I am not saying that GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) isn’t a good thing but we all know that the bad businesses will not have used the same time and money as we good businesses over all this.
It hasn’t been handled well. Communications from the ICO have been poor, support information has arrived too late at their website and they could have contacted their customer data processors to help them. Whilst legal and ‘advisory’ services across the UK have been milking this business opportunity, regardless of their ‘expert’ knowledge, hitting the purses of small businesses more than big ones.
So much so that GDPR will have held our economy back over the last month or so, including the time spent head scratching, wading through incomprehensible database jargon and balancing the cost of learning about GDPR for yourself or paying a so-called expert (who mightn’t be) to do it for you.
And then there’s the opportunity cost of losing touch with potential customers unnecessarily and reading so many GDPR emails from those that didn’t need to send them. From businesses I was once a customer of and haven’t heard from lately. But if they’d written to tell me of a new service I might have been delighted to hear from them…
And they’d have been entitled to email me, within the scope of GDPR. It’s just that few realise this.
Like many other busy individuals, I’ve stopped reading ‘lets keep in touch’ emails. And where I’ve clicked ‘Unsubscribe’ I won’t remember I’ve done this – so what’s the point?
I’d go further. If I unsubscribed from your e-newsletter, as a previous customer perhaps, I might have been happy to hear from you – if only I’d had time to read it because of the hundreds of emails clamouring for my attention this week.
For me the Data Protection situation is clear. FOXY Lady Drivers Club caters for Club members and non members can visit our site (but we don’t collect their personal details). Club members sign up and opt in to our services when they join, so they have a legitimate interest to receive our emails about the latest offers, services and FOXY Lady Approved businesses. We also publish Club Rules so anyone who wants to read them (and not a lot do, which I don’t take personally) can find out how to resign their Club membership if they want to. Just in case, you have to put resignations in writing to us, so they are correctly actioned.
Otherwise anyone clicking on the ‘unsubscribe’ button in our emails (including understandably disinterested husbands or partners sharing the same email address) would mean lose the ability to know the Club’s latest affinity offers or when to contact our helpdesk service.
Should a business want or need to know about GDPR now (it’s a bit late but never mind), there are six general bases on which personal data can be processed. If you are curious, and have more time to waste getting up to speed, you can read Article 6 of the GDPR here. For example, our Club processes members’ data on the basis of ‘legitimate interests’ or ‘proper performance of the contract.’
Maybe that applies to your business too?
NB: If your business handles data of any sort, remember to register with the ICO.
NB: If you are a member of FOXY Lady Drivers Club – you don’t have to share an email address with your husband/partner? If you have your own you can take control of the content YOU want to see/receive.
I think we should all have our own persoanl Privacy Policy.
End of. Harrumph.
FOXY Steph
