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Privacy Policies Are Good For Customer Relations

Really, the title of this post should say that good privacy policies are good for customer relations. Many companies see the privacy policy as a necessary evil. They cannibalize market competitors’ privacy policies and call it a day, but the truth is they are missing out on a real opportunity to connect with their customers. If your privacy policy says that you can collect everything under the sun, yes, you might avoid some legal liability issues, but everyone will assume that your alarm clock app or shopping cart website is recording their phone calls. On the other hand, if your privacy policy doesn’t do enough, you could find yourself in a lawsuit for not following the terms of your own policy. 
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That’s why I advocate for companies to take pride in their privacy policies.

Privacy Policies are more than just a legal hoop to jump through. With fallout from privacy breaches like with Facebook, Quora, and Newegg, privacy is moving to the front of customers’ minds. Privacy-forward companies are seeing surges in use (DuckDuckGo searches nearly doubled from 2017 to 2018), and, according to the Pew Research Center, 93% of Americans care who has their personal information, and 90% of Americans care what kind of information is held.

Privacy is now a feature of trusted consumer brands. That’s why it’s important to have thought through your privacy values. You need to understand your business model thoroughly to decide whether the collection, sale, sharing, or storage of user data is necessary to your business, because if not, you may be leaving some goodwill on the table with an overly broad privacy policy.

A broad privacy policy will help protect you during litigation, but it won’t let people know where you actually stand when consumers are deciding which brands to trust.

A good rule of thumb for a solid privacy policy is to follow the rule of the 5Ws – use your privacy policy to tell people:

  1. Who is collecting their data
  2. What data is being collected
  3. When the data will be collected
  4. Where the data goes
  5. Why the data is needed; and
  6. How the data is being collected

The above list is a bit of a simplification, but it gets the general idea across of what goes into a good privacy policy. As you’re sifting through the lives of various people with your data, remember that transparency on your end can go a long way towards building trust and lifelong customer relationships.