential. A recent Zippia survey found that companies that provide a superior customer experience can find their revenue increase by up to 15%.

Top Preference Management Factors that Influence Customer Experience

Simplicity

It is critical to create streamlined preference management experiences that allow consumers to quickly and easily find and manage their preferences. Complex user experiences can result in user frustration and abandonment. Over time, negative user experiences can turn into negative brand sentiment. Eliminating high-friction scenarios can improve the overall user experience.

Choices

Continued advancements in technology have allowed consumers to grow accustomed to having options. One of those options includes communication preferences. It is important to understand where, when, and how often your consumers want to hear from your brand.

If a consumer indicates that they prefer communicating through text message but your brand continues sending unwanted emails, your organization is wasting resources and alienating potential or existing customers. When consumer preferences are effectively managed and respected, organizations have the ability to maximize engagement with their audience. In turn, satisfied consumers may be more likely to buy.

Response Time & Consistency

Users expect to see digital updates reflected immediately. In order to ensure that communication preference updates can be made in real-time, a system must be in place to automatically store, update, and delete data. When a consumer changes their preferences, a preference management system should be able to accurately reflect those updates across the entire organization’s preference management system. Inconsistencies and lag time can lead to negative user experiences.

Conclusion

Preference management is something that all brands should seriously consider if they want to increase positive engagement with consumers. Managing consumer consents and preferences is difficult, but it doesn’t have to be as daunting a task as it may seem. To tackle this challenge, many organizations use a consent and preference management platform to help with both consent management and preference management.

WireWheel's Universal Preference and Consent Platform: The Easiest Way to Manage Preferences and Consents

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