Join me as we dive into the digital transformation with Haider Iqbal from Thales (like “Alice”). Haider will guide us through the massive shift from traditional to digital identity documents. Picture a future where everything in your wallet has moved to the digital realm—no more SIM cards or credit cards, just apps and digital IDs. Haider is at the forefront, helping us navigate this new world.
As we explore this digital landscape, we’ll tackle both the technological innovations and the cultural hurdles that businesses encounter during this significant change. We’ll also look into how different industries are building trust, and you might be surprised to see how much trust people are placing in the logistics sector.
We’ve seen brands lose customer trust over privacy issues. Interestingly, about 26% of consumers say they would sever ties with a brand over such mistakes. We’ll unpack why retreating from AI isn’t the solution, despite consumer doubts. Instead, we’ll talk about how customizing AI to fit local and cultural preferences and enhancing data privacy can make customer interactions more positive.
So, let’s have an open conversation about the future of digital identity and the crucial role trust plays in this era of digital transformation. Join us for this insightful episode.
This episode of Customerland is sponsored by
Read the full transcript below
Mike Giambattista
Haider Iqbal is Director of Product Marketing at Thales, and I’m going to ask Haider to give us a better description of what Thales does, because they operate in a space that we are all familiar with on some level, but may not be familiar with this particular function. But first of all, Haider, thanks for joining me. I really appreciate it.
Haider Iqbal
Awesome. Thanks for having me, Mike. And yeah, so Thales is I mean, the way I love to describe it to a lot of the people is in tangible terms, so the best way to look at it is what we say is, if you open up your wallet or if you open up your phone, it’s highly likely that you’re already using one of our digital identity and security products, and that could potentially be, for instance, the credit card, the chip based credit card that you guys are using credit card, the chip-based credit card that you guys are using or perhaps the SIM card or the eSIM that you might be using, or perhaps, depending on the state that you’re in in the US or in other parts of the world as well, the driver’s license that you might be using.
So we are actually in multiple domains, if you will, where we represent different digital identity products and solutions, but myself, I actually represent a specific business line within Thales, which is the identity and access management business line, which is basically helping a lot of the organizations with their digital transformation journeys in terms of implementing digital identity for their different kind of user bases.
Mike Giambattista
Would that be internal and external users, or mostly external customers?
Haider Iqbal
Both actually.
Mike Giambattista
Interesting. That’s got to be an interesting remit because you know, having spoken, you know countless people about their own digital transformation journeys. There’s the technology side of it, which can have its own significant complexities, but, uh, oftentimes the uh, the bigger hurdles tend to be cultural in nature and uh, so, if that’s the job description you have, fortunately, or unfortunately, unfortunately I think it would be really interesting to talk about how you and Thales go about implementing those kinds of transformations, because I know firsthand and lots secondhand, it’s not easy.
Haider Iqbal
Absolutely, absolutely. And I think, when you look at it from our own point of view as well, when we speak about digital transformation, it’s not just helping our customers actually transition on their journey of their digital transformation, but we ourselves, obviously, are going through a similar transformation as well. So a lot of the products that I just described in front of you are actually physical, tangible products, right? So when you speak about a SIM card, for instance, it’s that plastic-y thing that you actually put inside your phone. Or your banking card, for instance, it’s plastic as well, even though it has that chip inside. Or your passport, so on and so forth.
But increasingly, what you see is all these type of digital identity documents which were actually your gateway to the digital world. Whether that’s your mobile network operator, whether that’s your bank, whether those are your government services. A lot of these identity documents are getting dematerialized as well and becoming digital as well. So you’ve transitioned from a physical SIM card into what’s called an eSIM or an embedded SIM, which you don’t really need to physically insert inside your phone.
When you’re speaking about banks, for instance, obviously digital banking is like a norm. Now, right, you don’t need to physically go to a bank necessarily for physically doing a transaction, nor actually use your plastic card to actually do a transaction as well. So I guess when we speak about digital transformation, it’s not just helping our customers, whether those are banks, whether those are manufacturing companies or telecom companies, it’s not just helping them with their digital transformation as well. We ourselves actually understand a lot of those cultural aspects that you alluded to right, as we are transforming ourselves from being a very product-centric and an engineering-centric organization to a much more digital organization as well.
Mike Giambattista
Interesting. That’s probably a whole other conversation. That would be worthy, I’m sure, but I wanted to talk a little bit today about the Consumer topic recently, probably about a month ago and there are a handful of things, data points that were really eye-opening to us as we worked on this, and part of that was, I guess for me most significantly was the level of unawareness that so many consumers had as to their own risks. But for those people who were aware on some level how important those risks became, and looking through some of the data in this report, it looks like some of that’s supportive, but it’s expanded well beyond that. So I would like to, if it’s okay with you, kind of just go high level on a few things and then we can go nice and deep on where this data comes from and what it might mean out in the real world.
Haider Iqbal
Yeah, sure, that works.
Mike Giambattista
So I think everybody in banking, healthcare and government services will be happy to see that their verticals are the most trusted sectors when it comes to sharing personal data. Speaking with a handful of people in banking and healthcare, I don’t think there’s any surprises. Government services the handful of folks I know who work in that sector might be surprised that they’re that well-favored and trusted there, but good for them. And then media, entertainment, social media and logistics are languishing at the bottom of the industry. No real surprises on media and entertainment and social media there, but logistics was a bit of a surprise. Any insights there?
Haider Iqbal
Yeah, I think I mean even for the ones who are actually leading the pack as well. Right, I know some of these findings. They might seem really obvious even with the government side as well, even though you might have very differing points of view. I think when you look at these industries in general and you look at the ones at the top and at the bottom and how regulated the ones at the top are as opposed to the ones at the bottom, I think that’s kind of like a litmus test for me at least, to see that with that regulation, that with that regulation, I think at the end of the day the customers do have better faith in the brands in those industries.
But yeah, I mean for logistics, I think sometimes it can be a perception issue as well in terms of how a lot of the customers are interpreting logistics.
So logistics could potentially be looked at as a courier service as opposed to a logistics firm. That’s actually basically kind of like a trucking company as well, right? So I think part of that could be the reason for that as well. But again, going back to that regulation aspect, right, when you speak about logistics, even though logistic companies as a whole, when you look at them and their digital transformation journey. They do a lot in terms of internal aspects of digital transformation, like improving their operational efficiency, for instance, better collaboration with other vendors, other partners, distributors, so on and so forth partners, distributors, so on and so forth but as opposed to that, when you look at it from the consumer point of view, perhaps that has not been their forte in terms of making sure that their consumers, who might be accessing their applications or their services digitally, now actually require a better service. I think that could partly chip into why we see these statistics.
Mike Giambattista
I think that could partly chip into why we see these statistics. Sure, and I would suspect that at least a portion of it might be due to the fact that there are some of those logistics providers, in this case, who are probably doing a great job, but it’s likely the consumer just isn’t quite aware of it to that level, because a logistics company, almost by definition, is not really a consumer facing company.
Haider Iqbal
Yeah, that’s true and in fact, this is. You brought a very pertinent point right, because when we speak about digital trust or digital experiences you mentioned this in the beginning of the call whether we spoke about just the workforce side or the consumer side there’s this whole realm of what we refer to as the B2B identities as well, and this is basically your suppliers, your partners, your distributors or, when you look at insurance, for example, your brokers, your agents, so on and so forth, and this is like a totally different realm altogether.
Mike Giambattista
Let’s get back to some of the data points, because I think they’re pretty eye-opening 87% expect privacy rights from online companies they interact with, and the biggest expectation is the right to be informed that their personal data is being collected, followed closely by the right to have their personal data erased, and that’s 55% want to be informed that it’s being collected, and 53% want to be informed that they can’s being collected, and 53 want to be informed that they can have their of the right to erase their data. Um, interesting, yes, but um, I thought what was missing here was, uh and perhaps it’s just my own personal perspective but that their data is being sold, which you know it’s. You can’t do it quite so overtly as you could five or 10 years ago, but there are lots of ways of of spreading that data around the B2B ecosystem that aren’t quite a direct sale, but that, again, that might just be my perspective. But did either of those statistics surprise you one? And were there any, say, vertical variances when you were looking at different industries? How that might have looked?
Haider Iqbal
Yeah, I think first of all yes, pleasantly surprised, I should say to look at this statistic, primarily because usually when we’re speaking to some of our customers, it’s a hard sell to help them understand that you know what your customers are actually becoming a lot more aware about their privacy rights. Right, completely. You spoke about the data that companies hold on a lot of these consumers today. Yes, maybe 10 years ago it was not under that much of a spotlight, but now, when you look at it, even from a consumer point of view, and clearly, as the stats show from this survey as well consumers are a lot more aware in terms of what their rights might be. So, yeah, I mean pleasantly surprised, first of all, to look at that as well.
But having said that, I think it doesn’t necessarily mean that organizations need to stop collecting data about consumers as well. What this essentially means is that they actually need to do it a lot more responsibly, and not just because the regulation is demanding it. So, you know, you have regulations popping up over. Here in the US, for instance, I think there’s probably more than 30 different regulations in different states already. Right, that’s like becoming a whole mesh, if you will, but then I think a lot of the organizations. They need to look at it from a more responsible angle, not just from a compliance angle, completely agree.
Something that they actually owe to their consumers anyway.
Mike Giambattista
Yeah, there are certainly those companies that have kind of taken that proactive I would just call it mature stance on their consumer data. But you know again, just because we see this from where we sit in our corner of the universe, there are still a lot of companies out there who are obeying the regulations just because they’re regulated.
Haider Iqbal
Yeah, and I think it goes back to the question, the second part of your question as well if we see any nuances in the data in different verticals as well, right, and I think that’s where you see that split all over again as well, where the more regulated industries and they’re regulated for a reason, right, because they’re holding the more sensitive data, or the PII, if you will, for a lot of their consumers as well. So it actually makes sense that way as well that consumers would actually expect those kind of industries or those kind of brands to be a lot more responsible with their data, of course.
Mike Giambattista
This is one. This next data point is one that I think we should just spend the rest of the of the conversation on, because, uh, it’s wild to me over a quarter 26% of consumers have abandoned a brand in the past 12 months due to privacy concerns. And, if I may, a couple of things I want to pull out there. Um, one is that, uh, if I, and all of the apps on my phone and my computer and whatever else in my digital life, if I suspect some sort of data immaturity, call it insensitivity, I’m out, I’ll delete them so fast and I’ll tell everybody who listens to me both of them. It’s like you really need to to to deal with this.
Um, that’s just me. I. I tend to respond pretty quickly to those kinds of things, um, but your average consumer probably doesn’t see things the way I do just because of what I do for a living. Um, nonetheless, 26% of consumers have this is a have not would have abandoned a brand in the past 12 months due to privacy concerns build customer retention, and I’m thinking of CX, broader customer experience and employee experience, and even customer loyalty disciplines. This statistic should be a really scary one to me.
Haider Iqbal
Absolutely. And I think when you look at this number, when you look at 26%, don’t forget that if these folks are actually leaving your brand, they’re probably not leaving alone, right? They have the X’s or the Facebook’s and all the other social media to go and create hype about it as well, saying, you know what? I’m not using this brand anymore. And think about the multiplier effect that something like that has, Right, and again, it’s kind of sad in some ways, but then, at the same time, it’s one of those told you so moments. Right, because with cybersecurity companies like ours, unfortunately, we have to resort to fear-mongering tactics in terms of trying to educate enterprises, large organizations, to actually be, you know, be careful about the privacy or the security of their consumers or their users’ data. Right, but these kind of stats are really telling that way.
So now what we’re saying is and you know we started this conversation with a cultural shift as well, I think, from a privacy point of view as well, especially for those CX people they need to understand that they need to bake in privacy into their products, right?
So something that we like to refer to as privacy by design. I know it sounds like a really heavy term, but essentially, what we’re saying is introduce those checkpoints in that user journey where you’re ensuring that A you know you have taken consent from the consumer to begin with, but then also, at the same time, making your consumers aware as well in terms of their rights at different checkpoints as well in terms of their rights at different checkpoints as well. That option of going and turning off a certain notification should not be hidden so deep inside your menu, somewhere where your consumer can’t even go and access it. They should be able to go and update their settings or privacy settings very easily. And not only is that going to help some of these companies in ensuring that they are compliant to a lot of those regulations, but then, at the same time, they are gaining a trust of their users as part of that process as well. So I think that’s really important.
Mike Giambattista
Yeah, and I love that the phrase you use. It should really be baked in to all of their processes. Should it even be something that you call out, maybe, but I think that kind of protection is an expectation, as the data clearly shows, so why not meet it? We would be remiss if we didn’t talk about AI somehow in this conversation. However, your findings here were surprising to me anyway. That people have these definite feelings about what AI can mean and can do, and I’ll just call out a few of them. Maybe we can talk about it for a few minutes.
57% are nervous that brands use of generative AI will put their personal data at risk. Makes total sense, but well, we’ll. I’ll editorialize in a moment here. 43% said they wouldn’t trust any interactions powered by generative AI. That’s actually a really big deal, and I think the folks who are listening who operate in the CX space need to take note of that, because so much of CX right now is being kind of migrated into an AI powered sphere, and 47% don’t trust companies that use generative AI responsibly, like even if it’s responsible, they don’t trust it. So is that a hype thing? Is that you know? There really is something to fear here? What’s your take?
Haider Iqbal
I think I want to be fair to the survey as well and the whole survey process. When we were coming up with this question as well, we already had this in the back of our minds that, okay, we are actually asking this question off of consumers who may not even know what generative AI actually is. Yes, they’ve heard about it, they know the hype, but they don’t really know what it is at the back and they don’t know how it can potentially benefit them as well. So I’m going to put that caveat out there. However, we still put that question in there because perceptions do matter, oh sure, and this survey is basically all about perceptions as well, when you look at it. So I know a lot of the companies. They’re joining the bandwagon and they want to speak a lot more about how they’re using generative AI in their digital services, not knowing that maybe it’s actually inversely affecting them, not even knowing about this perception, right? So I don’t think, at the end of the day, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the CX executives, for instance, or the IT teams, for instance, they should stop looking at generative AI. No, I don’t think that’s how we should be interpreting this AI. No, I don’t think that’s how we should be interpreting this.
I think it’s good to know what the audiences are perceiving in terms of how that technology is being used. And then, obviously, tailoring your user experiences and making sure how you’re communicating about a certain technology or the use of data of those users, at the end of the day, in a more responsible fashion. And I go back to the same point, I think don’t underestimate the power of communicating with your customers in terms of how you are taking care of their data as well. So, again, baking that privacy aspect has multiple notions to it as well. Making sure that you’re communicating how you’re preserving the privacy of those consumers I think it plays to that trust equation. Making sure that you’re communicating how you’re preserving the privacy of those consumers, I think it plays to that trust equation, as I would call it, between those brands and those consumers.
Mike Giambattista
Makes perfect sense. You know as well. You know what public perception and even call it the business public perception of AI is transforming weekly. You know, I can remember not that long ago, literally say, call it two months ago, when the sky was falling, ai was going to change and destroy the world. And you know, in short order, take all our jobs. And yet, at least two months later we’re still here. But our perceptions and fears are shifting rapidly on this and even within the business world, I think people are coming to the realization that, responsibly deployed, there are some fantastic efficiencies that can be had through generative AI or AI in general. And yet I think the public is left with, you know, the non-business public, whoever they are, is left to interpret whatever the news cycle is delivering to them, and a lot of times that’s angst and hype, unfortunately, yeah that’s angst and hype, unfortunately?
Haider Iqbal
Yeah, and I think so. You know, when we did the survey, obviously we did it across 12 different countries and, interestingly, I’ll give you one more data point as well I think maybe around if I remember correctly around 37% of the respondents in Germany, they actually responded back that they actually see chatbots as kind of like a nuisance. Really, we spoke about generative AI and obviously chatbots is one area where generative AI has a lot of utility. That’s the interesting thing. So you have these nuances between different countries, for instance, between different industries, and, I would say, even within an industry, between different brands.
There are nuances that you need to be aware of, sure, and that’s why I think, going back to doing a full circle, right On one side, we’re speaking about privacy. You still need data from the consumers to actually understand them a bit better. You need data even to understand how they perceive your use of technology as well. At the end of the day, but I think it’s really important for CX managers to actually know this particular aspect, that they need to actually have that feedback loop in their processes and their products.
Mike Giambattista
Yeah, great point, Great point. Anecdotally, I think that’s smart to say that there are geographic differences, there are cultural differences, there are, I’m sure, demographic differences in the way chatbots are used and perceived. I know I had an interaction recently with a fairly sophisticated entity here in the United States and their chatbot popped up right away to answer a question as soon as it perceived I had one which I thought well, that’s pretty neat and proactive. However, when I engaged with the chatbot, the chatbot only had one thing it wanted. It wanted to funnel me down this pipeline and deliver me into the lead flow, and there was nothing I could do about it. It had nothing to do with my inquiry or my problem.
Haider Iqbal
That’s just where this chatbot wanted to take me, and it a great example of um a sophisticated company deploying a sophisticated technology without really looking at that feedback loop you just mentioned yeah, and, and that’s why, by the way, uh, you know, we started uh part of this conversation speaking about identity as well, and this is why identity becomes really, really, really core to the whole CX part. Right, if you know, mike is using multiple insurance brands of the same group. For instance, maybe you’re using the car insurance, the home insurance and some other health insurance from the same organization, right? Do they have a singular view of Mike as a consumer? Right, because your preferences, yes, again, there might be nuances between those as well, but then they might actually cascade from one brand to the other as well, and that’s why identity becomes so pivotal in building those personalized user experiences which can wow or which can delight your consumers as well, because if you actually center things around the identity of a user A, you can understand them a lot better as well, and then you can make sure that you have a more persistent user experience if you have multiple brands across your group or across your organization as well.
So, yeah, I mean, I think I can’t underestimate the importance of identity, uh, across across your group or across your organization as well. Um, so, yeah, I mean, I think, um, you know, I can’t underestimate the importance of identity and I think a lot of the banks, a lot of the telcos, a lot of the retail companies they have started realizing this, which is why you know they’re trying to make sure that whenever they’re building that cx, there on top of it is always this identity layer that goes with it, that goes hand in hand with it, just to make sure that they have a very good personalized view for each and every consumer out there.
Mike Giambattista
It’s too bad that this conversation isn’t being published live, but we’re not doing that for obvious reasons. But I would love to do an informal survey of how many people listening have had an experience with a company that has both offline and online components where the company actually had that 360 degree view of who you were within their system, within their ecosystem, their world. And you know, I think in the online world it’s probably more easier to manage that, but online slash offline becomes very difficult and, as you mentioned that, I’m trying to think of the number of companies that I’ve interacted with, with both online and offline presences, that have, my view, somewhat coordinated, and there aren’t very many of them at all. It’s still something of a challenge for so many companies.
Haider Iqbal
Yeah, absolutely. I think and again, it’s not. You know, what I’m about to say is not rigged in any way as well. It sort of seems to coincide with our study as well, which is when you look at banks, for instance, I think they have done a reasonably good job of building what you would call that omni-channel user experience for their consumers, and identity has actually been pivotal to that as well. Whether you’re gaining access to your financial services from a mobile app, from the web, from maybe the ATM machine or physically at the branch, this is essentially what that omni-channel experience is at the end of the day, and this is why, again, identity becomes pivotal, because as you’re actually entering that bank, for instance, and you’re identifying yourself, maybe by dipping in your card or tapping your phone somewhere, it’s the same identity, at the end of the day, that you’re actually leveraging when you’re sitting at home and doing a mobile banking transaction as well. So, yeah, I mean, I think, lots of learnings.
I think, going back to the initial part of the survey as well, I’m sorry, just going to make this one last point over here is you see, you saw that discrepancy between the banks and the logistics companies right Now. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the logistics companies or the media companies have to mimic. You know, point by point, what a bank might be implementing inside the organizations, but there are definitely learnings out there. So one surprising statistic that I saw was response was multi-factor authentication. Like 81% of the respondents said that they want the brand to actually offer multi-factor authentication. And here we’ve been spending I don’t know years, decades trying to convince our customers to actually deploy multi-factor authentication.
I wish we’d actually done a survey like this. I don’t know, 10 years ago maybe.
Mike Giambattista
Right, right. Well, maybe your efforts have finally paid off, because the world seems to have turned in your favor here.
Haider Iqbal
Yeah, so yeah, I think absolutely crucial to look at these points as well, because our consumers, our users, are becoming a lot more literate as well. They’re becoming a lot more tech savvy as well. They know about their privacy rights. They know the security mechanisms that are out there that help in preventing the breaches of their data Not necessarily too concerned about a company having a breach, but certainly their own data right. So, yeah, I think it’s an important part of the whole trust equation that brands need to be aware of.
