Driven by the Covid-19 pandemic, the topic of digital trust has become even more relevant to today’s digital businesses. As described by CIO Wiki, digital trust is the confidence placed in an organisation to collect, store and use the digital information of others in a manner that benefits and protects those to whom the information pertains. They also refer to it as today’s currency, and that it will be central to defining the high performers of tomorrow.
As a key enabler for high quality digital interactions, trust measures and quantifies customer expectations. However, interactions behind digital curtains require establishing a high level of trust between the parties involved – which is easier said than done.
The key trends that are shaping this evolution are as follows:
#1: Becoming a boardroom priority: Just a few years ago digital trust wasn’t a term widely used. In fact, aside from visionaries and trendsetters, business leaders weren’t correlating a concept like trust with their bottom line. However, the acceleration of digital services has made trust one of the top priorities for CXOs across the globe.
#2: Scope is expanding: At its start digital trust only encompassed security and privacy, with its relevance limited to just data breaches and misuse of content. Today, it is a broader topic covering areas such as identity, risk mitigation, predictability, and data integrity, as well as privacy and security.
#3: Consumers are becoming increasingly aware: Given the topic’s ambiguity and the fact that business leaders had yet to address the significance of digital trust, consumers were largely unaware of the topic. As consumers become more informed about this in digital business, they are using this knowledge to make conscious decisions based on a company’s ability to demonstrate a trustworthy ecosystem.
#4: Increasing relevance for enterprises: While the significance of digital trust for consumers shouldn’t be downplayed, it’s becoming a growing trend outside of B2C businesses and making its way into enterprises. With the expansion of its scope to include areas such as identity, risk mitigation, predictability, and data integrity, digital trust is becoming increasingly relevant to both the B2B and B2G (business to government) sectors.
#5: Lack of trust beginning to make a quantifiable impact: As considered in point three, as consumers become more informed around the topic, they are using this knowledge to determine the trustworthiness of an organisation’s digital ecosystem. We are now beginning to see the measurable impact it is having on the subscribers and revenues of digital businesses. In addition, we are also seeing how a continued demonstration of trust is subconsciously influencing consumer decisions.
Build consumer confidence with digital trust
As data breaches continue to occur with increasing frequency, digital trust will gain momentum – shifting from a “nice to have” to a necessity. For companies to attract customers and create loyalty brand ambassadors, they will need to build customer confidence by having the highest levels possible. These are the businesses that will increasingly become the vendors of choice for consumers, while organisations that do not put a priority on digital trust will find themselves at a clear competitive disadvantage.
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