Most people view implementing a customer preference centre as a necessary evil to address legal compliance of GDPR or CCPA and other equivalents. From our perspective and indeed our clients this could not be further from the truth.

Many commentators have spoken about the need to get closer to customers and to personalise communications to make them more relevant and timelier. In reality, however most of these activities are progressed by organisations using 1st, 2nd and 3rd party data to glean more about a consumer’s needs and wishes. Yes, it is certainly true that this information can indeed add value but in all cases these customer needs and wishes are inferred.

What a properly designed, constructed and integrated preference centre can do is put the consumer at the heart of the process and the result is zero-party data. That is data the consumer has freely given about their preferences, interests, needs etc. More than that, it invites them to maintain and amend them over time. This is sensible as this information does not stay the same – circumstances change, what we were interested in last year is not necessarily the same this year.

So, what best practices should you consider if you want to implement a future facing customer preference centre:

1) What preference options are going to help the consumer? This depends on the type of product or service you are selling. Let’s take the context of travel business versus a car dealership. Relevant preferences for a travel business might be types of holiday, locations, preferred times of year, hobbies (golf, tennis) etc. Whereas a car dealership might be service options, local events, early product launch previews, and so on.

2) There are times when a consumer wants a break – maybe they have had a fantastic trip to the West Indies and don’t want to hear anything about vacations for the next 6 months

3) Centralise your compliance processes and make them front of mind in the customer preference centre – do not hide them away. Consumers have a right to be forgotten or request a SAR so make sure they know about it. Yes, you may dread receiving them because they are time consuming and difficult to compile – but let’s be frank it is your issue not theirs. If you are finding these things difficult to do you need to step up and make them easier, automate them.

4) Extending their interests to others in their network – often the customer preference centre is an ideal location to think about presenting referral / member get member information. As they are thinking about their own preferences it is often a good time to think about, “you know what Aunty Jane would be interested in this”.  Personal recommendations and referrals always deliver better results.