Approximately 80% of the consumers surveyed by Parks Associates were concerned about the security of their data — and for good reason! Nearly 6 billion accounts were compromised by some sort of data breach in 2021, and those stats are growing.

These customer data security issues might not seem connected to support, but they impact the level of service you can provide — especially with screen sharing. Customers might feel hesitant about using co-browsing with so many news stories about data breaches. They don’t want their data to be exposed to prying eyes via computer notifications or on open tabs. There’s quite a bit of sensitive data, which are vulnerabilities that can compromise customer privacy.

Cohere gives customers peace of mind around co-browsing by blocking out sensitive customer information, restricting agent viewing permissions, and limiting when agents can access customer information.

Why customer data security matters

It’s your job, as a company, to keep a data breach from happening. A Centrify study shows 73% of consumers, 46% of CMOs, and 44% of IT practitioners all agree that businesses have an obligation to limit access to consumers’ data.

If your customer data security is compromised on your watch, you’ll damage your company’s reputation and likely lose a number of customers. Prioritize data security to keep your customers and your business in the clear.

Data breaches are costly

Breach expenses are no walk in the park. The average cost of a data breach in the US is $4.24 million — including the expenses of informing your customers about the breach, the resources it takes to resolve the issue, and fines. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) states companies who fail to protect customer data will be fined up to 20 million euros or 4% of their turnover in the prior fiscal year (whichever is higher)! Ouch!

Data breach costs are the highest for companies in the healthcare industry — with the average cost increasing by 29.5% in one year, from $7.13 million in 2020 to $9.23 million in 2021.

On top of these costs, brands face lost customer revenue as people lose trust in their company.

Data breaches destroy customer trust

Data breaches are just as detrimental to brands’ images as it is to their pocketbooks.

Consider one of the most famous data breaches — the Yahoohack between the years 2013 and 2016. Over 3 billion affected accounts resulted in a decrease in the financial value of the company. Poor customer data security forced customers to see Yahoo as an untrustworthy brand. After the breach, Yahoo lost approximately 30% of its customers.

Customers and businesses across the board agree that data breaches can be detrimental to a brand’s value. Of the consumers surveyed by Varonis, 80% stated they would stop using a brand after their information was compromised in a data breach. And 61% of CMOs believe that the biggest financial loss in a breach is the loss in brand value.

According to Gartner, 83% of consumers refuse to do business with companies they do not trust, so you don’t want to end up like Yahoo. Be more transparent about how you collect and use customer data and what steps you’re taking to protect users’ privacy.

How Cohere helps strengthen your customer data security

Cohere instills trust by putting your customers in control. Cohere also automatically filters sensitive information to protect your customers.

Filters out sensitive information

Cohere automatically hides passwords, social security numbers, and credit card numbers from agents during screen shares with blocked boxes, like the ones below.

Your company can block any other elements it deems as “sensitive” with a single attribute. If there is additional information agents find that needs to be blocked out, like a password, phone number, or address, they add the information to a list in their program. Setting up this list in Cohere is fast, and your agents don’t need coding experience to do so.

Allows customers to set viewing permissions

On Cohere’s platform, customers decide agents’ level of access to their information when co-browsing.

For example, a customer has to grant access to an agent in order to allow them to see their screen, assist them through the page, or make alterations to a form the customer is working on. Customers always have the ability to decline agent access to their sessions.

Cohere only allows your agents to share the webpage, so they never see the customer’s other open tabs, their notifications, or anything on their desktop, like what’s typically seen in a Zoom call.

Customers can also revoke access at any point in the co-browsing session. All your customers have to do is end a session, and your agents will no longer be able to see your customer’s screen or have access to the customer account information.

Prevents agents from accessing data post-session

Some software tools allow agents to access customer information, even after their sessions with users end. Agents have 24/7 access to customer accounts and networks — whether they’re in an interaction with a customer or not.

In Cohere, agents can only access customer data during the support call. Your agents can access session recordings after calls, but only information that was available during the call and was pre-approved is shown to them.

With Cohere, your customer’s data is in safe hands

Your customers want you to keep their information secure, but your company only has so much time and manpower. If you have to wait on your IT department to build a security solution from scratch, you’ll leave customers vulnerable — and may very well lose their business.

Cohere is here to help. The goal of our platform is to help people, like your customers, who may not know how to keep their data safe when they’re online. We make that process easy, so your customers feel comfortable working with your brand.

Sign up for Cohere for free to start offering a secure co-browsing experience right away.