Building Trust with Customers Through Effective Age Verification
Customer trust is paramount to the success of any business, especially considering that 81% of customers refuse to do business with brands they don’t trust. Moreover, 9 out of 10 people place more trust in what a customer says about a business than in what the business says about itself, according to Wyzowl.
Online age verification processes can notably influence whether customers trust your brand. Therefore, this article will overview how age confirmation impacts businesses and their reputation.
What is Age Verification?
Age verification is the process of validating a customer’s age using various techniques and preventing access to age-restricted products, services, or content in cases where the customer isn’t of legal age. While all websites may employ age verification, certain industries are required to do so, for instance, online gambling sites or e-commerce businesses that sell alcohol, tobacco, or other products.
It’s a complex procedure that requires not only data security, full-proof verification methods, and compliance with laws and regulations but also great user experience as it influences the success of further business operations.
SUPPORT FOR AGE VERIFICATION MECHANISMS FOR ONLINE CONTENTALT: Share of adults in the United States supporting the implementation of age verification mechanisms for online content as of January 2023
Why is Effective Age Verification Important?
An effective age verification procedure can positively impact the trust and loyalty of your customers, as it directly addresses several key factors.
Safety of Minors
To start off, laws and regulations that mandate the necessity of age verification are essentially designed with the purpose of safeguarding children and teens from content that’s not suited for their age. It includes not only restricted sales of tobacco, alcohol, and guns but also firework retail, pharmaceuticals, ridesharing, and adult content sites that aren’t appropriate for minors.
Legal Compliance
This stems directly from the point above, as laws and regulations require restricted web access to unauthorized persons, making it a cornerstone of age confirmation systems. A business that’s not compliant may face significant financial penalties, and legal action or can even lose the necessary licenses. Hence, any online business that offers age-restricted content, products, or services must ensure its operations comply with local and international laws and regulations.
As a matter of fact, in the United States, the FDA even requires online businesses to have age-verification scanners if they want to sell age-restricted products. In addition, if a business employs age verification techniques that don’t effectively secure the customer’s data, it may violate online data protection laws and regulations like GDPR, COPPA, and others.
Fight Against Fraud
Effective age verification also streamlines the fight against fraudulent activities as users are requested to prove who they are. Online businesses can request government-issued IDs or even use facial recognition powered by artificial intelligence to confirm the age of their customers. The provided information can also be used as an additional source of verification before giving users access to age-restricted content.
When users are effectively verified without leaving room for doubt, it makes it significantly more challenging for malicious actors to engage in fraudulent activities, such as identity theft or the use of fake credentials.
Minimized Financial Losses
Not to mention the financial penalties from non-compliance with laws and regulations, chargebacks are also a big financial issue for businesses that don’t use full-proof age verification methods. For instance, minors may use their parents’ credit cards to purchase goods without their parents’ consent. Thus, parents can request chargebacks for these unauthorized transactions, making it a financial burden for business operations.
Enhanced Brand Reputation
A tarnished brand image is a direct consequence of all the points mentioned above. If your business doesn’t prohibit children from accessing age-restricted goods and content, is non-compliant, facilitates fraudulent activities, or consistently receives chargeback requests from children’s parents, then you may lose customers’ trust and loyalty.
Hence, an effective online age verification system is a necessity if you want to retain or even improve how users see your business. A negative online review may affect not only your online operations but also in-person sales.
Why is Trust Important?
Let’s face it—any business needs clients to survive, as customers are at the core of business activities, be it sales or entertainment. While it may be difficult and can take a long time to build trust, it can take only seconds to lose it, in turn losing valuable clients and diminishing the success of your business.
The user experience tells clients whether a business values its customers or not. Consequently, this can impact not only their decisions to purchase but also their choice to engage with your website, as people want to feel assured and confident with their choices, especially when it comes to spending their hard-earned money.
Therefore, a trusted business is bound to have increased customer loyalty, great reviews, and increased growth and revenue.
How to Choose an Age Verification System?
Choosing an effective age verification system that suits your needs and builds trust with customers is a difficult process, yet there are a few factors that may help you decide.
For beginners, the system should give you several options to confirm the users’ age, it should be compliant with relevant laws and regulations, and it should have highly secure data storing techniques. If this isn’t the case, then you might want to look elsewhere.
Now, there are other factors you might want to consider from the user’s perspective, such as:
- Speed. The time it takes to confirm the user’s age may impact whether the user will continue with the process or even come back for future purchases. While age verification may be one of the most important steps your business has to take, remember that customers want to proceed with their requests as fast as possible.
- Convenience. As customers want speedy transactions, they might find it inconvenient when they’re first asked to provide photos of their passports or other identification documents. Thus, an effective age verification system must have a convenient way to confirm the age and ask for IDs in cases where it’s really necessary.
- Availability. The verification system should work in relative countries around the world. If that’s not the case, customers may choose to do business with your competitors as that may be their only option.
- Privacy. As mentioned already, secure data storage is a necessary part of any age verification system. This isn’t only demanded by laws and regulations but also by clients, as no one wants to proceed with their purchases while knowing that malicious entities may access their sensitive data.
While there are various age verification providers, Ondato stands out from other counterparts due to its seamless, secure, and foolproof age verification methods.
It offers a highly accurate facial recognition system powered by artificial intelligence that tells the age of users in just seconds, and when there’s any doubt, businesses can request government-issued IDs.
On top of that, it stores customer data securely and is fully compliant with GDPR and other international and local regulations. Feel free to visit Ondato’s site and see for yourself whether it’s the right fit for you.
Wrapping Up
As the statistics show, trust is the most major factor in any business’s success. Poor age verification and data security, or even the lack of it, can influence how customers see your business online and in person.
When critical verification and security factors aren’t addressed, clients may not even recommend your business to others. Hence, it’s not something you can overlook; an effective and secure age verification system should be a key part of your business strategy.
Victoria has been curious about finance and its management. She loved to organize her own and some of her family’s financial stuff to make intelligent decisions while trading in crypto from the very young age of 17 years. Her interest in smart investment strategies and making wise monetary decisions made her a confident writer. You will feel the joy of an accomplishment after her every post through her agile approaches to making your finds more safe and worthwhile.
