Webinar Replay
Customer Identity in the Digital-First World
Hello everyone, and thank you so much for taking the time to join our webinar today, Customer Identity in the Digital First World.
My name is Joe Malefont.
I lead our customer identity solutions.
Marketing team here at Ping Identity, and I'm joined by Liz Miller from Constellation Research.
So glad I'm here today.
Thanks so much.
We're gonna have an awesome conversation.
I'm looking forward to it.
Thanks, Liz.
And let's take a quick second to lay some Context and start with something really foundational.
What is customer identity, and how is enterprise buyers told why identity Matters?
Gosh, that seems like a really easy question.
Doesn't it?
And it's super complex.
It's super complex to answer these days.
So let's kind of start off by acknowledging a big gorilla in the room, which is, depending on who is talking to you about identity.
And who you are within the organization, you might be hearing something a little bit different about what customer identity is, or what identity is and why it matters to your Organization.
So, kind of, let's start with, if you are in a More IT centric, maybe a more security-centric environment, you’re likely hearing about Identity as being that thing, that, that whether it's a wallet, Whether it's an identifier, whether, what, no Matter what that is, that allows you to understand and verify who that individual is.
Who is either trying to gain access to your systems, uh, is engaging with you across your systems.
But if you're in marketing, if you're in a customer experience-centric organization, You're likely hearing about identity as being more focused on and the data and information that you can wrap around a profile to actually gain more understanding of who that person Is that you're engaging with, uh, so that you can maybe pummel them with more emails, Right?
So, it starts to give you a little more Sense of what that personalization is.
Why this gets so messy and why it's really important for people to understand that these Two schools of conversation are happening: because systems are very different, And they're doing very different things with that identity and with that kind of identifier That has been created.
One is being created to perhaps authenticate or authorize access into a system.
The other is being used for outbound experiences that really start to personalize and really focus those experiences, so that you know all these different things about the Person that you are communicating with.
That gets really confusing when we're trying to buy systems, But it gets really, really dangerous when we're starting to talk about vulnerabilities, When we're starting to talk about security, but when we're also starting to talk about the Security of the relationships we're trying to build with our customers and our employees.
So, it's really important to start to narrow in and understand that identity means different Things to different people, but fundamentally, for our organizations, Identity should mean a person.
And ultimately, when we think of identity, there, there're two sides to it, Right?
Like, there's the one side which is who am I?
And then the other side of it becomes the customer identity, Which is, Who are you, right?
So, when we have customers coming in to access Services that we offer, that's the Customer Identity side and that's where we're gonna Focus in a lot more today, right, Liz?
Absolutely.
And I think that you said exactly the, The point here is: Which perspective are we coming from of the who that we're trying to Learn more about?
And increasingly, as we start to see things, Maybe even go into the Metaverse, who knows, talk about buzzwords, Um, as we start to see more of those M2M interactions, It might even be, what are you, right?
So, understanding all of the parties involved are core and fundamental, not just to Identity strategies and technologies, But quite frankly, to our business.
We need to understand.
Who, what, and how, and where all of these entities are looking to move and go, So that we have control both on opening up that access and making sure experiences flow and are Amazing for our customers and for our employees and for our organization, But also that those experiences don't actually open up unintended vulnerabilities.
Yeah.
So from the Ping standpoint, we look at Customer identity really quite simply from the customer's perspective because that's who it is.
Customer identity really spans a series of actions someone takes online from the time that They first visit any of your digital properties as an unknown user to creating an account to Becoming a known user and ultimately a valued customer.
It's really taking what happens in the physical world, but now doing it in a digital world.
And we're gonna come back to that a little bit later.
For really any organization though, we're breaking customer identity down in five stages From the time they land on the site to the time they actually become that loyal advocate, It's, you want to detect who they are, what they're doing, Verify that they're actually a person, build out that profile of who they are, What they like, what they've provided consent for, authenticate that user, and then authorize them into various services and places that they're allowed to go.
Uh, it's almost equating it to when you go to check into a hotel, Right?
You, you present your ID and credit card.
And you're given a card in return that authorizes you where you're allowed to go.
They've now seen who you are through the front door; they verified you with your driver's License, they look up your profile, perhaps You're the first time checking into that hotel, Maybe not.
They've authenticated that credit card with the Driver's license, now you're paying for it, and you're being given a key in return, Which is your authorization to go into your hotel room.
So it, it's not very different when we go online, but it is a little bit different.
Where we have actually taken steps to see things differently from others is that customer Identity starts even before a session begins online.
When someone lands on your site and they're completely unknown, That's where we start detecting signs of fraud, right?
Whether it's account takeover, new account creation fraud, Um, that really fraudulent view becomes an important initial components before Somebody has actually revealed themselves.
So exactly the same thing.
I want to make sure that we're building trust with our customers and that organizations are able to build trust with their customers and Ensure that they're reducing fraudulent transactions, and that's why in their systems, Right?
Like, we need to be able to know.
That, hey, we put an autopay, you know, we put a self-service payment or a Mobile check-in app Out there.
We want to know that the systems and the Experiences that we put out there, that we invested, are not accidentally doing harm or Accidentally leading to negative experiences.
And I think something that I have noticed that I really appreciate.
In all of our conversations, it is that opportunity to detect fraud is from moment one, Even before you know who that customer is, but it doesn't add friction to the experience.
And I think that also has to be part of this.
New conversation and this new strategy around Identity.
It's not about throwing up walls, Adding more friction, making it impossible For a person to actually check into that hotel Room, right?
It's really about those incremental steps and Having those systems and solutions on the back end that aren't just looking at identity as a Single facet.
Now, this is clearly an evolution of the Definition of identity, right?
So, what has really changed recently for Customer identity?
You know, most recently, if we wanted to kind of look into the recent past, We can all agree that the global pandemic.
Was this seismic shift, not just in where people could and chose, And, you know, chose to engage, where they worked, where they lived.
Everything about where people existed changed.
But it also fundamentally changed what devices we're trying to get onto networks, What devices were individuals using to log into things.
They weren't using their Computers anymore.
They were on their MobileIron device, they were on their tablet, They were sitting, you know, on their couch using their home router.
The number of devices out there that look to become part of this digital ecosystem and Footprint fundamentally changed.
And while we've seen those moments of fluctuation in the past, The big difference now is it's not going back.
Now, people, employees, whether you're in your work life or you're in your consumer life, You now have examples of these amazing frictionless digital experiences that can be had across any number of digital planes.
And so, you're gonna want that everywhere, right?
You're gonna want it to be so easy to log into an account, Like, oh, I had this great experience.
I didn't even need my password.
They just texted me this number, and it was so cool.
You might not know how to define that as a passwordless experience.
You know, that you, you know, utilize your identity.
Consumers and our employees don't know how to define it.
They just know they want it because they got from point A, From their point A to their point B in the device and the location that they chose with Zero friction.
In fact, the systems that they encountered Helped them get to where they wanted to be faster.
And so, they might not know how to define it, but that's the new expectation.
And I think that is why identity has changed so much, because identity is now fundamental Only how our network systems run, how our IT systems run, How our security systems run, identity is core and fundamental to how personalization works.
How Employee Experience works, how people engage and get what they need to get done in Their daily lives, done, whether it's at work or whether it's in their personal lives.
And that's not gonna change.
It's just gonna get more complex.
And you made an interesting point in there is that people just want a seamless experience.
Right?
But we've had security as an issue before.
I, I had a former colleague who used to say, hackers don't break in anymore, They log in, and this was pre-pandemic, we're talking five years ago, In 2017, he was saying this.
It's only been exacerbated by that shift to everything being digital-first in such a short Period of time.
So do they just log in, then wait.
Yes, that's the terrifying thing, right?
They wait, and they wait for an opportunity.
And how do you know if that's the person?
Logging in?
They, they log in every day.
How do you change that?
And now, with everything digital, You talked about, you know, Marketing groups, IT groups, Everyone needing to understand this profile.
And the complexity of where we're at today, What is the risk of really reverting back to a Much more focused, simple definition of Identity?
Why can't everyone just agree on the same definition?
Why is it so siloed?
That's a great question.
Um, I think because when we try to Homogenize, or, you know, in, in order to get to a common definition, There, there needs to be a little bit of simplification.
And there's this struggle, right?
Because, um, simple doesn't mean simplistic.
And I think that's especially true when it comes to identity.
We, we don't need to look for a simplistic definition.
We might need to look for a simple articulation, so that everyone understands what we're talking About.
But the reality is, because identity is applied and utilized in such different ways.
Slight modifications on a theme, let's call it, across these different organizations.
All of these organizations are having to put their own spin, Their own color on, their own prioritization on Where their impact begins to show Identity, where their pull from identity comes from.
So, when we start to wonder, I mean, I often hear people when they ask this type of Question, they're like, well, you know, what's really, what's, What's the risk?
What's it really gonna do if we just come to a Simple definition, and we all just say, OK, Identity is the way we verify people's access.
Right?
Experience then is at risk, right?
Your customer experience, your employee experience, that fundamentally gets put onto The risk block, because if you make it so hard to gain access to do business, To, to gain, you know, to gain access to your account, to um gain access to your software Solution, like, say you're a customer service agent and you're now working from home.
If it takes me my whole day to figure out how to walk into the system, My employees' experience is at risk.
They're not gonna be happy about not being successful.
They want to be able to use the tools that we're providing them.
But now, our customer experience is at risk.
How do you provide them with information that you need if you don't know who they are?
If my Customer Service Rep is sitting there and I don't give them information about Joe, Because I'm like, I don't know, you can't, you don't, you don't get to see that data, All of a sudden, I'm chipping away at what is foundational to my business.
Because I needed to simplify a definition for one foundational core of my business.
So, I, I think that when we, when we start to think about identity, We really need to start to think about kind of identity through the lens of our primary Stakeholders in the service of our people.
And whether that, whether the people is our employee, or people, or our customers, We really have to remember that all of this identity is in the service of those, Those two core constituencies, because that's what drives our profitable growth.
That's what drives our experience and our engagement in our business.
So, I think it's, it's about kind of where we put that perspective.
So, based on all that, you know, when we think of an exceptional customer experience, 'Cause we, I, I've heard you say, you know, the customer experience, The user experience a few times now, is there really an anatomy or structure that people can Plan for to really lead them into success?
That's great.
Um, yes, there is, and it starts fundamentally With you.
With you, the person, right?
Literally, with you.
Um, you know, every great customer experience starts with a strategy that fundamentally Understands that there is a person behind the impact of every action, Every system, every reaction that we have in place.
So, having the experience be built around the employee, the customer.
Now, let's build out from there.
Right?
So if I'm going to build out my experience for Sales, and I know that Joe is my salesman, right, he's my guy.
I need to build out a system so Joe is the most successful.
All of a sudden, that experience starts to build around you and how you work, And how, what shortcuts do you usually take, you know, Do, what, what are those keystrokes?
How quickly are you typing?
What are you doing?
You can start to build out that profile of the Individual, so that you can then start to marry that against the things that are important for The business.
And whether that's something that's Important for the business and, hey, I gotta make sure that Joe doesn't get access to the Sensitive information about our customer, oh, HIPAA, right?
You can start to make that determination.
I need to make sure that, you know, maybe Joe has access to all these different tools because He's out in the field.
He's gonna be Mobile.
I need to make sure that he can access this from wherever he is today.
I need to be able to do that, or I need to be able to let Joe send anything he needs to that Customer cause he's about to close a huge deal, right?
So you now then start to build together, here's Joe, My, my sales guy, but here's Liz, my customer.
So how do I need Liz to accept all the information from Joe?
So again, when you start with the individual, as opposed to starting with an identity, Like the block, you start with the person.
You start to see the needs and the flows, and the workflows and the data and the systems that You need to move from there.
I mean, and, and you guys do this all the time, right?
I mean, you, you see both sides of that coin.
So, have you seen examples of where maybe your Customers have really taken that step back and started to say, Like, listen, actually, these two experiences intertwine, and I really need to start looking At these differently.
Yeah, I, I think some of the places we see it The most are in retail, right, where I use two different examples.
So retail, buy online, pick up in store, uh, That did not exist Pre-COVID, right?
This is a hybrid world where you, You have a digital experience that you're completing in the real world or Airlines and how we travel have evolved, and they're trying to be customer-centric, That I give you your boarding pass, I'm trying to reduce all of the points of friction that You might have, so you can have a much more seamless travel experience.
Those are points where Organizations in these Industries have used the data along the Way to say, how do we reduce this time?
How do we improve.
People moving through these sequences.
So that data is a really important way to feed in, and thankfully what they can do with a lot Of that data is A/B test to say, does this experience work better?
Does this experience work better?
And it doesn't take a long time, you know, thankfully, uh, Using things like orchestration, we're able to have organizations A/B test very quickly.
Does this login flow work?
Work better, or this login flow work better?
Does this password reset work better or this one?
What should we take out?
Um, do we see better conversion with password list?
Do we see reduced card abandonment?
So, tools like, you know, PingOne DaVinci, for example, provide the orchestration needed to do That ABAC testing, but just as important, it has to be able to snap in with everything else.
So hence a bunch of other Box integrations, um.
That's how we make that customer experience, the most seamless it can possibly be.
Yeah, yeah, and I love what you said, and I find this to be true.
Almost across every single great experience you can think of, Whether it's a small experience, or whether it's like a big giant, Like, this is a multi-stage orchestration experience, is if you start with the individual And you understand that person.
And then you can track those journeys that you can even predict, or you know that they will Take.
And end that with the data, so that the data is Leading you to all the places where that person can go, All those experiences that they can have, but that you are continuously verifying, Checking, experimenting, having the ability and the capacity to experiment and to test, Right?
But you are validating, and you are, You know, making that decision, uh, between, because, you know, Authentication and authorization, two very different things.
But are you making sure that you have the capacity to do both along the way, No matter where an individual chooses to take their journey.
Can you flex?
You know, do you have flexible systems that allow you to do that?
So, I think that when we start with the person, And then we end with the data, As opposed to, let me see what data I have.
Now, I'm going to create experiences and journeys, and then I'm gonna try to force my People to go down that path that only fits to what my data can do.
That's when you most often see experiences go horribly wrong.
Now, we've talked about the experience, talked about how to improve it, Especially with the data, who's actually involved in a customer experience strategy and Who's involved with the development of that customer identity strategy.
You know, it, in one place it could be and the other could be really IT.
So who's involved in all of this?
Wow, it's, it's, it's almost like who is involved and who should be involved.
I feel like you and I should probably probably create some kind of chart on the Fly right now, like, this should be the team, but this is the team, Right?
So, I think that right now, Oftentimes, experience is unfortunately handled in two camps and two silos.
And that has to stop, right?
So, you have your IT team, Let's say, you know, the IT faction looking at experience, And they are largely looking at establishing and setting up those networks and those systems.
So the technology operates the way it is expected and intended, Right?
And so, when, when we start to look at identity Through that lens, you start to see the criticality of things like access, You know, controls, etc.
But when it also comes to experience, you then have this other camp that's like the marketing.
I, I, I lovingly refer to them as the Three Horsewomen of the Apocalypse, Right?
It's these three departments that tend to be at The front line of CX delivery, which tends to be marketing, Service, and sales.
So, you definitely see that group coming.
Together.
In a perfect world, and where I think Experience-led organizations need to be pressing forward.
This needs to be a connected dynamic, and this team really needs to include, Yes, that frontline, Sales, Service, and Marketing.
They are bringing that voice of not just the customer, but of the teams executing these Types of solutions.
So, they are that voice, they are that need, they know what that strategy and that cadence.
Needs to be, but they have to be working in lockstep with IT.
And security.
So, in a lot of organizations, And for those of you listening, I can feel your eye rolls and groans through the screen.
When I say, sometimes IT and security do not work together.
Sometimes there is friction, sometimes there is a disconnect between those two teams.
The team that's just trying to keep the network up and running, And then the land of no security that says, you can't have that.
I'm sorry, you can't do that right now.
But we're seeing this Age of Trust and Brand Security come to light, Where everyone in this ecosystem really needs to be core to the strategy of how we think About, develop, whether it's individual executions of experience, or the totality of the systems that deliver experience.
Because you need to have things like fraud detection, right?
You and I have been talking about fraud detection, but that's not a comfortable Conversation.
That said, marketing or service or sales necessarily gets to be part of.
IT might decide it, security might decide it, You might get legal involved for that.
Conversation.
But for the most part, it's not considered an Experienced conversation, but it has to be.
It's core to that bi-directional.
Trust that we were talking about, of, I trust that I gave you this, I trust that you're you.
That's a bi-directional relationship.
And yes, it's based on risk or fraud, but it's still a relationship, Right?
So, we need to have all of these players really Start to have holistic intentional strategic conversations where IT security, Marketing, customer service, and sales start to work as that lockstep team.
You might start calling them digital, you know, You might start seeing revenue officers kind of Come in and play in that group.
But it really is, I mean, if CX is an enterprise-wide team sport, It has to include IT and security fundamentally.
And interestingly, fraud is frequently not in the IT group, Right?
It's in the Governance, Risk, and Compliance Group.
Sometimes it will be under IT, but that's Mostly them running the tool or implementation, right?
Yeah, we, uh, we actually conducted a study last year around brand loyalty.
Interesting, we found that 63% of consumers are likely to.
Even online service for a competitor who makes it significantly easier to authenticate Identity.
So in the context of fraud, if you treat all of Your customers with the same level of requirements, even though you know that This is the same person from the same place, from the same device, Logging at the same time, looking at the same stuff, the risk signals are very low, But you treat them the exact same way as somebody for whom all the risk signals are high.
Those two experiences are gonna be, you're gonna inundate the, The people who you want to come back with all of the security measures for the people that you don't want, uh, coming in.
So, that's a big part of why fraud has to be part of those other four groups that You just mentioned.
You, you're so right, and it, It always shocks me, um, as a marketer by training and trade, I don't know if that's a good thing or not.
Your audience can.
Leave that on Twitter or wherever.
Um, like, don't DM me that it's not, though.
But I think that we often forget that piece of the puzzle.
But I always encourage people, it's, it's much like your, Your hotel analogy, right?
Imagine that you've invited 100 of your closest friends to your house for a party.
And every single time your friends come up, and they ring the doorbell, And you look through the keyhole, right?
And you're like, who is it?
Oh, hey, Joe, yeah, you're one of my oldest and best friends.
I see you every week.
Who is it?
Can you, could you just go ahead and knock or Give me your special knock before I let you in the door.
But I think what's happening is, as customers are having those wonderful Experiences, where it's like, oh hey, it's you.
OK, cool, Great.
I see your biometrics.
Hey, welcome back.
Oh my gosh, how are the shoes?
Where it feels like our digital conversations through experiences with our Customers, replicate that natural feel of trepidation, right?
When you first hear someone ring your doorbell, you're like, Did I just ring my doorbell?
But when I see it's you through the peephole, You're like, oh my God, come in.
That's the same, that's the same experience people want digitally.
They don't want all of that friction, and they will, they will abandon their cart.
But here's the other thing that I love about your survey, Cause when I started thinking about it when I saw the study, It's like, you know what?
They're just not coming back, They're telling everybody about what a garbage experience they just had with you.
They're making it so other people don't come back, right?
Let's not mistake that loyalty reverberates.
As consumers in this day and age, and it's been incredibly exacerbated by the last couple of Years of COVID, where we're all benchmarking the experience, not against others that Are relevant, they're actually benchmarking against everybody at the same time.
Whether it's airline ticket, booking a hotel, ordering food online, or having a guest checkout experience on an e-commerce site.
Those are 4 vastly different experiences, but they're benchmarking the best experience Against all of those.
So now we don't need to actually look at how good our customer experience really is User experience.
Or use their journey against our competitors.
It's against best-in-class.
Oh, yeah, and it's best in class anywhere in the world.
Like, go, go ask someone who lives halfway around the world, What type of experience they want to have.
I did this once.
I was, I was with a group of people in Singapore, and I was like, What kind of experience would you want to have?
And they're like, Oh, Nordstrom.
You don't have a Nordstrom here.
Like, what do you mean you want a Nordstrom experience?
But they hear about the experience from their friends.
They see reviews of an experience online, and they're like, I want someone to treat me like that.
I want someone to treat me like I'm the most Important person that they're dealing with, even though they don't know who I am yet, Because I haven't logged in, right?
It's, it's that expectation.
It's almost like hearsay.
But that's what's driving the expectation, and it's just gonna, It's just gonna amplify as we, as we keep going into this digital-first world.
So, there's this myth that everything, uh, digital isn't just on the rise, But it's everything.
It's the only channel of engagement.
And I think we need to debunk that myth.
What are customers engaging, and why is it so important for a customer experience across Any channel to really align with Hybrid security and Customer Identity strategies?
That's such a great question.
Um, customers are predictable only when you see them through a one-dimensional lens of data on an Excel spreadsheet.
That's when customers are 100% of the time predictable, 'cause I can move my data around And I can be like, that's exactly what my customer's gonna do.
The problem is the customer never does it, right?
Like 1 out of a million customers does what you expected them to do.
Customers and people, um, we do what gets us value.
And for most people, value can be summed up as something that saves me time, Something that saves me money, or something That added to my day.
Right?
So that's what they're looking for.
They're looking for those seamless experiences.
But where they choose and where they want to be.
So, you, We, we have, you know, we have the great example of, I'm gonna buy this online, and online for me is my phone.
But online for you might be your computer at home.
Online for the next person might be a combination of their tablet and their phone.
And I'm gonna buy it there.
But you know what?
I know that I'm gonna be driving by the store in about 15 minutes.
Yeah, I'm just gonna roll up, roll down my window, please check my purchase through the Window for me, right?
Like, it's not even like come in and pick it in the store.
I want someone to physically walk out of the store and put it in my trunk.
And I don't want to talk to anyone, right?
So, customers are learning, And we are teaching them through availability of experiences like this, that they can.
Really have the power of their own determination to complete the experiences where, When, and how they would like to.
And people still like the physical world.
Like, people still wanna go into the store.
I still wanna go touch something that I may wanna buy.
I still wanna go to the hotel.
Right?
So we still have this aspect of people are Humanity is naturally attracted to things that are tactile, Things that are social, things that bring people together.
And I think we can't forget that.
However, while their destination might be in the physical space, There are going to be lots of different points of interaction and engagement that may be any number of combinations of digital.
And that digital, that world of digital also has a multitude of spaces and places.
So, the complexity of what we're dealing with right now is how do I track an individual.
Who's gonna be random, who's gonna be all over the place, Picking across a random network of places and spaces across both digital, And that might be first, but might land in the physical.
So it just gets complex because we get to choose, like, We're in the ultimate Choose Your Own Adventure book, and we are not taking no for an answer.
So I think this, your response there really lends itself well to us doing a quick little Rapid-fire session to demystify some terms.
Um, let me start.
I'm just gonna throw out terms and you give us The definition of them, right?
So let's start with decentralized identity.
Wow, that's a, that's one because it's like, what is it, What are we gonna call it today?
Decentralized identity, Self-Sovereign Identity.
Like we, we, I think we have like 19 different Words we can throw into that bucket, but like, let's simplify it, Decentralized identity.
If I boil it down to the simplest demystified statement, it is, It gives individual individuals control over their digital identities.
Right?
So it puts the onus and the control of what is considered part of that identi identi.
That, excuse me, that identity that is verifiable, puts that in control of the Individual, right?
It puts the onus on the organization to be able to have those UM pieces of Identity and those identifiers that can be verified, that you can actually match up to.
But Self-Sovereign-Identity really does what the words intended to do or decentralized Identity, puts the control back in the hands, minds, systems of the individual.
Did that match up?
What, what, what would you have, What would you have said if I had said, hey, What is, What is decentralized identity?
It's simply put, I own my identity, and I prove it to you on an as-needed basis basis versus me needing to complete a profile on your website and you storing all of my identity.
So instead of having your information spread Across a whole bunch of different sites, who knows how many places my personal profile Exists with credit card and address, all That, which is all of the different incarnations, and protecting it.
Now I own it, and I provide it to you on an as needed basis.
Yeah, I love it.
We were close, I think, we close.
Next one.
Authorization versus authentication.
Oh, I love that one.
I love that one, because I think, And we've touched on it a couple times.
Um, so, Authentication is literally taking that identity, right, And saying, yep, yep, you can come into the club, right?
Like, like, I got you.
We're good.
Authorization is the act of allowing and Understanding where someone should be, where someone should go, Allowing them to walk down the hallway.
Let's go back to, I've I've invited everybody to my house.
Um, I've looked through the people, I see that it's you.
Great.
I've authenticated that; come on in.
Right?
Um, authorization is—you cannot go use the Bathroom upstairs in the master.
You are not allowed to walk up those stairs.
You, uh, uh, no, my mom can walk anywhere she wants to.
I have given her those controls.
She can use the bathroom upstairs, but you, Joe, you use the guest bathroom downstairs.
All right, how about password lists?
Oh, password list.
Um, password list does not mean you don't A password.
Can we, can we fundamentally start there?
It's that you're not constantly asking people to fill out that form and go through that whole Form of, like, every single time they need to come and authenticate.
Let's put my Username, let's put my Password.
It's about knowing and understanding that this Person has already been to your site and your destination, and simply saying, I, I know that you have this phone.
Here, I sent you something.
Prove that it's you, like, just confirm it, right?
Instead of saying, OK, I had that 18-letter password that had 13 different characters Symbols in it.
Or I just had password 1234, that person is still out there.
That person still exists.
Um, without having to go back and go through That, you're actually making it super easy for your customers, Super easy for your employee by saying, hey, I recognize you.
Let me put you through this one cute little quiz, right?
And then being able to have people seamlessly move that through that experience without any Friction.
Next one, Privacy by Design.
Privacy by Design.
Is a strategy.
That understands that privacy.
Linking back to that concept of Self-Sovereign identity, that privacy, and the definition of Privacy is in the definition of the individual.
And ergo, by design, we are building systems, We are building processes, We're building workflows that respect that consent, that respect that permission, That respects how our individuals want to and have given us permission to engage with them.
Privacy by accident is, oh, there’s a new regulation that says I can’t use or collect This data.
I've got to go back and make sure they've Read all of my cookie policies, and they've checked off everything, So I can still do the awful things that I'd like to do to them.
But I'm gonna call it Privacy instead, right?
Like, that's Privacy by accident, Right?
Privacy by design is fundamentally believing And understanding that privacy, it will always be in the eye of the individual, not necessarily in the eye of the regulator.
And when we start to move in that direction, we start to understand and start to comprehend.
And that when we use that by design, new regulations, new requirements, New limitations, new expansions, we can still flex and weave in that framework because we have fundamentally believed that an individual's privacy is sacrosanct to them and Is important and is, and involves a permission and involves a consent, And that we respect that.
And that it's mutual respect and mutual trust.
I don't give really technical definitions on this stuff, Sorry.
That's OK.
Context of customer identity, what about Zero Trust?
Zero Trust through the, through the lens of identity should be that I do Not ever assume that you are who you say are.
We were just talking about the example, and we were just using, Um, you know, the concept of when someone is, you know, When, when, from the very first moment, someone hits your website, That, you know, Ping very much believes that you should be constantly looking at that fraud.
You should be constantly looking for that risk factor there.
That's absolutely true, right?
Because when you start to come at this from a Zero Trust posture, you are saying, listen, we can't afford to trust.
Everything, as if, you know, trust blindly, Right?
So, we're gonna come from Zero Trust.
We are not gonna have cleared lists, we're not gonna have Zero Trust, But these people are OK.
It is this concept that we need to protect us, and we need to protect You, because that's part of our value exchange, is this bi-directional exchange of trust, Right?
Um, trust, Zero Trust is not trust.
But I'm also gonna verify these people over here, right?
It is really that posture of, no, I'm going to have to do something every time To ensure that you are you, to check and balance that you are you.
Um, and, and I think that when we come from that posture of truly being Zero Trust, It is where we see things like password lists.
When we start to see things like those conversations around risk and understanding the Event-based, the behavior-based, the, you know, biometrics, when we start to understand that entire portfolio.
Of what's available to us to utilize in a zero Trust posture.
It stops being friction of, I'm gonna make you Go through all the bells and whistles ’cause I never will trust you into a posture of, We're Zero Trust, but it's because we need to trust each other, and I need to protect both of Us.
What is the Metaverse?
OK.
That's always a complex one, right?
Um, and I always, like, let's be very honest with each other.
I do sometimes feel like today, when someone says the Metaverse, I want to go like, and allow like purple glitter to like flow into the screen just to The metaverse, you know.
OK, um.
I'm gonna boil this down.
The metaverse, or in reality, what will likely be metaverses, So multiple metaverses.
Is an environment in which there is a shared immersive Experience in which community, commerce, and currency are Simultaneously being co-created and experienced, right?
So, it is all about shared immersion.
Um, it's probably easier today to say what the Metaverse is not, Because I'm gonna be super honest, today, the Metaverse is not here.
Bits and pieces of it are.
Bits and pieces of the experience are Absolutely here.
If anyone has a kid who's playing Roblox, Like, welcome to the Metaverse, right?
Like, you are seeing it unfold live and in Person.
Um, and you are starting to see, it's not necessarily a game, it's more about this immersive universe that you can now see and Walk through and say, hey, I'm gonna go into that store, And you go into the store, and I'm gonna go look at these items.
And I wanna buy that item, and you can buy it, right?
Um, where the Metaverse will go will be more about how you interpret the Metaverse economy.
So for some organizations, the Metaverse will manifest as the capacity for field sales to Walk up to an asset that has been, uh, you know, put into service and hold up, Uh, you know, hold up a Google or hold up a screen, and up comes this world of 10 Technicians, 10 experts.
Everyone gets to see the overlays of the 19 different ways you can fix the turbine.
Right?
Um, and everyone has secure access to that Experience.
Because it is being shared simultaneously and You are immersed in that.
So when we start to think about that experience in the Metaverse, That shared experience, we have to start thinking about everything that you and I have Been talking about today, right?
How do we start to make sure that every single one of those med students is who they say they Are, that their device is secure and they're able to log into this?
We're talking about a person's heart, like that person's really on the table, Right?
We're talking about life or death, you know, like security situation here.
So when we start to think about shared, and we start to think about immersion, We have to think about what identity is going to mean in the metaverse, Because we're gonna hear a lot of people be like, ah, It's BlockChain, ah, it's crypto, it's this, It's that.
We're gonna hear a brand new round of buzzwords bingo start to come into the Metaverse.
But what I would encourage everyone to, to really focus on and think about is, If we are in a world of shared immersion, what does that identity mean?
Co-creation and bi-directional exchange of Trust as the value.
How does that start to work?
How does that start to come into play?
And how are we then enabling that through our systems, so we're not in the middle of That metaverse experience throwing up a screen That's like, Stop right there.
I don't know who you are.
Please authenticate yourself with 19 different passwords.
Like, that's not what's gonna happen in the Metaverse.
Awesome.
So we've gone through a whole lot of topics in The last little while.
Any final closing thoughts that you want to share with everyone?
Wow, you know the big thing that I would want to leave everyone with is that This chaos and this kind of dynamic buildout of what we today consider the digital World based on everything that we've just been through, right, In the physical world, that's gonna keep evolving, and that's gonna keep changing.
The fundamental truth, though, of Do I know Joe?
Whether I'm talking about an experience that drives a profitable relationship, Or an experience that drives a successful session, still revolves around, Do I, Liz?
No, Joe.
And I think when we start to lose sight of that, when we start to lose sight of our people, When we start to lose sight of our customers and our employees, We start to think about them as systems or data sets or identifiers or profiles, We start to lose why these conversations around identity.
Are so important because they do lead to conversations around risk.
They do lead to conversations around revenue and profitability.
They do lead to conversations around, Are we doing harm?
Are we doing well?
These are big, meaty, hard conversations to have.
They get a lot easier when you realize that the Systems that you are entrusting the execution of all of these strategies to aren't asking you or your customers to conform around the system.
Right?
We are no longer in an age where experience Can be driven by what we can do.
It has to be driven by what our customers and our people need us to do.
And I think that's why identity starts to become a really strategic conversation, Rather than a checkbox, right?
I think we, I think a lot of times we kind of Relegate identity to that compliance checklist.
And we're like, We got it, you know, hey, Debbie, Bob, and Risk.
We have identity solutions, and we have to stop that.
It really becomes a value multiplier and a business accelerator when we start to think Of Identity as being a strategic conversation that is then executed and Enabled by flexible, smart.
You know, uh, AI-empowered data first, data-rich systems that allow us To get there in a way that just feels as frictionless as the experience that we want our customers to have.
So that's my, that's my TED Talk.
Hi.
Awesome.
Liz, it's been great.
I really appreciate the time.
And with that, thank you everyone for, for taking the time to join us and we'll be in Touch very soon.
My name is Joe Malefont.
I lead our customer identity solutions.
Marketing team here at Ping Identity, and I'm joined by Liz Miller from Constellation Research.
So glad I'm here today.
Thanks so much.
We're gonna have an awesome conversation.
I'm looking forward to it.
Thanks, Liz.
And let's take a quick second to lay some Context and start with something really foundational.
What is customer identity, and how is enterprise buyers told why identity Matters?
Gosh, that seems like a really easy question.
Doesn't it?
And it's super complex.
It's super complex to answer these days.
So let's kind of start off by acknowledging a big gorilla in the room, which is, depending on who is talking to you about identity.
And who you are within the organization, you might be hearing something a little bit different about what customer identity is, or what identity is and why it matters to your Organization.
So, kind of, let's start with, if you are in a More IT centric, maybe a more security-centric environment, you’re likely hearing about Identity as being that thing, that, that whether it's a wallet, Whether it's an identifier, whether, what, no Matter what that is, that allows you to understand and verify who that individual is.
Who is either trying to gain access to your systems, uh, is engaging with you across your systems.
But if you're in marketing, if you're in a customer experience-centric organization, You're likely hearing about identity as being more focused on and the data and information that you can wrap around a profile to actually gain more understanding of who that person Is that you're engaging with, uh, so that you can maybe pummel them with more emails, Right?
So, it starts to give you a little more Sense of what that personalization is.
Why this gets so messy and why it's really important for people to understand that these Two schools of conversation are happening: because systems are very different, And they're doing very different things with that identity and with that kind of identifier That has been created.
One is being created to perhaps authenticate or authorize access into a system.
The other is being used for outbound experiences that really start to personalize and really focus those experiences, so that you know all these different things about the Person that you are communicating with.
That gets really confusing when we're trying to buy systems, But it gets really, really dangerous when we're starting to talk about vulnerabilities, When we're starting to talk about security, but when we're also starting to talk about the Security of the relationships we're trying to build with our customers and our employees.
So, it's really important to start to narrow in and understand that identity means different Things to different people, but fundamentally, for our organizations, Identity should mean a person.
And ultimately, when we think of identity, there, there're two sides to it, Right?
Like, there's the one side which is who am I?
And then the other side of it becomes the customer identity, Which is, Who are you, right?
So, when we have customers coming in to access Services that we offer, that's the Customer Identity side and that's where we're gonna Focus in a lot more today, right, Liz?
Absolutely.
And I think that you said exactly the, The point here is: Which perspective are we coming from of the who that we're trying to Learn more about?
And increasingly, as we start to see things, Maybe even go into the Metaverse, who knows, talk about buzzwords, Um, as we start to see more of those M2M interactions, It might even be, what are you, right?
So, understanding all of the parties involved are core and fundamental, not just to Identity strategies and technologies, But quite frankly, to our business.
We need to understand.
Who, what, and how, and where all of these entities are looking to move and go, So that we have control both on opening up that access and making sure experiences flow and are Amazing for our customers and for our employees and for our organization, But also that those experiences don't actually open up unintended vulnerabilities.
Yeah.
So from the Ping standpoint, we look at Customer identity really quite simply from the customer's perspective because that's who it is.
Customer identity really spans a series of actions someone takes online from the time that They first visit any of your digital properties as an unknown user to creating an account to Becoming a known user and ultimately a valued customer.
It's really taking what happens in the physical world, but now doing it in a digital world.
And we're gonna come back to that a little bit later.
For really any organization though, we're breaking customer identity down in five stages From the time they land on the site to the time they actually become that loyal advocate, It's, you want to detect who they are, what they're doing, Verify that they're actually a person, build out that profile of who they are, What they like, what they've provided consent for, authenticate that user, and then authorize them into various services and places that they're allowed to go.
Uh, it's almost equating it to when you go to check into a hotel, Right?
You, you present your ID and credit card.
And you're given a card in return that authorizes you where you're allowed to go.
They've now seen who you are through the front door; they verified you with your driver's License, they look up your profile, perhaps You're the first time checking into that hotel, Maybe not.
They've authenticated that credit card with the Driver's license, now you're paying for it, and you're being given a key in return, Which is your authorization to go into your hotel room.
So it, it's not very different when we go online, but it is a little bit different.
Where we have actually taken steps to see things differently from others is that customer Identity starts even before a session begins online.
When someone lands on your site and they're completely unknown, That's where we start detecting signs of fraud, right?
Whether it's account takeover, new account creation fraud, Um, that really fraudulent view becomes an important initial components before Somebody has actually revealed themselves.
So exactly the same thing.
I want to make sure that we're building trust with our customers and that organizations are able to build trust with their customers and Ensure that they're reducing fraudulent transactions, and that's why in their systems, Right?
Like, we need to be able to know.
That, hey, we put an autopay, you know, we put a self-service payment or a Mobile check-in app Out there.
We want to know that the systems and the Experiences that we put out there, that we invested, are not accidentally doing harm or Accidentally leading to negative experiences.
And I think something that I have noticed that I really appreciate.
In all of our conversations, it is that opportunity to detect fraud is from moment one, Even before you know who that customer is, but it doesn't add friction to the experience.
And I think that also has to be part of this.
New conversation and this new strategy around Identity.
It's not about throwing up walls, Adding more friction, making it impossible For a person to actually check into that hotel Room, right?
It's really about those incremental steps and Having those systems and solutions on the back end that aren't just looking at identity as a Single facet.
Now, this is clearly an evolution of the Definition of identity, right?
So, what has really changed recently for Customer identity?
You know, most recently, if we wanted to kind of look into the recent past, We can all agree that the global pandemic.
Was this seismic shift, not just in where people could and chose, And, you know, chose to engage, where they worked, where they lived.
Everything about where people existed changed.
But it also fundamentally changed what devices we're trying to get onto networks, What devices were individuals using to log into things.
They weren't using their Computers anymore.
They were on their MobileIron device, they were on their tablet, They were sitting, you know, on their couch using their home router.
The number of devices out there that look to become part of this digital ecosystem and Footprint fundamentally changed.
And while we've seen those moments of fluctuation in the past, The big difference now is it's not going back.
Now, people, employees, whether you're in your work life or you're in your consumer life, You now have examples of these amazing frictionless digital experiences that can be had across any number of digital planes.
And so, you're gonna want that everywhere, right?
You're gonna want it to be so easy to log into an account, Like, oh, I had this great experience.
I didn't even need my password.
They just texted me this number, and it was so cool.
You might not know how to define that as a passwordless experience.
You know, that you, you know, utilize your identity.
Consumers and our employees don't know how to define it.
They just know they want it because they got from point A, From their point A to their point B in the device and the location that they chose with Zero friction.
In fact, the systems that they encountered Helped them get to where they wanted to be faster.
And so, they might not know how to define it, but that's the new expectation.
And I think that is why identity has changed so much, because identity is now fundamental Only how our network systems run, how our IT systems run, How our security systems run, identity is core and fundamental to how personalization works.
How Employee Experience works, how people engage and get what they need to get done in Their daily lives, done, whether it's at work or whether it's in their personal lives.
And that's not gonna change.
It's just gonna get more complex.
And you made an interesting point in there is that people just want a seamless experience.
Right?
But we've had security as an issue before.
I, I had a former colleague who used to say, hackers don't break in anymore, They log in, and this was pre-pandemic, we're talking five years ago, In 2017, he was saying this.
It's only been exacerbated by that shift to everything being digital-first in such a short Period of time.
So do they just log in, then wait.
Yes, that's the terrifying thing, right?
They wait, and they wait for an opportunity.
And how do you know if that's the person?
Logging in?
They, they log in every day.
How do you change that?
And now, with everything digital, You talked about, you know, Marketing groups, IT groups, Everyone needing to understand this profile.
And the complexity of where we're at today, What is the risk of really reverting back to a Much more focused, simple definition of Identity?
Why can't everyone just agree on the same definition?
Why is it so siloed?
That's a great question.
Um, I think because when we try to Homogenize, or, you know, in, in order to get to a common definition, There, there needs to be a little bit of simplification.
And there's this struggle, right?
Because, um, simple doesn't mean simplistic.
And I think that's especially true when it comes to identity.
We, we don't need to look for a simplistic definition.
We might need to look for a simple articulation, so that everyone understands what we're talking About.
But the reality is, because identity is applied and utilized in such different ways.
Slight modifications on a theme, let's call it, across these different organizations.
All of these organizations are having to put their own spin, Their own color on, their own prioritization on Where their impact begins to show Identity, where their pull from identity comes from.
So, when we start to wonder, I mean, I often hear people when they ask this type of Question, they're like, well, you know, what's really, what's, What's the risk?
What's it really gonna do if we just come to a Simple definition, and we all just say, OK, Identity is the way we verify people's access.
Right?
Experience then is at risk, right?
Your customer experience, your employee experience, that fundamentally gets put onto The risk block, because if you make it so hard to gain access to do business, To, to gain, you know, to gain access to your account, to um gain access to your software Solution, like, say you're a customer service agent and you're now working from home.
If it takes me my whole day to figure out how to walk into the system, My employees' experience is at risk.
They're not gonna be happy about not being successful.
They want to be able to use the tools that we're providing them.
But now, our customer experience is at risk.
How do you provide them with information that you need if you don't know who they are?
If my Customer Service Rep is sitting there and I don't give them information about Joe, Because I'm like, I don't know, you can't, you don't, you don't get to see that data, All of a sudden, I'm chipping away at what is foundational to my business.
Because I needed to simplify a definition for one foundational core of my business.
So, I, I think that when we, when we start to think about identity, We really need to start to think about kind of identity through the lens of our primary Stakeholders in the service of our people.
And whether that, whether the people is our employee, or people, or our customers, We really have to remember that all of this identity is in the service of those, Those two core constituencies, because that's what drives our profitable growth.
That's what drives our experience and our engagement in our business.
So, I think it's, it's about kind of where we put that perspective.
So, based on all that, you know, when we think of an exceptional customer experience, 'Cause we, I, I've heard you say, you know, the customer experience, The user experience a few times now, is there really an anatomy or structure that people can Plan for to really lead them into success?
That's great.
Um, yes, there is, and it starts fundamentally With you.
With you, the person, right?
Literally, with you.
Um, you know, every great customer experience starts with a strategy that fundamentally Understands that there is a person behind the impact of every action, Every system, every reaction that we have in place.
So, having the experience be built around the employee, the customer.
Now, let's build out from there.
Right?
So if I'm going to build out my experience for Sales, and I know that Joe is my salesman, right, he's my guy.
I need to build out a system so Joe is the most successful.
All of a sudden, that experience starts to build around you and how you work, And how, what shortcuts do you usually take, you know, Do, what, what are those keystrokes?
How quickly are you typing?
What are you doing?
You can start to build out that profile of the Individual, so that you can then start to marry that against the things that are important for The business.
And whether that's something that's Important for the business and, hey, I gotta make sure that Joe doesn't get access to the Sensitive information about our customer, oh, HIPAA, right?
You can start to make that determination.
I need to make sure that, you know, maybe Joe has access to all these different tools because He's out in the field.
He's gonna be Mobile.
I need to make sure that he can access this from wherever he is today.
I need to be able to do that, or I need to be able to let Joe send anything he needs to that Customer cause he's about to close a huge deal, right?
So you now then start to build together, here's Joe, My, my sales guy, but here's Liz, my customer.
So how do I need Liz to accept all the information from Joe?
So again, when you start with the individual, as opposed to starting with an identity, Like the block, you start with the person.
You start to see the needs and the flows, and the workflows and the data and the systems that You need to move from there.
I mean, and, and you guys do this all the time, right?
I mean, you, you see both sides of that coin.
So, have you seen examples of where maybe your Customers have really taken that step back and started to say, Like, listen, actually, these two experiences intertwine, and I really need to start looking At these differently.
Yeah, I, I think some of the places we see it The most are in retail, right, where I use two different examples.
So retail, buy online, pick up in store, uh, That did not exist Pre-COVID, right?
This is a hybrid world where you, You have a digital experience that you're completing in the real world or Airlines and how we travel have evolved, and they're trying to be customer-centric, That I give you your boarding pass, I'm trying to reduce all of the points of friction that You might have, so you can have a much more seamless travel experience.
Those are points where Organizations in these Industries have used the data along the Way to say, how do we reduce this time?
How do we improve.
People moving through these sequences.
So that data is a really important way to feed in, and thankfully what they can do with a lot Of that data is A/B test to say, does this experience work better?
Does this experience work better?
And it doesn't take a long time, you know, thankfully, uh, Using things like orchestration, we're able to have organizations A/B test very quickly.
Does this login flow work?
Work better, or this login flow work better?
Does this password reset work better or this one?
What should we take out?
Um, do we see better conversion with password list?
Do we see reduced card abandonment?
So, tools like, you know, PingOne DaVinci, for example, provide the orchestration needed to do That ABAC testing, but just as important, it has to be able to snap in with everything else.
So hence a bunch of other Box integrations, um.
That's how we make that customer experience, the most seamless it can possibly be.
Yeah, yeah, and I love what you said, and I find this to be true.
Almost across every single great experience you can think of, Whether it's a small experience, or whether it's like a big giant, Like, this is a multi-stage orchestration experience, is if you start with the individual And you understand that person.
And then you can track those journeys that you can even predict, or you know that they will Take.
And end that with the data, so that the data is Leading you to all the places where that person can go, All those experiences that they can have, but that you are continuously verifying, Checking, experimenting, having the ability and the capacity to experiment and to test, Right?
But you are validating, and you are, You know, making that decision, uh, between, because, you know, Authentication and authorization, two very different things.
But are you making sure that you have the capacity to do both along the way, No matter where an individual chooses to take their journey.
Can you flex?
You know, do you have flexible systems that allow you to do that?
So, I think that when we start with the person, And then we end with the data, As opposed to, let me see what data I have.
Now, I'm going to create experiences and journeys, and then I'm gonna try to force my People to go down that path that only fits to what my data can do.
That's when you most often see experiences go horribly wrong.
Now, we've talked about the experience, talked about how to improve it, Especially with the data, who's actually involved in a customer experience strategy and Who's involved with the development of that customer identity strategy.
You know, it, in one place it could be and the other could be really IT.
So who's involved in all of this?
Wow, it's, it's, it's almost like who is involved and who should be involved.
I feel like you and I should probably probably create some kind of chart on the Fly right now, like, this should be the team, but this is the team, Right?
So, I think that right now, Oftentimes, experience is unfortunately handled in two camps and two silos.
And that has to stop, right?
So, you have your IT team, Let's say, you know, the IT faction looking at experience, And they are largely looking at establishing and setting up those networks and those systems.
So the technology operates the way it is expected and intended, Right?
And so, when, when we start to look at identity Through that lens, you start to see the criticality of things like access, You know, controls, etc.
But when it also comes to experience, you then have this other camp that's like the marketing.
I, I, I lovingly refer to them as the Three Horsewomen of the Apocalypse, Right?
It's these three departments that tend to be at The front line of CX delivery, which tends to be marketing, Service, and sales.
So, you definitely see that group coming.
Together.
In a perfect world, and where I think Experience-led organizations need to be pressing forward.
This needs to be a connected dynamic, and this team really needs to include, Yes, that frontline, Sales, Service, and Marketing.
They are bringing that voice of not just the customer, but of the teams executing these Types of solutions.
So, they are that voice, they are that need, they know what that strategy and that cadence.
Needs to be, but they have to be working in lockstep with IT.
And security.
So, in a lot of organizations, And for those of you listening, I can feel your eye rolls and groans through the screen.
When I say, sometimes IT and security do not work together.
Sometimes there is friction, sometimes there is a disconnect between those two teams.
The team that's just trying to keep the network up and running, And then the land of no security that says, you can't have that.
I'm sorry, you can't do that right now.
But we're seeing this Age of Trust and Brand Security come to light, Where everyone in this ecosystem really needs to be core to the strategy of how we think About, develop, whether it's individual executions of experience, or the totality of the systems that deliver experience.
Because you need to have things like fraud detection, right?
You and I have been talking about fraud detection, but that's not a comfortable Conversation.
That said, marketing or service or sales necessarily gets to be part of.
IT might decide it, security might decide it, You might get legal involved for that.
Conversation.
But for the most part, it's not considered an Experienced conversation, but it has to be.
It's core to that bi-directional.
Trust that we were talking about, of, I trust that I gave you this, I trust that you're you.
That's a bi-directional relationship.
And yes, it's based on risk or fraud, but it's still a relationship, Right?
So, we need to have all of these players really Start to have holistic intentional strategic conversations where IT security, Marketing, customer service, and sales start to work as that lockstep team.
You might start calling them digital, you know, You might start seeing revenue officers kind of Come in and play in that group.
But it really is, I mean, if CX is an enterprise-wide team sport, It has to include IT and security fundamentally.
And interestingly, fraud is frequently not in the IT group, Right?
It's in the Governance, Risk, and Compliance Group.
Sometimes it will be under IT, but that's Mostly them running the tool or implementation, right?
Yeah, we, uh, we actually conducted a study last year around brand loyalty.
Interesting, we found that 63% of consumers are likely to.
Even online service for a competitor who makes it significantly easier to authenticate Identity.
So in the context of fraud, if you treat all of Your customers with the same level of requirements, even though you know that This is the same person from the same place, from the same device, Logging at the same time, looking at the same stuff, the risk signals are very low, But you treat them the exact same way as somebody for whom all the risk signals are high.
Those two experiences are gonna be, you're gonna inundate the, The people who you want to come back with all of the security measures for the people that you don't want, uh, coming in.
So, that's a big part of why fraud has to be part of those other four groups that You just mentioned.
You, you're so right, and it, It always shocks me, um, as a marketer by training and trade, I don't know if that's a good thing or not.
Your audience can.
Leave that on Twitter or wherever.
Um, like, don't DM me that it's not, though.
But I think that we often forget that piece of the puzzle.
But I always encourage people, it's, it's much like your, Your hotel analogy, right?
Imagine that you've invited 100 of your closest friends to your house for a party.
And every single time your friends come up, and they ring the doorbell, And you look through the keyhole, right?
And you're like, who is it?
Oh, hey, Joe, yeah, you're one of my oldest and best friends.
I see you every week.
Who is it?
Can you, could you just go ahead and knock or Give me your special knock before I let you in the door.
But I think what's happening is, as customers are having those wonderful Experiences, where it's like, oh hey, it's you.
OK, cool, Great.
I see your biometrics.
Hey, welcome back.
Oh my gosh, how are the shoes?
Where it feels like our digital conversations through experiences with our Customers, replicate that natural feel of trepidation, right?
When you first hear someone ring your doorbell, you're like, Did I just ring my doorbell?
But when I see it's you through the peephole, You're like, oh my God, come in.
That's the same, that's the same experience people want digitally.
They don't want all of that friction, and they will, they will abandon their cart.
But here's the other thing that I love about your survey, Cause when I started thinking about it when I saw the study, It's like, you know what?
They're just not coming back, They're telling everybody about what a garbage experience they just had with you.
They're making it so other people don't come back, right?
Let's not mistake that loyalty reverberates.
As consumers in this day and age, and it's been incredibly exacerbated by the last couple of Years of COVID, where we're all benchmarking the experience, not against others that Are relevant, they're actually benchmarking against everybody at the same time.
Whether it's airline ticket, booking a hotel, ordering food online, or having a guest checkout experience on an e-commerce site.
Those are 4 vastly different experiences, but they're benchmarking the best experience Against all of those.
So now we don't need to actually look at how good our customer experience really is User experience.
Or use their journey against our competitors.
It's against best-in-class.
Oh, yeah, and it's best in class anywhere in the world.
Like, go, go ask someone who lives halfway around the world, What type of experience they want to have.
I did this once.
I was, I was with a group of people in Singapore, and I was like, What kind of experience would you want to have?
And they're like, Oh, Nordstrom.
You don't have a Nordstrom here.
Like, what do you mean you want a Nordstrom experience?
But they hear about the experience from their friends.
They see reviews of an experience online, and they're like, I want someone to treat me like that.
I want someone to treat me like I'm the most Important person that they're dealing with, even though they don't know who I am yet, Because I haven't logged in, right?
It's, it's that expectation.
It's almost like hearsay.
But that's what's driving the expectation, and it's just gonna, It's just gonna amplify as we, as we keep going into this digital-first world.
So, there's this myth that everything, uh, digital isn't just on the rise, But it's everything.
It's the only channel of engagement.
And I think we need to debunk that myth.
What are customers engaging, and why is it so important for a customer experience across Any channel to really align with Hybrid security and Customer Identity strategies?
That's such a great question.
Um, customers are predictable only when you see them through a one-dimensional lens of data on an Excel spreadsheet.
That's when customers are 100% of the time predictable, 'cause I can move my data around And I can be like, that's exactly what my customer's gonna do.
The problem is the customer never does it, right?
Like 1 out of a million customers does what you expected them to do.
Customers and people, um, we do what gets us value.
And for most people, value can be summed up as something that saves me time, Something that saves me money, or something That added to my day.
Right?
So that's what they're looking for.
They're looking for those seamless experiences.
But where they choose and where they want to be.
So, you, We, we have, you know, we have the great example of, I'm gonna buy this online, and online for me is my phone.
But online for you might be your computer at home.
Online for the next person might be a combination of their tablet and their phone.
And I'm gonna buy it there.
But you know what?
I know that I'm gonna be driving by the store in about 15 minutes.
Yeah, I'm just gonna roll up, roll down my window, please check my purchase through the Window for me, right?
Like, it's not even like come in and pick it in the store.
I want someone to physically walk out of the store and put it in my trunk.
And I don't want to talk to anyone, right?
So, customers are learning, And we are teaching them through availability of experiences like this, that they can.
Really have the power of their own determination to complete the experiences where, When, and how they would like to.
And people still like the physical world.
Like, people still wanna go into the store.
I still wanna go touch something that I may wanna buy.
I still wanna go to the hotel.
Right?
So we still have this aspect of people are Humanity is naturally attracted to things that are tactile, Things that are social, things that bring people together.
And I think we can't forget that.
However, while their destination might be in the physical space, There are going to be lots of different points of interaction and engagement that may be any number of combinations of digital.
And that digital, that world of digital also has a multitude of spaces and places.
So, the complexity of what we're dealing with right now is how do I track an individual.
Who's gonna be random, who's gonna be all over the place, Picking across a random network of places and spaces across both digital, And that might be first, but might land in the physical.
So it just gets complex because we get to choose, like, We're in the ultimate Choose Your Own Adventure book, and we are not taking no for an answer.
So I think this, your response there really lends itself well to us doing a quick little Rapid-fire session to demystify some terms.
Um, let me start.
I'm just gonna throw out terms and you give us The definition of them, right?
So let's start with decentralized identity.
Wow, that's a, that's one because it's like, what is it, What are we gonna call it today?
Decentralized identity, Self-Sovereign Identity.
Like we, we, I think we have like 19 different Words we can throw into that bucket, but like, let's simplify it, Decentralized identity.
If I boil it down to the simplest demystified statement, it is, It gives individual individuals control over their digital identities.
Right?
So it puts the onus and the control of what is considered part of that identi identi.
That, excuse me, that identity that is verifiable, puts that in control of the Individual, right?
It puts the onus on the organization to be able to have those UM pieces of Identity and those identifiers that can be verified, that you can actually match up to.
But Self-Sovereign-Identity really does what the words intended to do or decentralized Identity, puts the control back in the hands, minds, systems of the individual.
Did that match up?
What, what, what would you have, What would you have said if I had said, hey, What is, What is decentralized identity?
It's simply put, I own my identity, and I prove it to you on an as-needed basis basis versus me needing to complete a profile on your website and you storing all of my identity.
So instead of having your information spread Across a whole bunch of different sites, who knows how many places my personal profile Exists with credit card and address, all That, which is all of the different incarnations, and protecting it.
Now I own it, and I provide it to you on an as needed basis.
Yeah, I love it.
We were close, I think, we close.
Next one.
Authorization versus authentication.
Oh, I love that one.
I love that one, because I think, And we've touched on it a couple times.
Um, so, Authentication is literally taking that identity, right, And saying, yep, yep, you can come into the club, right?
Like, like, I got you.
We're good.
Authorization is the act of allowing and Understanding where someone should be, where someone should go, Allowing them to walk down the hallway.
Let's go back to, I've I've invited everybody to my house.
Um, I've looked through the people, I see that it's you.
Great.
I've authenticated that; come on in.
Right?
Um, authorization is—you cannot go use the Bathroom upstairs in the master.
You are not allowed to walk up those stairs.
You, uh, uh, no, my mom can walk anywhere she wants to.
I have given her those controls.
She can use the bathroom upstairs, but you, Joe, you use the guest bathroom downstairs.
All right, how about password lists?
Oh, password list.
Um, password list does not mean you don't A password.
Can we, can we fundamentally start there?
It's that you're not constantly asking people to fill out that form and go through that whole Form of, like, every single time they need to come and authenticate.
Let's put my Username, let's put my Password.
It's about knowing and understanding that this Person has already been to your site and your destination, and simply saying, I, I know that you have this phone.
Here, I sent you something.
Prove that it's you, like, just confirm it, right?
Instead of saying, OK, I had that 18-letter password that had 13 different characters Symbols in it.
Or I just had password 1234, that person is still out there.
That person still exists.
Um, without having to go back and go through That, you're actually making it super easy for your customers, Super easy for your employee by saying, hey, I recognize you.
Let me put you through this one cute little quiz, right?
And then being able to have people seamlessly move that through that experience without any Friction.
Next one, Privacy by Design.
Privacy by Design.
Is a strategy.
That understands that privacy.
Linking back to that concept of Self-Sovereign identity, that privacy, and the definition of Privacy is in the definition of the individual.
And ergo, by design, we are building systems, We are building processes, We're building workflows that respect that consent, that respect that permission, That respects how our individuals want to and have given us permission to engage with them.
Privacy by accident is, oh, there’s a new regulation that says I can’t use or collect This data.
I've got to go back and make sure they've Read all of my cookie policies, and they've checked off everything, So I can still do the awful things that I'd like to do to them.
But I'm gonna call it Privacy instead, right?
Like, that's Privacy by accident, Right?
Privacy by design is fundamentally believing And understanding that privacy, it will always be in the eye of the individual, not necessarily in the eye of the regulator.
And when we start to move in that direction, we start to understand and start to comprehend.
And that when we use that by design, new regulations, new requirements, New limitations, new expansions, we can still flex and weave in that framework because we have fundamentally believed that an individual's privacy is sacrosanct to them and Is important and is, and involves a permission and involves a consent, And that we respect that.
And that it's mutual respect and mutual trust.
I don't give really technical definitions on this stuff, Sorry.
That's OK.
Context of customer identity, what about Zero Trust?
Zero Trust through the, through the lens of identity should be that I do Not ever assume that you are who you say are.
We were just talking about the example, and we were just using, Um, you know, the concept of when someone is, you know, When, when, from the very first moment, someone hits your website, That, you know, Ping very much believes that you should be constantly looking at that fraud.
You should be constantly looking for that risk factor there.
That's absolutely true, right?
Because when you start to come at this from a Zero Trust posture, you are saying, listen, we can't afford to trust.
Everything, as if, you know, trust blindly, Right?
So, we're gonna come from Zero Trust.
We are not gonna have cleared lists, we're not gonna have Zero Trust, But these people are OK.
It is this concept that we need to protect us, and we need to protect You, because that's part of our value exchange, is this bi-directional exchange of trust, Right?
Um, trust, Zero Trust is not trust.
But I'm also gonna verify these people over here, right?
It is really that posture of, no, I'm going to have to do something every time To ensure that you are you, to check and balance that you are you.
Um, and, and I think that when we come from that posture of truly being Zero Trust, It is where we see things like password lists.
When we start to see things like those conversations around risk and understanding the Event-based, the behavior-based, the, you know, biometrics, when we start to understand that entire portfolio.
Of what's available to us to utilize in a zero Trust posture.
It stops being friction of, I'm gonna make you Go through all the bells and whistles ’cause I never will trust you into a posture of, We're Zero Trust, but it's because we need to trust each other, and I need to protect both of Us.
What is the Metaverse?
OK.
That's always a complex one, right?
Um, and I always, like, let's be very honest with each other.
I do sometimes feel like today, when someone says the Metaverse, I want to go like, and allow like purple glitter to like flow into the screen just to The metaverse, you know.
OK, um.
I'm gonna boil this down.
The metaverse, or in reality, what will likely be metaverses, So multiple metaverses.
Is an environment in which there is a shared immersive Experience in which community, commerce, and currency are Simultaneously being co-created and experienced, right?
So, it is all about shared immersion.
Um, it's probably easier today to say what the Metaverse is not, Because I'm gonna be super honest, today, the Metaverse is not here.
Bits and pieces of it are.
Bits and pieces of the experience are Absolutely here.
If anyone has a kid who's playing Roblox, Like, welcome to the Metaverse, right?
Like, you are seeing it unfold live and in Person.
Um, and you are starting to see, it's not necessarily a game, it's more about this immersive universe that you can now see and Walk through and say, hey, I'm gonna go into that store, And you go into the store, and I'm gonna go look at these items.
And I wanna buy that item, and you can buy it, right?
Um, where the Metaverse will go will be more about how you interpret the Metaverse economy.
So for some organizations, the Metaverse will manifest as the capacity for field sales to Walk up to an asset that has been, uh, you know, put into service and hold up, Uh, you know, hold up a Google or hold up a screen, and up comes this world of 10 Technicians, 10 experts.
Everyone gets to see the overlays of the 19 different ways you can fix the turbine.
Right?
Um, and everyone has secure access to that Experience.
Because it is being shared simultaneously and You are immersed in that.
So when we start to think about that experience in the Metaverse, That shared experience, we have to start thinking about everything that you and I have Been talking about today, right?
How do we start to make sure that every single one of those med students is who they say they Are, that their device is secure and they're able to log into this?
We're talking about a person's heart, like that person's really on the table, Right?
We're talking about life or death, you know, like security situation here.
So when we start to think about shared, and we start to think about immersion, We have to think about what identity is going to mean in the metaverse, Because we're gonna hear a lot of people be like, ah, It's BlockChain, ah, it's crypto, it's this, It's that.
We're gonna hear a brand new round of buzzwords bingo start to come into the Metaverse.
But what I would encourage everyone to, to really focus on and think about is, If we are in a world of shared immersion, what does that identity mean?
Co-creation and bi-directional exchange of Trust as the value.
How does that start to work?
How does that start to come into play?
And how are we then enabling that through our systems, so we're not in the middle of That metaverse experience throwing up a screen That's like, Stop right there.
I don't know who you are.
Please authenticate yourself with 19 different passwords.
Like, that's not what's gonna happen in the Metaverse.
Awesome.
So we've gone through a whole lot of topics in The last little while.
Any final closing thoughts that you want to share with everyone?
Wow, you know the big thing that I would want to leave everyone with is that This chaos and this kind of dynamic buildout of what we today consider the digital World based on everything that we've just been through, right, In the physical world, that's gonna keep evolving, and that's gonna keep changing.
The fundamental truth, though, of Do I know Joe?
Whether I'm talking about an experience that drives a profitable relationship, Or an experience that drives a successful session, still revolves around, Do I, Liz?
No, Joe.
And I think when we start to lose sight of that, when we start to lose sight of our people, When we start to lose sight of our customers and our employees, We start to think about them as systems or data sets or identifiers or profiles, We start to lose why these conversations around identity.
Are so important because they do lead to conversations around risk.
They do lead to conversations around revenue and profitability.
They do lead to conversations around, Are we doing harm?
Are we doing well?
These are big, meaty, hard conversations to have.
They get a lot easier when you realize that the Systems that you are entrusting the execution of all of these strategies to aren't asking you or your customers to conform around the system.
Right?
We are no longer in an age where experience Can be driven by what we can do.
It has to be driven by what our customers and our people need us to do.
And I think that's why identity starts to become a really strategic conversation, Rather than a checkbox, right?
I think we, I think a lot of times we kind of Relegate identity to that compliance checklist.
And we're like, We got it, you know, hey, Debbie, Bob, and Risk.
We have identity solutions, and we have to stop that.
It really becomes a value multiplier and a business accelerator when we start to think Of Identity as being a strategic conversation that is then executed and Enabled by flexible, smart.
You know, uh, AI-empowered data first, data-rich systems that allow us To get there in a way that just feels as frictionless as the experience that we want our customers to have.
So that's my, that's my TED Talk.
Hi.
Awesome.
Liz, it's been great.
I really appreciate the time.
And with that, thank you everyone for, for taking the time to join us and we'll be in Touch very soon.
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