Digitalisation has permeated practically all industries and ecosystems across the world. In keeping with this trend, digital technology is transforming a wide range of sectors in Indonesia, particularly services.
So, how can recent technological advances accelerate growth and gain customer loyalty? Ultimately, providing consistent, safe, and scalable experiences across the services ecosystem is the key to customer happiness and loyalty. Businesses must take a customer-centric approach when digitally engaging and responding to customers to develop extraordinary digital experiences that attract new customers and keep existing ones.
Companies have access to vast amounts of consumer data via digital platforms, including demographics, product usage and behaviour. However, this data will only be helpful to an organisation if it has effective analytics technology that can generate actionable insights to produce value. Furthermore, consumers must be able to provide consent and access and manage their data and its use.
Security is becoming vital in this digital context as online offers, e-transactions, and services extend the digital surface. Besides infections and fraud, there is an increasing risk of account takeover (ATO) and unauthorised access. Regulatory frameworks are essential for the safety of all stakeholders. On the other hand, safety rules and regulatory frameworks are getting more demanding, making compliance difficult.
Organisations must become more agile to catch up with the rising rate of change and demand in today’s business. Organisations must be flexible and dynamic to respond to changes in technology, customer behaviour, legislation, and security.
The OpenGov Breakfast Insight with Indonesia’s top public sector officials in financial services and enterprise sectors on 16 February 2022 at the Westin Hotel, Jakarta, discussed cutting-edge technologies for enhancing client loyalty and profitability in Indonesia’s financial services and corporate sectors.
Opening Address
Customers are complicated, acknowledges Mohit Sagar, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of OpenGov Asia. And in a rapidly evolving digital landscape, he emphasises the importance of know-your-customer (KYC) initiatives.
Organisations must recognise what makes their customers tick and know they expect a personalised experience and customer service.
“Notice how your scam alert is the same? It’s not personalised at all. Why? You can tell by my profile that I’m a smart guy and tech-savvy. You can tell by my mother’s profile; she is not tech-savvy. Yet we have the same message about people. Small little thing, and we can get the insights to make your messages personalised,” he explains.
In the FSI sector, digitisation can help banks become more efficient and profitable and increase client retention by delivering more tailored offerings and services. A data integration plan should include as much information as feasible, pulling from sources that reveal user profiles and activity. Better insights result from combining such data and allow for excellent customer service and win their loyalty.
Customer loyalty boosts profitability by promoting repeat business, lowering a company’s expenses, establishing a favourable pricing premium and generating referrals. Its primary goal is to improve the ability of end-users and producers to transact with one another.
Welcome Address
Johan Fantenberg, Principal Solutions Architect, APJ, ForgeRock, reiterated the criticality of KYC programmes to gain and maintain customer loyalty.
KYC essentially is not just knowing about the customer but knowing the customer’s needs. What they want is a non-negotiable aspect of any customer interaction, service, and the product you put in the market.
“You need an approach and an attitude that starts with fully understanding, knowing and securing the customer’s interaction and their data. So that last part – knowing and securing – is more challenging than it sounds. You need a strategy, and you need a technology to apply,” Johan stresses.
There are many reasons to infuse identity into a connected world. Security and experience are foundational. KYC translated into a digital identity is the fundamental building block for loyalty and experience.
However, Johan cautioned delegates to keep protection and personalisation integrated – they are unseparated parts of the digital identity. Both are needed to establish trust from users, which is the main ingredient to get loyalty.
Poor experience contributes to a bad reputation, insecurity, business risk and lack of mutual trust. Protection and personalisation share many drivers, both business and personal. This reflects both must-haves for compliance and drivers for digital transformation.
Securing customer data is the pinnacle of gaining customer trust and loyalty. Data shows that customer trust has sunk fast. About 74% of U.S. adults now highly value their data privacy. At the same time, about 82% are concerned about how companies gather and use their data.
Johan iterated some crucial points about data security: protection, transparency and control. Data protection is about not accidentally letting the data out. Data transparency means being open and honest about what data organisations want and what has been done with the data already collected. Data control gives people choice and agency. Business needs to provide customers with the ability to manage, edit, change and share by themselves.
Fireside Chat: Increasing Organisational Loyalty and Growth in the Digital Ecosystem
In Indonesia, the internet and mobile applications have expanded dramatically, indicating that digital channels would become increasingly important in developing loyalty and driving organisational development.
Raditio Ghifiardi, Vice President of Information Security & Compliance Smartfren Telecom, agrees that digitalisation is strategic for customer loyalty.
“Customer loyalty is strategic, and we have the opportunity to make it digital. Earlier, the customer would travel to the store to purchase SIM cards. Customers can now purchase everything they desire thanks to the internet platform. So we make certain that people are provided with customer services through email, chatbots, WhatsApp and so on,” he elaborated.
Organisations must be flexible and dynamic to respond to changes in technology, customer behaviour, regulation and security. Raditio admits that businesses have no choice but to have a digital platform because everybody will go in that direction. Digitalisation is mandatory and even more challenging for the telecom industry because of the fierce competition in the industry.
Regarding customer data security, Raditio acknowledges the rise of cyber-attacks lately in Indonesia and specifically the Bjorka incident last year. Bjorka claimed to have 1.3 billion SIM card registration data obtained from the Ministry Communication and Informatics system, information of 44 million people through breaching the General Election Commission (KPU), among others. This was then sold on the dark web.
Aside from external threats, Raditio emphasises the importance of developing security awareness internally. “The weakest link is our users. It’s not even customers. It is our internal users. Do we need to have internal safety? Yes, we need to secure people. We need to ensure that those who have access are regulated and controlled and limited in what they can access.”
Therefore, Raditio is pushing data security for his internal team. While for customers, he encourages consent to ensure customers aware of the data collection and the processing process. The effort also aligns with Personal Data Protection (PDP) Law.
Closing Remarks
Johan believes managing data security is essential for customer loyalty, and firms need to collect what they require to provide a service. Even though technology has made it easy to collect data, businesses must collect it based on context. This is the principle of data minimisation. Collecting data and building up a pile of digital toxic waste will ultimately cost businesses.
“And that waste is going to bite you when you get or if you get exposed,” he warns.
Additionally, personalisation has become inevitable in tomorrow’s business, especially when users’ data have been collected. It will bring a sense of privilege to the customer experience – if people are willing to provide the information, they want something back in return.
Mohit concurs with this – today, customers are looking for exclusivity and tailor-made experiences. They are open to sharing data and information but want something “special” and personal in return.
“If you don’t give it to them, they will go elsewhere. That’s the issue. Then you better personalise the user’s experience, not generalise it,” Mohit concludes.
