Chatbots provide hope for easy to understand consent, post GDPR!

We are all being inundated with requests for consent to continue using services as the GDPR deadline rapidly comes closer and closer. Many of us are not finding the consent experience very good.

The question from these experiences we need to ask ourselves are we any the wiser of understanding the context of how our personal data is processed. The fundamental truth is no, albeit with a few exceptions. Yet when people swap their persona from a customer viewpoint to a business perspective, everyone is claiming they will be GDPR compliant. What a paradoxical world we live in!

There are some services we have recently given our ‘GDPR’ consent for the “use of our data” without clear understanding, simply because the service is important and switching to an alternative is problematic in the remaining timescale left. However, this is a reluctant consent that feels more like coercion. But, GDPR states that consent should be freely given. Oh dear!

Coercion techniques combined with the lack of credible evidence that the person clearly understood the consent criteria for the use of their data, puts some major organisations at risk for mass class actions, huge regulatory fines and brand contamination.

To compound these problems there seems to be a lack of science being applied to the consent process. For example, there is a growing acceptance that 8 seconds is the attention time span for someone online to read, understand and move on.

Try reading and understanding the typical consent narrative in 8 seconds.

Rather than the continued use of dense content, the opportunity for chatbots to provide dialogue in 8 second ‘byte’ sized chucks with an automated compliance audit trail is a game changer. This approach provides a clear audit trail of the consent choices, pathways and outcomes.

A new type of chatbot is emerging that will eventually play a significant role in the principles of transparency and consent, but sadly this market shift will happen post GDPR when the litigation process gets underway through the combined forces of regulators and customers.