New Report Urges Businesses to Streamline Their Identity Procedures

The Business Performance Innovation (BPI) Network and the CMO Council have found more evidence that suggests that a poor identity experience is a major deterrent for many customers. In that regard, the study echoes another recent BPI Network and CMO Council report that found that people will walk away from a digital transaction when they have trouble logging in.

The new report supplements that consumer data with input from executives in the security, digital marketing, and customer support sectors. Both reports found that people are becoming increasingly frustrated with passwords, and have expressed a preference for biometric authentication options.

However, businesses still need to take proactive measures to meet that demand. The latest survey shows that customer support centers tend to trail the pace of innovation, which creates both friction and risk as long as they rely on outdated security measures. Consumers, meanwhile, are more wary of identity theft, and are looking to work with organizations that can guard against it. Many businesses also fail to provide a consistent user experience, which is to say that there are different authentication procedures for people accessing different channels.

With that in mind, the BPI Network and CMO Council advise companies to take immediate steps to simplify their onboarding and authentication procedures. The companies themselves would seem to agree with that assessment. Many CMOs and Chief Digital Officers want to remove friction from their consumer channels, and many more executives have flagged digital identity as one of the biggest priorities facing any business in the wake of COVID-19. They believe that systems that are easy to use are more satisfying for customers, which is why many businesses are already in the process of switching to a biometric authentication model.

“Consumers and business leaders agree that identity assurance plays a major role in delivering winning digital customer experiences,” said CMO Council and BPI Network Executive Director Donovan Neale-May. 

“This study underscores the critical need for businesses to deploy biometrics to ease the strain of authentication and improve security and privacy for customers,” added Daon Marketing SVP George Skaff. “Security and digital experience leaders should look to unify authentication and identity proofing on a single enterprise platform across their mobile, web and customer support channels.”

Daon carried out the research project in collaboration with the BPI Network and CMO Council. The various parties will discuss their findings in a webinar panel on November 3.

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November 2, 2021 – by Eric Weiss