Have you ever become so frustrated with an app account’s sign-on process that you’ve given up? Too many steps to authenticate, having to log in multiple times for different features, everything taking so much longer than expected…

Security measures can obstruct a customer’s user journey. Your customers are central to your business growth, and in today’s world of technology, building and sustaining loyalty through a positive digital experience is essential to establishing a reliable revenue stream. Enter: Customer Identity and Access Management.

What is Customer Identity and Access Management?

Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) enables the secure collection, storage, and management of customer data. Like IAM for your workforce, CIAM allows your organisation to maintain control over people’s access to your applications and services, but CIAM is a simpler, more scalable solution focusing on the customer digital experience.

CIAM benefits your business in three ways:

1. Improves the digital user experience for your customers,
2. Fortifies identity security processes while still enabling the collection of customer data with progressive profiling,
3. Facilitates compliance.
   
   

When does authentication become an obstacle?

Consider times when you’ve been repeatedly asked to reset your password. Or when your password must include uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols. Or when you’re forced to use multiple devices to authenticate. Passwords and multi-factor authentication (MFA) can sometimes hinder the user experience by adding friction to the log-on process.

Forcing your customers to jump through hoops when registering, signing in, or managing the accounts they use to access your services may push them towards a competitor, particularly when digital services are central to your business model.

What makes a good CIAM solution?

The best CIAM solutions unify customer data from multiple channels to maximise security while empowering the end user with a frictionless digital experience.

A progressive profiling approach further improves and personalises the UX by fragmenting the registration process. If you can minimise the initial requirements for registration and instead incorporate them in a later interaction, there are fewer obstacles for new customers, and customers are able to provide further information when ready to do so.

What are the key features of a CIAM solution?

Here are some of the features CIAM provides:

• Single Sign-On (SSO) – enables access to all required applications via a single set of credentials, building an omnichannel experience and eliminating the frustration of entering credentials multiple times.
  
  
• Multi-Factor Authentication – minimises the risk of an account being compromised, e.g., from a stolen password, by requiring two or more factors of authentication. These could be something you know (like a password), something you have (like a mobile phone), or something you are (like a fingerprint).
  
  
• Centralised Customer Directory – allows records to be integrated from multiple customer data repositories while ensuring control and compliance.
  
  
• Self-Service Account, Privacy and Consent Management – empowers customers with the ability to register for services, update account settings, reset passwords and manage preferences for how their personal data is used or shared, without the hassle of engaging customer services.
  
  
• Identity Proofing and Fraud Detection– building confidence in the identity of the customer during remote sessions and mitigating risks from malicious actors.

To understand how your business could leverage Customer Identity and Access Management, contact us to book an intro call with one of our experts.