Cybersecurity and Customer Experience

Written by Anita Siassios, Founder and Director, ManagingCX | 5 min read

Cybersecurity and Customer Experience: An Introduction for CX Professionals

You’re logging into the computer to start your workday when you see an email subject line that makes your heart drop: “Customer data breach at [your organisation]: Our response.” While the email has a lot of information about new security protocols and technologies, you’re thinking about the implications to the results of the upcoming customer survey you are planning.

After all, we all know that customer experience equates to customers realities divided by their expectations (Lynn Hunsaker, 2020).

Fortunately, cybersecurity initiatives are an excellent opportunity for CX teams to deliver even more secure, trusted, and enjoyable experiences. Indeed, prevention is the key to delivering great customer experiences in a cyber security context.

As Greg Bell, the US leader at KPMG Cyber, put it: “In too many industries, information security is still seen as a technology risk to be minimised instead of a business issue to be optimized.”

In this introduction to cybersecurity and customer experience for CX professionals, I’ll provide a brief overview of what cybersecurity is and why understanding this discipline and its implications is important to customer relationships and business bottom lines.

What is Cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity involves protecting business systems, intellectual property, internal documents, and other sensitive information from attacks. In order to understand this further, let’s walk in the shoes of an attacker by watching this video developed by CISCO.

Cybersecurity is also concerned with protecting customer data and preventing harm, disruptions, or attacks on customer digital experiences, often referred to as clickjacking.

There are a variety of cyber threats that can disrupt the customer journey and business operations overall, from malware attacks and data breaches to customer journey hacking. For a complete list of cyber threats and preventative measures for small businesses, check out this small business cybersecurity guide.

70% of organisations have experienced a malware attack. Malware is a piece of software designed to disrupt another program or network. Botnet attacks, or attacks by a large number of connected devices, are also a common type of cyber attack, as are attacks from a disgruntled employee.

Fortunately, businesses have many options for protecting themselves against cyber threats. Besides the obvious benefit of not having internal operations disrupted, organisations have much to gain from business operation, CX, and revenue perspectives, as well.

Let’s now take a deeper look at the benefit of adopting a stronger approach to cyber security.

Why Should Businesses Invest in Cybersecurity?

If an organisation wants to:

• Protect customer and employee data

• Secure intellectual property (IP) and other sensitive information

• Retain customer and employee trust

• Avoid disruptions to internal business operations

• Avoid costly and reputation-damaging lawsuits

• Take a proactive instead of a reactive approach to managing risks

… then they should invest in cybersecurity.

In other words, investing in cybersecurity comes down to preventing disruptions to your customers experiences, their wellbeing, and other risks cyber-attacks pose. A more robust approach to cyber security gives brands an opportunity to enhance their customer relationship.

85% of consumers worldwide said they wished there were more companies they could trust with their data. Another 60% of consumers said they expected an organisation they do business with to face a data breach one day.

Unsurprisingly, 48% of people stopped using a service when that company disclosed a data breach.

Investing in cybersecurity initiatives can help businesses to maintain existing customers’ trust in a company and even encourage longer-term relationships with that brand. Developing a reputation for protecting customers’ data could also help to attract future clients.

Protecting customers is just one benefit of adopting more cyber security measures; however, considering data breaches cost an average of $3.86 million, taking a proactive approach to cyber safety could save businesses millions in lawsuits and lost productivity.

Although IT will be concerned with an organisation’s cyber safety, cybersecurity should be everyone’s business and a concern for those outside of technical teams as well.

CX teams should contribute to cyber initiatives that can not only retain customer trust but make sure each step along their journey is preventing and or managing a potential attack to maintain and improve customer satisfaction.

Why Should CX Professionals Care About Cybersecurity?

CX professionals should enhance their peripheral vision and participate in cybersecurity initiatives so they can craft better customer experiences.

For example, 27% of consumers want compensation after a breach, and 22% want to be notified about what happened and how it’s being resolved.

CX teams can lean on voice of the customer (VOC) programmes to understand how customers would prefer businesses to respond after cyber breaches and collaborate with colleagues to deliver on those expectations.

Doing so demonstrates a Customer-Centric Mindset by Thinking and Acting for the customers’ wellbeing.

To make the most of your customer insights, enrol in Managing CX’s Customer Experience Excellence Course for a personalised deep dive into the CXPA CX competencies that will empower you with the knowledge and skills to design the full end-to-end Customer Experience Strategy.

We’ll take a deeper dive into why customer experience teams should be concerned with cyber security in the second part of the series, but suffice to say that CX teams should view cybersecurity as yet another opportunity to gain customers’ trust and loyalty.

Learn More About Cybersecurity and Customer Experience

Click here to read part 2 and part 3 of Anita’s introduction to cybersecurity and customer experience for CX professionals. 

Bio

Anita Siassios is an Australian CX maven and community leader with a passion for making impactful change. Anita has over 33 years’ experience in banking, technology, operations, and privacy, enabling large international corporates to embed a values-driven customer-centric mindset into their business. 

In 2018, she founded ManagingCX, a consulting firm that elevates companies and professionals by uplifting their CX capability to proactively manage their customer and employee experiences.

Visit ManagingCX.com.