As Valentine's Day approaches, we can't help but ask...are you in love with your customers? If not, you should be. After all, they provide more value to your organization than anything else. Without them there would be no revenue, no new products or services and no company.

As innovation progresses all around us, enterprises are beginning to focus heavily on customer experience. A few less clicks here, a streamlined login interface there and features like single sign-on may seem like nice-to-have upgrades. But in today's ultra-competitive landscape, customer experience enhancing capabilities like these can be your most effective tools to increase customer engagement and grow and your market share. Many of these features are offered through customer identity and access management (CIAM) solutions. But sometimes, it's difficult to quantify how these features all work together to solve specific technical requirements and meet larger organizational goals like driving loyalty and revenue from your customers.

Valentine's Day is a holiday all about relationships, and it provides an excellent opportunity to define a few guidelines on how to build relationships with your customers. In this three-part blog series, we'll explore how CIAM capabilities enable you to build relationships with your customers in a way that isn't all that different from how we build personal relationships.

Leave a lasting impression with registration and authentication

Think back to when you last went on a first date. If you're like me, that may have been a long time ago. The most important priority on a first date is to make a great first impression. Whether or not the person sitting on the other side of that dimly lit dinner table would have been a perfect life partner for you or not, if the first impression was off, you probably never got the chance to find out. First impressions may even continue to be evaluated over several of your first few dates, phone calls and interactions.

Similarly, you have to make excellent first impressions with your customers. If you don't, even if your product or service would be perfect for the customer, you'll never get the chance to prove that value-and the customer is likely to choose another brand. First impressions are often made during registration and authentication. These are two interaction points with a brand that customers are likely to come across early and often. Brands have to get them right.

Getting registration and authentication right may require specialized CIAM capabilities that make customers' lives more convenient, like social login. Allowing customers to use Facebook or other existing credentials to sign on and register is convenient. Signing on with just a couple of clicks is often preferred over creating a new username and password or typing other information about themselves into a form. But social login isn't always preferable for financial institutions, healthcare providers or others with many high-value transactions.

It's also important to be consistent across channels during registration and authentication. That applies to both look and feel and customer sign-on credentials. The latter is achieved through single sign-on (SSO). If customers are expected to have separate sets of credentials for your mobile app, your web app and other digital properties, it can turn your customers away. Adding other capabilities like centrally managed password policies, email verification, account validation, account recovery and authentication and registration best practices can enhance their experience even further.

Some of these capabilities are specific to registration, but others like social login and account recovery can make customers' lives easier every time they interact with your brand. Getting registration and authentication right is essential to making a great first impression and starting things off on the right foot with your customers.

Next week, we'll be continuing with part two of this series. We'll talk about how to progress relationships with your customers by creating consistent, personalized experiences across all channels and applications.

To learn more about Ping's CIAM capabilities check out our webinar replay: Introducing the Most Comprehensive Customer IAM Solution.