Customers want personalization without the uncanny valley. - guest blog by Jonas Berggren.

Balancing: privacy and personalization

Regulation: The European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an important component of privacy law across Europe. GDPR gives the consumer more control over how their data is stored and used by companies, but we are now a few years into the enforcement of these rules - most companies in Europe will now be aware of what they need to do to remain compliant. The EU has already issued 648 penalties to companies that broke the rules. Regulations like the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) set the ground rules for using customer data. It become a template for data protection and privacy in many other countries and states around the world including California, the UK, Turkey, Mauritius, Chile, Japan, Brazil, South Korea, South Africa, Argentina and Kenya. But within those rules, companies must find their own balance. Overly personalized chatbots pretending to be your friend or suspiciously targeted ads can alienate customers. On the other hand, remembering your preferences and offering relevant suggestions usually goes over well. Customer comfort: Despite these comprehensive rules, it is probably point two that concerns most people today. It just makes us feel uneasy when companies appear to know too much about what we want or what we are doing. Have you ever been talking to a friend at a party where they recommend a new company or service to you? It’s a company that you have never heard of, you have never searched for them on Google, and you are not following any of their social media, but as soon as you get home from the party, you start seeing adverts for that company on your phone? That feels odd. Are our electronic devices listening to us as well as logging everything we search for? Analysts call this the uncanny valley - this term originated to describe the weird feeling when a robot looks and feels almost human, but it can apply to a company that tries to behave like it is your friend. Experts say no, these companies are not listening in, but the devices may well be using the proximity of you to your friend to recommend some of the services they are using. It does feel strange though.