We’re all increasingly used to the idea that the data we hand over on an everyday basis, especially online, not only smoothes our transactions but also becomes part of our ongoing relationship with the businesses and brands who receive it.
By telling you my address once, I know I won’t have to do so every other time. A service I’m buying with my data is, effectively, its intelligent use by you in the future. That’s value.
It depresses me, though, how often I’m on the receiving end of the devaluing process when that intelligence isn’t applied: my supermarket chain of choice keeps kicking out vouchers for dog food, even though I don’t have a dog, but have bought cat food from them; I use an airline site regularly that remembers my passport details but makes me specify my gender every time I book; my partner can’t get Amazon to recognise that he’s got a Kindle and doesn’t need to keep having them recommended to him.
They’re the tiniest of things, but when the point is that we’re expecting the journey to be smooth, the smallest bumps are the most aggravating.
When I’m helping plan data capture and use, I always try to keep everyone’s mind not on the usual question of “what data do we need?” but on “what are we going to do with this data?” It’s proven a useful focusing tool more than once.
And everyone immediately sees the benefit of thinking about application, not just capture.
I was talking to a client recently about the data that will be captured from their customers when a new site goes live, and it was heartening to discover that it’s not just me being hyper-aware of these things; he wanted to make sure there was a reason to collect each item, and a plan to use it intelligently in his relationship with the customer. He cited his own annoying experiences just like those I listed above.
Which makes me wonder – if plenty of us are having those experiences where other people using our own data badly annoys us, where does that experience go when businesses are developing their data strategies in the first place? As businesses carefully plan all the data they’re going to capture, why isn’t its use always as painstakingly considered?
Jon Pollard is founder and director of digital strategy at BrocklebankPenn
