An effective data breach response plan isn’t just about protecting your business from lawsuits or regulatory penalties; it also impacts customer experience, and customer experience is directly tied to revenue.
That’s one of the key premises underlying the newly released Forrester Wave report on Customer Data Breach Notification and Response Services. In preparation for the report, Forrester examined companies in cable, airline, investment, retail and health insurance and found that in most of those industries, better customer experiences correlated with higher-revenue growth. The report examines how a company’s poor data breach response can affect its growth.
“Breaches of customer data have strained relationships between businesses and their customers,” study authors wrote. “Botched customer-facing response to a breach fails to inspire confidence and hinders recovery. Security and risk (S&R) pros must consider aspects of customer-facing breach response and communications as a part of incident response planning and identify who to call for help in the event of a customer data breach.”
Data breach notification and response services can help companies improve their handling of a breach response, the study says, and it evaluates six leading service providers, including Experian Data Breach Resolution. Based on their research, the authors cited three core capabilities that every breach services provider should have, including:
- The ability to perform timely, relevant notification to consumers, legislators, regulators and the media. Services providers should be able to deliver breach notifications quickly, coordinate communication responses between mailing and call centers, advise companies on what notifications should say and the appropriate tone to strike, and even help translate notification letters into other languages.
- Trained call center representatives who can answer consumer questions and concerns around the clock.
- The ability to offer credit and identity-theft monitoring and protection, including fraud and ID-theft resolution.
Additionally, the report examined and commented on other factors that companies should consider when selecting a data breach response provider, such as experience handling sizeable breaches, an extensive portfolio of services, and length of time in business.
Among the vendors that Forrester evaluated using these criteria, Experian was found to “lead the pack … (with) a strong current offering, a strong strategy that will clearly address current and future market needs, and experience successfully supporting enterprises with megasize customer data breaches.” Experian has handled the largest breach (110 million) among the reviewed providers.
When a data breach happens to your company, will you fumble the response and alienate customers? Or will you work with a leading data breach response provider to put into action an effective response that could improve customer experience and preserve business?