Chinese consumers’ trust in tech has fuelled digital CX innovations until recently, but the pandemic will likely erode some of this trust, according to a new study.
A Forrester report examines how COVID-19 is altering customer expectations in China after the recent COVID-19 pandemic, which has seemingly strengthened the existing correlation between technology innovations with quality-of-life improvements in China.
With most services offered online during the outbreak, technology reached new frontiers and enabled people to go on with their lives and even do new things while quarantined.
This will likely stimulate people to think differently and ask themselves: “Can I do this job more effectively and accessibly by moving it to digital?” (For more details, read WARC’s breakdown of the report: Early signs of how COVID-19 is altering CX expectations in China.)
But Forrester sees early signs that trust in certain technologies and their uses is eroding, especially around data privacy.
Amid the outbreak, tech giants like Alibaba, Suning, and Tencent deployed a colour-coded health rating system to help government officials track and record people’s quarantine statuses.
The system, in more than 200 cities in China, assigns a green, yellow, or red QR code based on data self-reported by citizens and from bodies like the epidemic prevention and law enforcement authorities. The colour of the code determines whether a person should be allowed out in public or not.
This application of technology “threatens the traditional social contract and gives tremendous power to those who control data”, wrote Meng Liu, the main author of the Forrester report.
It’s a live issue for other countries which are also having to think about these matters as they consider how they might use tech to assist emergence from lockdown while preventing further outbreaks.
With customers’ concerns about data privacy and the rising inequality between themselves and businesses, brands must take the responsibility to earn people’s trust, the report advises.
Sourced from WARC
