The customer focused pains multiplied by where identity lives

Customers are the number one priority of any business who want to stay in business. Every customer has a digital identity – usernames, passwords and personal information - to interact with your business. These identities are stored in directories. Imagine each directory is like an individual world because that’s how they can appear and behave.

The pains of multiple customer directories manifest themselves both internally and externally in a business. Internally, directories cause a lack of clear business insight into an individual customer’s behaviour across a portfolio of products and services. Externally directories create a frustrating, disjointed customer experience from a business that appears like it should be seamlessly connected internally.

Let’s deal with the internal pains first. Directories create information silos and with them, the inability to see in a single pane of glass which customers buy multiple products across a business portfolio.  As a result, businesses miss the potential cross-sell, up-sell or tailored user journey opportunities that can create additional revenue.

If a business can join up the customer identities in its disjointed directories, it can benefit from having a single view to automate upsell & cross sell campaigns. Utilising hooks into marketing automation systems to avoid the potential privacy risks from consent stored in multiple directories, leading to emails being inappropriately sent and potential fines incurred. Or to create personalised customer journeys, without the usual significant manual effort, driving revenue whilst increasing speed & efficiency.
 

Are your directories driving customers away?

Let’s not forget the most important people here though, the customers. The nature of directories also creates more direct pains for them too, in the form of multiple registrations and log-ins to what appears to be the same company’s website. Continually having to register in long, fill out antiquated forms and resupply your identity details doesn’t create a sense of confidence in the business. Instead, it creates friction that causes customers to end their sessions, directly impacting your sales.

Customers don’t need to show the patience or loyalty of workforces when facing IT-created pains, because nobody is paying them to endure it. Quite the opposite. They are paying for the privilege of a poor customer experience.
So, they go elsewhere even at a price premium, to get a better experience.

Our own customer expectations also quickly migrate into the workplace, because we don’t compartmentalise between the two. If we’ve had a great, frictionless experience in one place, it’s only human nature to wonder why we can’t have it in another. The answer is probably related to directories.

To learn more about the role directories play and how they can be managed more efficiently with Okta’s Universal Directory, read our eBook “Universal Directory. Create one world’ here: https://www.okta.com/au/resources/whitepaper-universal-directory-create-one-world/