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Miles Burke’s piece in the Sitepoint Tribune newsletter on how not to use customer data discussed several ways that small businesses can break the deal with their clients. After all, what’s the most valuable thing on the Web? Trust.

The examples Miles used were probably understandable on a naive human level. Unfortunately businesses have led themselves to believe that when people give them information, later turned into data and stored on the company’s servers, there is an implicit ownership that passes to the business.

The business comes to believe this information can be gathered, collated, sorted, even data mined to extract their optimum business outcomes from the deal.

Let me ask these simple questions. How would you feel about your data being repurposed? How many organisations have your details? Do you feel comfortable with them selling your email addresses? Spamming you? Investigating your behaviour? No, it would feel like shit to discover that a business you trust had manipulated that trust for financial or other business advantage.

Here is the right way, the ethical way, to treat customer data.

1. Only ever ask for the exact data you need for that transaction
2. Clearly state why you need the data and how long it will be kept
3. Make a point of explaining exactly what that data will be used for
4. Understand that the deal is in those first three rules
5. Store their data with a serious security effort
6. Tell them where and how their data is going to be stored
7. Allow them to rescind and delete their data at any time
8. Never share their data with any other person or business
9. Never use their data for anything other than it’s identified purpose
10. When you no longer need their data destroy it
11. When the time limit expires on their data destroy it
12. If you wish to acquire their data again or more data… ask again
13. Accept as a business policy that it is always their data not your data
14. Respect the trust relationship implicit in this way of doing business

Some of that list may be repetitive but I don’t want to leave the reader with any doubt about loopholes. Yes there is a lot of data accumulation and data mining and on-selling of customer details in the real world. I don’t care… and I don’t give a toss how big or successful the company who’s doing it… that’s plainly unethical behaviour that disrespects the trust relationship of their customers.

It is never ethically correct to break those rules. However you feel like justifying it in whatever business you own or manage or contribute effort. It’s their data… their information… and you need to be prepared to delete it after the designated deal / time expires. Customers need to know the fine print of that deal. And ask yourself if that fine print were visible to them would they still be providing the information.

It’s not the role of a business to keep dossiers about the general public… let alone customers.

One thing that really shits me is when I see product purchase forms online that ask irrelevant questions. What exactly do you need to know about somebody to sell them a snorkel and flippers? Age? Why? Sex? Again, why?

The correct ethical behaviour in relation to people’s data is something that will differentiate your business from the competition. It’s all about respect. Think of it this way… every time you deal with a customer, even online, you’re touching them on the shoulder with a reassuring gesture.

It’s like any relationship so don’t be a bastard in it.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 12th, 2010 at 3:58 pm and is filed under business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.