For physical businesses, it is essential to keep your business premises in order and protect it from thieves and other unwanted intruders. This is not just to protect your business, but to help you serve your customers better without hassles or disruptions.
In fact, advances in security systems have made even remote monitoring of your business premises possible.
Cyber security is also essential for online businesses. Hackers are constantly seeking vulnerabilities in your site to exploit. This can cost you not just lots of money, but also your reputation, and even customers.
Here are reasons why customer security online is essential to overall customer experience in your business.
There’s intense competition
A Walker study has revealed that customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator by 2020. In other words it won’t matter how low your prices are, or how wonderful your product is if your customer experience is crappy.
Think about this in relation to customer security.
Customers are increasingly becoming aware that some tweaks on your website are necessary to provide a safer experience for them. For example, getting an SSL certificate might seem trivial to you, but it won’t anymore if you realize that research from HubSpot has shown that 82% of customers will leave a site that is not secure.
So if your competitors have secure websites and you don’t, is there any guess where most of your customers will run to? Certainly not.
It will increase customer retention for your business
Satisfied customers will do business with you again and even tell others about you. I don’t need to quote statistics because you’ve probably already experienced that. But I will.
According to Esteban Kolsky, 13% of unsatisfied customers will tell 15 or more people about their terrible customer experience with your business. On the other side of the coin, 72% of customers will share a positive experience with at least 6 people.
If you’re taking steps to ensure that customers are secure on your site, you could get more referrals for your business, and end up making more money.
Contrary to what you may think, 43% of cyber attacks target small businesses and 60% of small companies go out of business within six months of a cyber attack!
You can only get repeat customers when you’re still in business. When you secure your site, you’re not just improving customer experience, but you’re ensuring you’ll be around for a while to enjoy the fruits of good customer experience.
It’s easier to lose personal information
Losing personal information like emails, addresses, and credit card information can be disastrous. Sometimes the consequences are felt for months, and even years after such loss.
It’s little wonder then that some people are still skeptical about making purchases online or using some websites. Using complex logins (aka two-factor authentication), intricate passwords, or virtual data rooms can make your site more secure for your customers.
Remember that an attack on you is an attack on your customers. For example, if hackers successfully accessed your email marketing database, they may send emails to your customers using phishing techniques to get even more information while pretending to be you.
Customers may think they’re communicating with you when they’re only talking to a criminal. Sure, not all customers, will fall for it, but the fallout from such an occurrence will be damaging to your brand and business. It can potentially put you out of business too.
53% of customers listed a company falling victim to a data breach as a reason for abandoning business dealings with the brand.
Protecting your site doesn’t just protect you from attacks, but it protects your customers too. Getting one’s personal info stolen online isn’t exactly the definition of a good customer experience.
According to Accenture, 85% of customers are loyal to brands that safeguard and protect the privacy of their personal information, and most of them spend more with the brands and companies they’re loyal to.
Take steps to safeguard your site. According to Moz, you should:
- Secure your site with SSL
- Update any plugins or extensions/apps you use on your site
- Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
- Make sure your CDN has data centers in multiple locations
- Use a password manager
When you follow these steps, you will improve your site’s security and improve customer experience for your business. You’ll make customers feel safe in doing business with you, knowing that their personal information is secure on your site.
