Customer Identity and Access Management 2.0: Bridging the Gap of Identity
Customer identity and access management (CIAM) is taking over the customer login experience. There’s more at stake than just registration and authentication. If all you’re getting from your customers when they log in is an email address to send newsletters and passwords, you’re missing out on a host of benefits. In this article, we explain how CIAM 2.0 can help your business face the future head-on.
CIAM simplifies every business task that deals with your customers on an individual basis, including customers that haven’t registered on your site yet. With a single data hub for all identities, CIAM seamlessly links authentication, customer management, sales, marketing, business intelligence, and services. Consequently, this means that security and data protection are streamlined for you and your customers.
Can you really afford not to use CIAM?
“If your business isn’t using CIAM, you stand every chance of lagging behind businesses that are making the most of the technology and the customer data it collects.”
Customer identity and access management (CIAM) is a software solution that combines login verification with customer data storage and monitoring in a single location that links to all of your customer-oriented systems. CIAM gives you a centralized customer database that links to all of your other apps and services.
At its simplest, a CIAM solution consists of a customer-facing side with self-service fields for password, name, username, email, and data protection consent. Authentication features such as single sign-on, social profile integration, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and choice of communication preferences serve to enhance your customer’s online experience.
Logging on via your CIAM system is usually the first interaction a customer has each time they visit your site. A smooth and secure login experience is the minimum that today’s customers expect from a modern organization. It engenders trust and encourages your customers to come back to you time and again.
From an enterprise point of view, a CIAM solution has a number of useful features that can improve security, enhance customer data collation, and provide useful data to marketing and sales departments.
The data that’s collected about each customer can be tied into your company’s customer relationship management (CRM) software to benefit your sales and marketing team. It can be used to build an understanding of the complete customer journey—device, location, types of activities, pages looked at, purchasing patterns, and more.
A basic CIAM system provides these advantages for a business and its customers.
A streamlined customer experience shows current and future customers an organization that’s up-to-date and concerned about providing the easiest login possible.
By providing an easy login experience for your applications and services, you encourage customers to try out more of your digital offerings. The end result is a customer who is more embedded in your digital ecosystem, without any extra effort on your part.
“A streamlined customer experience shows current and future customers an organization that’s up-to-date and concerned about providing the easiest login possible.”
For example, implementing single sign-on through a customer identity and access management system means a customer only needs one account for all of your digital touchpoints. Whether your customers are signing in from a browser or a mobile device, they’ll benefit from not having to sign in repeatedly to different services again and again—encouraging repeat use of your apps and services.
A standard CIAM system provides essential security features that safeguard both data and account access. For example, with risk-based authentication, each customer’s usage and login patterns are monitored, making it easy to spot unusual (and therefore potentially fraudulent) activity.
