The most successful businesses give their customers exactly what they want. But that’s easier said than done. Not only do budgetary or resource constraints often stand in the way of delivering customers their dream service, but it’s also challenging to determine customer wants and needs. Your consumers are not a monolith; their needs and desires will vary dramatically.

However, we can say with relative certainty that all consumers want two things: convenience and the feeling that they can trust their data with their service providers. Here are six technologies that will provide those things.

Convenience

Convenience is essential for modern consumers. Years of TV and social media have shortened our attention spans, and the exhausting reality of daily life has left us with precious little spare time. As such, consumers will not tolerate inconvenience. So much so that some studies suggest that 22% of people will give up within a minute if they’re having a frustrating online experience. Here are a few technologies that will ensure your online services are convenient for consumers.

Digital Onboarding

It may sound obvious, but the days of customers signing up for a service in person are long gone. Much of the world has adjusted to the conveniences of living a large part of our lives online: expecting your customers to attend your office to purchase your services will dramatically impact sales. In fact, 80% of consumers expect a fully digital onboarding experience.

But digital onboarding alone isn’t enough to satisfy the modern consumer. As discussed above, online frustrations constitute a significant barrier to digital onboarding. Consumers rank, for example, advertising pop-ups (71%), having to re-enter personal information (65%), and password resets (64%) as their top online frustrations – but the list doesn’t end there. It’s essential to remove other frustrations, such as complex cookie options, chatbots, and (unnecessary) banking or credit card verification, to ensure a frictionless digital onboarding experience and prevent potential customers from clicking away.

BYOI – Bring Your Own Identity

Consumers are also keen to use their preferred identity provider (e.g., ID.me, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn) to log in to a new service rather than create a new account. The rise in customers expecting BYOI confirms something we already knew: consumers value convenience.  According to some studies, the modern internet user has over 100 passwords. Understandably, consumers don’t want to create and remember more than they need to.

Providing BYOI as an option is non-negotiable unless you’re willing to lose half of your customers to a competitor that does offer it.

Trust

Brand trust is at an all-time low. Only 28% of Gen Z trust the brands they do business with. Perhaps more concerning, little over half (57%) of boomers said they trusted the brands they use. You can use two technologies to convince your customers that you’re trustworthy.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA/2FA)

Consumers today are more security-conscious than ever. Countless education schemes, high-profile cybercrimes, and famous scams have ensured that. As a result, security measures such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) have become essential to consumers, with more than 80% of respondents saying they either want or need their service providers to offer 2FA. Offering 2FA proves to your customers that you take their privacy and security seriously. It’s only a little thing, but it goes a long way.

Explicit Consent for Data Sharing

Regulations like GDPR, headline-grabbing data scandals, and a never-ending list of high-profile breaches have taught consumers the value of their data. Although, according to research from Thales, 89% of consumers say they’re happy for organizations to use their data, this comes with caveats. For example, nearly half (46%) of respondents to the Census wide survey said that any company they do business with must provide a clear view of what data the user has consented to share with them. 36% saw it as desirable.

Convenience and Trust

There are a couple of technologies, however, that can inspire trust while enhancing convenience.

Progressive Profiling

Consumers are willing to hand over their data in exchange for a better online experience. But they don’t like when brands ask for too much: 29% of consumers reported leaving a brand in the past 12 months because it demanded too much personal information. Asking consumers to give up all their personal information in one massive form will do little but scare them off.

One way to harvest consumer data without setting off alarm bells is progressive profiling. This technique involves gradually and transparently collecting data to avoid overwhelming the user. For example, organizations may use shorter forms or surveys across multiple interactions to create detailed user profiles. These user profiles allow organizations to provide consumers with a more bespoke and convenient user experience.

Passwordless Authentication

Passwordless authentication has been a hot topic in the past few years. Organizations and users alike have become exasperated with the logistical and security issues inherent in the password. Technologies like biometrics, secure passkeys, and authenticator apps are fast overtaking the password as the world’s favorite authentication mechanism: KuppingerCole expects the passwordless authentication market to reach $6.6bn by 2025, up from $1.84bn in 2020.

Passwordless authentication is somewhat of an anomaly among these technologies in that it provides users with both enhanced convenience and builds trust. By removing the need for users to create, store, and remember passwords, passwordless authentication significantly improves user experience. At the same time, it enhances security (and therefore consumer trust) by eradicating many of the vulnerabilities passwords are susceptible to, such as brute-force and credential stuffing attacks.  Organizations need to take a holistic approach to Passwordless implementation, across all user identities, including consumers, their own workforce and third-parties.

In conclusion, walking the line between providing convenience and inspiring trust is a difficult task. It’s also crucial to succeeding as a business. Consider using the technologies above to improve user experience and prove to consumers that you take their privacy seriously. However, keep in mind that not all consumers are the same: your users’ wants and needs may differ from the general population, meaning you need to interact with them directly.

Josh is a Content writer at Bora. He graduated with a degree in Journalism in 2021 and has a background in cybersecurity PR. He’s written on a wide range of topics, from AI to Zero Trust, and is particularly interested in the impacts of cybersecurity on the wider economy.