GDPR and the New Customer Service Balancing Act

Ask any customer service leader and they will tell you GDPR is coming.

Cue the horror movie music.

The General Data Protection Regulation, a European privacy and data protection measure, will go into effect in May, and companies around the world are scrambling to prepare for it. Adopted to strengthen data protection for individuals within countries in the European Union, GDPR is designed to give people more control over their personal data, protect data from loss, and unify regulatory privacy and data requirements across Europe. And it doesn't just affect EU companies. Anyone with a customer, employee, vendor, or partner in the EU is liable.

For customer service in particular, the regulation seems ominous. GDPR requires companies to get explicit consent for data collection. All identifiable personal information, regardless of where it is used, must be protected, and proof of protection must be verified. The regulation goes so far as to state that the protection of

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Eric V. Holtzclaw is chief strategist at PossibleNOW and the author of Laddering: Unlocking the Potential of Consumer Behavior.