NEW INITIATIVE EXPLORES NEED TO UNIFY AND HUMANIZE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES AROUND IDENTITY AND AUTHENTICATION IN A DIGITALLY CONNECTED ECONOMY

BPI Network, CMO Council and Daon to Drive Global Conversation on Modernizing Cross-Channel Authentication to Advance Customer Experiences, Revenue and Risk Management

(SAN JOSE - September 15, 2021)

The critical need to simplify and unify the way companies recognize and authenticate their customers and partners across all channels of engagement is the subject of a new thought leadership initiative being undertaken by the Business Performance Innovation (BPI) Network and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, in partnership with Daon, a global leader in identity assurance technology.

The new program, called Unify How You Verify, is of critical importance to businesses and brands as digital channels and interactions proliferate and customers become increasingly irritated by tedious and repetitive authentication processes. Companies must address the challenge by adopting a singular, unified and humanized identity experience that persists across all engagement channels and throughout all stages of the customer relationship lifecycle.

The Unify How You Verify program will incorporate new research into consumer attitudes toward current authentication processes, as well as conversations with senior executives and experts in customer support, ecommerce, security, IT and other relevant functional areas on what can be done to improve customer experiences and drive greater revenue, satisfaction and compliance.

For more information on the program, please visit  https://www.cmocouncil.org/thought-leadership/programs/unify-how-you-verify

“As customers rely increasingly on new digital channels of interaction and as identity verification and authentication become ubiquitous, companies and brands must respond with new unified and frictionless approaches to recognize their customers and verify identities across all touchpoints,” said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council and BPI Network. “We’re excited to team with Daon to shed new light on the challenges companies and consumers are facing in identity authentication, as well as the next-generation approaches needed to address these issues.”

Highlighting the need for change, a recent CMO Council report, entitled “How Covid Has Changed The Channels Of Engagement,” finds consumers across generations and geographies are flocking to digital self-service channels when engaging with brands, yet many get frustrated when their needs aren’t met. This frustration has led to 73% of consumers questioning why they’re doing business with the brand.

“Daon is pleased to partner with the BPI Network and CMO Council on this important thought leadership initiative as businesses of almost every stripe are grappling with the need to simplify and unify authentication across their organizations,” said George Skaff, senior vice president of marketing for Daon. “We know that biometrics can deliver convenient and secure customer experiences. Yet, humanizing and optimizing these experiences require more than a string of biometric authentication events. What’s needed is an authentication model, incorporating both biometric and non-biometric factors, that can create a singular, unified identity experience that persists across all engagement channels and throughout all stages of the customer relationship lifecycle.”

Survey insights from Experian’s annual Global Identity & Fraud Report found that since the pandemic, consumers have an increasing level of comfort and preference for physical and behavioral biometrics as methods of security. In fact, for the first time in four years, passwords did not earn a spot in the top three most secure methods for authenticating a customer’s identity.

About the BPI Network

The Business Performance Innovation (BPI) Network is a peer-driven thought leadership and professional networking organization reaching some 50,000 heads of IT transformation, change management, business re-engineering, process improvement, and strategic planning. The BPI Network brings together global executives who are champions of change through ongoing research, authoritative content and peer-to-peer conversations. For more information, visit www.bpinetwork.org

About the CMO Council
The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council’s 16,000+ members control more than $1 trillion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include over 65,000 global marketing and sales executives in over 110 countries covering multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. The Council’s strategic interest groups include the Customer Experience Board, Digital Marketing Performance Center, Brand Inspiration Center, Marketing Supply Chain Institute, GeoBranding Center, and the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE). To learn more, visit https://www.cmocouncil.org.

About Daon

Daon, www.daon.com, is an innovator in developing and deploying biometric authentication and identity assurance solutions worldwide. Daon has pioneered methods for securely and conveniently combining biometric and identity capabilities across multiple channels with large-scale deployments that span payments verification, digital banking, wealth, insurance, telcos, and securing borders and seamless travel. Daon’s IdentityX® platform provides an inclusive, trusted digital security experience, enabling the creation, authentication and recovery of a user’s identity and allowing businesses to conduct transactions with any consumer through any medium with total confidence. Get to know us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Media Contact:

Kevin Sugarman

ksugarman@cmocouncil.org

408.677.5311