With new data privacy regulations cropping up every day, consent management for all your customer-facing channels is now more important than ever. Your customers expect a secure, seamless experience and need to know that their choices about how their data is handled are being respected.
As of 2022, 71% of countries are covered by data privacy regulations, so consent management needs to be a priority for life science companies.
In this post, you’ll learn what consent management is, why it matters, and how a consent management platform can help you build trust with health care providers.
What Is Consent Management?
Consent management is a process or system for managing consents and permissions for handling customers’ personal data. Your consent management process is what allows patients and consumers to decide what information they are willing to share with companies and health care providers, and it empowers them to exercise their right to privacy.
A proper consent management system includes clearly disclosing how data will be used if consent is provided, refraining from tracking data until the customer has given consent, and securely storing consent documentation. Most importantly, you must allow your customers to withdraw or make changes to their consent at any time.
A consent management platform like the Pitcher Super App can manage all aspects of consent management for your company.
What Is a Consent Management Platform?
A Consent Management Platform (CMP) enables you to automate your consent management process, making it easier to stay compliant and provide a positive experience for your customers.
Your CMP informs your prospects and customers about the types of data you are collecting, and what it is being used for. The platform also securely manages and stores consent data and handles users’ requests for updates to their consent requirements.
With more privacy laws being introduced all over the globe, nearly all companies will need a dedicated, robust platform for managing consent – and the larger your company is, the more methodical your approach needs to be.
Why Consent Management Matters
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union (EU) came into effect in May 2018, and it has triggered similar legislation all over the world. The goal of this regulation is to standardize data protection requirements in the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA).
Because of these new legal regulations, companies must obtain user consent before they collect data through cookies while a user is browsing a website or using other online channels. Because of these regulations, companies all over the world are now responsible for consent management.
You should use consent management if your company:
- Processes personal data as part of its activities, including things like names, addresses, email addresses, health data, racial or ethnic information, IP addresses, cookie data, and RFID tags
- Needs to collect data for analytics or personalization
- Participates in the buying, sharing, or selling of consumer data
Fines for violating consent management regulations can be steep. Financial pain isn’t the only negative effect, either. Companies who violate consent management regulations will need to earn back the trust of customers that were affected by the breach.
Consent Management Platforms facilitate GDPR compliance and help companies achieve consent management objectives with minimal input from marketing and sales teams.
Why Invest in a Consent Management Platform?
Investing in a Consent Management Platform doesn’t just help you stay legally compliant with today’s data privacy regulations – it also has other business benefits.
Helping you take a more customer-centric approach
Dirk Abeel, Pitcher’s Life Sciences GTM, notes that consent is an indicator of customer-centricity.
[Consent management] encourages us to be genuinely interested in what our customers are looking for, expecting from us, and the channels through which they want or don’t want to be contacted or engaged,” he says. “It also enforces the importance of investing in the right channels that matter to our customers, directly related to the purpose of the mutually beneficial engagements and interactions.
Seamless omni-channel engagement
Consent management requires you to collect and manage consent on multiple channels, including email, phone, fax, website activity, and social media. When you use a Consent Management Platform, it enables you to provide a seamless omni-channel experience for your customer that reflects their needs.
Dirk Abeel says, “[Consent management] demonstrates our commitment to offering our customers the seamless, personalized experience they are looking for in this omni-channel connected world.”
Optimizing your sales processes
Knowing which prospects and customers are opting in and out of specific engagement also helps you refine your sales interactions and improve conversions.
Giving the customer the opportunity to opt-in and out is giving them the opportunity to let us know if they value us or not,” Dirk Abeel says. “An opt-out should trigger the question: ‘Why is this happening, and what did we miss out on to let a customer decide to disengage with us?’ This gives us an opportunity to learn from our mistakes and to do better in the future.
Staying up-to-date on changing laws
Data privacy laws are changing constantly, and you want to make sure your business practices are always fully compliant.
Integrated Consent Management Platforms are continuously updated based on the latest regulations and industry best practices for business transformation – so you can stay up-to-date on the latest rules and have easily-accessible data when compliance audit time rolls around.
More data privacy laws are on the horizon. Many U.S. states are now introducing their own data privacy regulations, following the GDPR model. California passed the California Consumer Privacy Act in 2018, and the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report advocating for the adoption of federal data privacy mandates that mimic the GDPR.
All signs point to more regulation as time goes on, and your company can be ready by implementing a solid, integrated Consent Management Platform.
How to Choose a Consent Management Platform for Your Life Sciences Company
Now that you know why consent management is important, what’s the best way to choose the Consent Management Platform that’s the right fit for your company?
The right consent management tool for your life sciences company will:
- Automatically store each user’s consent choices and restrict data flows according to those choices, so you can build trust with health care providers (HCPs).
- Deliver fully compliant content to HCPs and track interactions.
- Streamline consent updates when users submit them.
- Be easy to use, so sales reps can quickly and easily record consent and channel permissions for HCPs with just a few taps.
- Integrate with your existing tech stack, so you can map users’ consent preferences to content on your website and in other channels, as well as automatically update your CRM.
- Include real-time robust reporting, so you can stay compliant with GDPR and CCPA consumer request requirements.
Omni-channel Consent Management with the Pitcher Super App
Pitcher’s intuitive, compliant, all-in-one Super App will help elevate your HCP interactions by streamlining your sales operations and making consent management a snap.
With just a few taps, your sales reps can record and update omni-channel consents for HCPs, so you know what channels to invest in and which ones are missing the mark.
The Pitcher Super App provides out-of-the-box compliance features that you can easily integrate with your existing CRM.
Learn more about how Pitcher can help your company streamline consent management.
Get fresh insights monthly, straight to your inbox. Subscribe to the Pitcher newsletter here.