On March 21, MailTecK & Customer Comms organized a conference in Bilbao on compliance with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which was a great success. The event aimed to inform organizations about this legislative change, as well as to help them incorporate effective communication tools to obtain explicit consent from their customers. During the presentations, several examples were given to show how to achieve such consent through different channels, with full legal validity and, above all, in record time.
May 25. That is the key date, as Javier Echebarría, CEO of MailTecK and Customer Comms, insisted. “There are only two months left for companies to obtain explicit consent from their customers, but there are still many who are unaware of this regulation. Organizations that don’t start putting in place actions to obtain their customers’ consents will have a real problem.” For example, if non-compliance is very serious, it could mean the payment of a fine of up to 20 million euros or 4% of the company’ s global turnover.
“Data is vital to our work. We are the most affected area within the company.” The first lecture was opened by Joseba A. Etxebarria, professor at the University of the Basque Country, referring to the Marketing department; after which the university professor remained calm. “We will adapt to the new legislative context.”
Iñaki Uriarte, director of the legal area of Adigital, gave a presentation on this subject. “The main difference is that liability used to be passive. It is now proactive. In addition, we have an obligation to document everything,” Uriarte emphasized. The lawyer especially emphasized the importance of not skipping the requirements for requesting consents. For example, the purposes of each consent request must be shown separately, silence in the pre-checked boxes will not be valid, or they may not be linked to the acceptance of a contract.
Multichannel communication, the best countdown solution
The last interventions were made by different members of MailTecK & Custommer Comms. Javier Echebarría presented MailConsent, an effective tool for companies that have not yet implemented a communication process for obtaining consents. “Two months is enough, or even less time, if we use this solution,” Echebarría assured.
The key to MailConsent is multichannel communication, which allows the explicit consent of each customer to be obtained through the integration of different communication channels: SMS, postal mail, e-mail, web, Call Center, etc. “Not all customers want to receive our message through the same channel. So let’s adapt the Customer Journey Map to each customer profile/archetype to achieve a higher conversion rate,” Moisés Fimat, IT consultant at MailTecK & Customer Comms, encouraged the guests.
Through electronic signatures, we can more easily obtain consent. ” Thanks to eSignLive, our advanced electronic signature solution, we can obtain the customer’s consent during an online contract closing process,” said Francisco Marina, pre-sales consultant at Customer Comms.
Once consent has been obtained, the company faces another challenge. MailConsent allows to close the circle with respect to the new regulation. The revocation can be made through the same channel through which the consent was requested, certified and stored for the next 5 years.
Another requirement of the new GDPR is to have a communication plan for affected customers in the event of a security breach, also known as “Databreach”. For this reason, MailConsent includes a service that is quickly activated in the event of a security breach of customer data. If that were to occur, all customers would receive informative notifications within the three-day period established by the new regulations.
To end the day, Javier Echebarría referred to a critical problem faced by companies. ” Security is the workhorse of many organizations today. It has been very important for us to integrate it into our solution”, “Our mission is to help companies protect the data of those people who trust them the most”, said Echebarría.
After the presentations, all attendees were able to ask questions about this new regulation and receive advice from specialized consultants. “May 25 is just around the corner. We need the consent of our customers now, because without customers there are no companies. Companies cannot wait any longer.” This was one of the quotations made by one of the attendees during the day, which best sums up the urgency and necessity of this process.