Digital channels, including websites, mobile apps, and social media, have become the primary touchpoint for establishing new customer relationships. In fact, 91% of adults ages 18 to 49 have purchased products or services online using a smartphone, according to Consumer Affairs.1 It’s crucial to make a good first impression during these customer interactions if you hope to build a loyal customer base.

This shifting dynamic creates new challenges and opportunities for businesses looking to attract and retain customers. The right customer identity and access management (CIAM) strategy can help you provide a positive customer experience.

CIAM allows businesses to securely capture and manage customers’ identity and profile data and control what applications, services, and information users have access to.

The traditional approach to CIAM has tended to force the customer to provide as much information as possible at the point of registration and require them to log in with a username and password for every session. Taking this approach usually forces businesses to make user experience tradeoffs to secure how customers engage with their brand online.    

Modern approaches to CIAM enable businesses to identify who their customers are and what applications they should have access to in a way that doesn’t require compromising convenience for security. By continuously assessing the trustworthiness of each customer’s identity throughout their session, businesses can dynamically adjust the level of authentication required based on real-time risk, making security visible only when absolutely necessary. This approach allows customers to securely engage with digital properties without encountering unnecessary friction. 

CIAM can also help you streamline the end-to-end customer journey by making it easier to introduce single sign-on (SSO) for customers across all your digital properties, prompt customers for multi-factor authentication (MFA) for additional security only when necessary, and ultimately move towards secure, convenient passwordless authentication experiences.

CIAM elevates the customer experience (CX) by simultaneously reducing friction and building trust. Our 2024 Consumer Survey found that “security” (78%) and “ease of use” (76%) were the most important aspects of interacting with brands online, highlighting the importance of delivering both secure and seamless journeys.

Reduce Friction

With CIAM, you no longer need to push every customer through the same rigid authentication processes when they visit your site. 

For example, if they’re registering for the first time, you don’t need to ask them to enter all their personal data immediately, you could just ask them to provide their email address and set a password, minimizing friction until they’re ready to make a purchase. When they decide to place their first order, then you can ask them for their address, payment details, and any other necessary information. At any given point in their journey, you’re only asking them for the information you actually need, so they can focus on their shopping experience, rather than filling in forms.

Similarly, when an existing customer wants to log into your site, you can make smarter decisions about how many authentication hoops you should make them jump through. For example, if they logged in successfully an hour ago on the same PC with the same IP address, and their mouse movements and typing patterns are the same as they were before, you might decide they don’t need to enter their password again. Modern CIAM systems allow businesses to fully configure the level of security required, and to specify the signals they monitor to achieve secure authentication. 

Essentially, CIAM allows you to adjust the level of friction in your authentication experience appropriately so customers don’t feel they’re being bothered unnecessarily.

Build Trust

When we talk about adjusting friction, the key word is “appropriately.” Zero friction is rarely the right answer from a security perspective, and it’s not always what customers want, either.

For example, imagine you get a login request that seems to be coming from an existing customer, but the IP address shows that they are in a different country and using an unknown device. In that case, you might decide to send a MFA request to make sure the customer is who they say they are.

Let’s say the request does come from a genuine customer. Perhaps they’re traveling overseas, and they’ve borrowed a friend’s device because their own smartphone won’t connect to the local network. In this situation, receiving an additional security challenge doesn’t feel like unnecessary friction. It’s actually reassuring for the customer because it shows them you’re taking their account security seriously. 

Only asking for the authentication you need, and always asking for authentication when you need it can prove to customers that the friction added to the experience is necessary, and you’ll find it much easier to win their trust.

Utilizing CIAM to improve CX can unlock a variety of benefits that work together to improve business operations, reduce IT costs, and capture more revenue. Effective use of CIAM enables you to:

Boost Customer Acquisition and Retention 

Businesses can acquire more customers with CIAM and progressive profiling by streamlining the registration process, asking for information over time rather than forcing new customers to fill out a long sign-up form before checkout. Reducing friction during login when existing customers return can help ensure businesses retain customers.  

Increase Revenue

By using progressive profiling, businesses can get to know their customers better while building rich user profiles to offer tailored experiences across every digital property. Unifiying customer identity with existing Customer Relationship Management and Customer Data Platforms allows businesses to finely target cross-sell and up-sell offers. Getting more customers to complete their product selection and purchasing journeys means more successful transactions and more revenue for your business.

Strengthen Customer Loyalty

By enforcing appropriate security measures in the right situations, CIAM shows your customers you are a trustworthy steward of their accounts and personal data. This increases the likelihood of repeat business, reduces the risk of account abandonment, and acts as a disincentive for churn.

Reduce Customer Support Costs

Effective CIAM gives customers more options for authenticating with your site, which means they are less likely to fail security challenges or get locked out of their accounts. This in turn reduces the volume of calls to your customer service center, cutting operational costs and enabling agents to focus on strategic initiatives and adding value.

Mitigate Security, Privacy, and Fraud Risks

By replacing outdated perimeter-based identity checks with continuous authentication using real-time analytics, CIAM makes your customer-facing systems more secure. This not only protects your business from cyberattacks and fraud, it also protects your customers’ data and reduces the risk of financial and reputational damage from data breaches.

Eliminate unnecessary friction and build digital experiences that keep customers safe and coming back for more. It’s time to modernize your IAM solution and deliver what your customers expect.