In today’s business landscape, trust is the foundation for success. It drives customer loyalty and advocacy, elevates employee engagement, and fuels innovation. However, a recent survey showed that only 34% of customers trust the brands they use, despite trust being a deciding factor in over 80% of their buying decisions.
As this blog will show, businesses can help foster trust by incorporating biometric technology into their identity verification and authentication processes.
What defines customer trust?
To establish trust, three pillars must be addressed: 1) security, 2) transparency and consent, and 3) compliance. Let’s examine each in turn and see how biometric technology can foster trust respectively.
Security:
Personal data security is paramount for businesses and customers alike. Traditional authentication methods such as passwords or PINs can be vulnerable to hacking or social engineering attacks, leaving customer data at risk. According to a survey, 87% of consumers would not do business with a company if they had concerns about its security practices.
As biometric authentication is based on physical characteristics such as fingerprints, facial features, or voice patterns, which are unique to each individual and difficult to replicate or forge, it offers superior protection for customer data.
In addition, biometric solutions can encrypt data and add timestamps, mitigating data breaches, identity theft, and unauthorised access with additional layers of protection for customers’ personal data.
Transparency and consent:
Today’s customers demand transparency and control over their personal data. In fact, a study found that 86% of consumers consider data privacy to be a growing concern, and 68% are worried about the amount of data being collected by businesses. Another study found that 76% respondents would not buy from a company they did not trust with their data.
Biometric technology can help address these concerns with opt-in processes and clear audit trails. This allows customers to provide explicit consent for the collection and use of their personal data, enabling businesses to demonstrate transparency and accountability in their data handling practices.
Compliance:
Naturally, compliance is crucial to building customer trust. A business that fails to be compliant not only faces the possibility of hefty fines, but reputational ruin.
Biometric technology can facilitate compliance by automating the identity verification process, running ongoing robust AML/KYC checks, and improving accuracy rates. Not only does this help ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations, but it improves verification process scalability and significantly cuts handling costs, freeing up resources. It also enhances the overall customer experience, radically reducing onboarding abandonment rates and improving conversion rates.
As the importance of trust continues to grow in the digital age, businesses need to leverage biometric technology to stay ahead of the curve and build stronger relationships with their customers.
To learn about how biometric identity verification can streamline the onboarding process and help build trust from the start, click here.
