with a trusted customer identity source.
Customer identity is the moment when a consumer moves from being unknown to known. Establishing identity with a trusted identity source lets marketers understand who their real customers are on an individual level while respecting their privacy-consent boundaries.
Customer identity and access management (CIAM) provides a unified interface across digital touchpoints that enables customers to directly input and update identity data, along with the associated consent and preference data. It also serves as the foundation to unify an organization’s existing tech stack as it integrates and enables a broad ecosystem of technologies, spanning applications, APIs, security, infrastructure, and business and marketing analytics.
CIAM can provide actionable insights that boost conversion and build trust.
By capturing deterministic data and events related to onboarding and login such as: when users are signing up, signing in and interacting with your services, the location(s) they are consuming your services from and the devices they are using to access your services across all digital channels, CIAM can provide actionable insights that boost conversion and build trust.
This can be achieved through bi-directional synchronization to customer data repositories such as master data management (MDMs), customer data platforms (CDPs), customer relationship management systems (CRM) and digital marketing hubs (DMH), to leverage CIAM data to enrich users’ profiles with verified identity data and connect anonymous profiles to known users. Identity data can also be synchronized with fraud and consent and preference management systems to reduce risks.
CIAM starts with sign-up, often the first touchpoint at which a customer becomes identifiable through verification and spans continuous interactions through login. Authentication has traditionally been seen only as a security concern and a way to let the right users access applications, it has reciprocal value as a powerful way to understand and build trust with a customer from the very first click. User transactions can be identified and verified as being done by a legitimate user via authentication events using identifiers such as email or mobile number. For example, when a user verifies their identity with SMS or email verification, the phone number or email address is validated.
This empowers CIAM to introduce a way to accurately identify customers, connect an anonymous user with a converted customer, and enrich customer profiles with customer-provided verified data. The unknown user browsing an item on one browser and later signing up from a different browser on a different device can be connected through the power of identity. And any updates to information performed at login are synchronized to downstream systems providing marketers with trusted data - reducing erroneous marketing spending caused by bots/bad actors.
Building this bridge with CIAM is essential to achieving success with future-oriented digital marketing efforts that leverage actionable insights to boost and build trust which in turn increases conversion and engagement.
Trust is earned, and a good user experience helps to establish that. For instance, asking for too much data up-front and only protecting apps with a password arguably one of the weakest authentication factors) can lead to user mistrust and sign-up abandonment.
An Auth0, which now powers Okta Customer Identity Cloud. global survey of 17,000 IT and marketing decision-makers and consumers cited that close to
50% of consumers find long sign-up forms and passwords as top barriers to service adoption
Earning and keeping consumer trust means balancing security and convenience. In the same Auth0 survey we found that as many as
49% of consumers state that they are more likely to sign up for a service if it offers multi-factor authentication or more secure and convenient options than a username and password combination.
At the same time, consumers do not want the flow of their experience disrupted, so security cannot be intrusive or take too long.
Consumers are willing to accept more friction depending on the type of transaction and its sensitivity; however, it doesn’t have to result in overburdening users. Intelligent authentication that leaves the user in a trusted state until there is a reason to trigger additional proof can result in increased revenue.
CIAM can be used to incrementally build trust by balancing the experience with security - introducing friction only at the right time helping to overcome user skepticism in this first-party-data, consent-oriented, risk-averse world.
Reducing signup and sign in friction by adopting more advanced forms of authentication and only introducing friction when necessary is key to optimizing interactions. This requires the ability to activate holistic identity insights. It only takes one frustrating experience for customers to make customers leave even a brand they love, meaning conversion is unlikely when the brand isn’t a known quantity yet.
CIAM plays a central role in the conversion funnel. Acquisition is tied to sign up and retention is tied to the login experience associated with your digital services. Not having a unified view into these processes and a way to analyze and take action on this data can lead to friction which creates frustration and leads to lost conversions. In fact, according to our global survey we found that 83% of consumers abandon purchases or account creation because of difficult login processes.
CIAM unlocks insights, such as preferences and usage patterns - how, where and when customers are signing up and signing into services and shares this with business systems (Martech, Content Management, Fraud, Privacy, Sales, Customer Care) to boost business outcomes.
Introducing centralized customer identity management systems, and associated data provides a deep source of valuable user information and funnel metrics that can be mobilized for conversion and revenue optimization as well as improvements to the total customer experience. ◆
