How not to be an American Psycho: avoiding the creepy side of digitization

Several months ago, I was talking with a gentleman in the fitness industry who excitedly told me about an app he’s working on. Its purpose is to encourage friendships among his gym’s members, presumably in the interest of building brand loyalty. Among the app’s many features, it will send you notifications throughout the day when someone from your favorite fitness class is nearby, “so you could maybe get together and grab a coffee or something.”

I did my best to be complimentary—he really was very proud of himself—but inwardly, I was cringing. As an avid gym-goer who very much prefers to keep her head down and mind her own business while sweating it out—and sincerely hopes everyone around her is doing the same—I would find any expectation that I should be making friends between squats enormously off-putting. And getting push notifications to alert me that Sonia from Pilates is in the neighborhood—and her being alerted of my presence in turn? Well, this is just about the last thing I would want technology to do for me.

As the saying goes, “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” And as US businesses—currently the most digitally advanced in the world—collect more and more customer information and think up more and more things they could do with it, they must constantly ask themselves whether or not they should.

And it’s not an easy question: As much as I am horrified by the prospect of forced gym fraternization, I really do like it when my preferred drugstore uses data collected from my loyalty card to offer personalized discounts on my favorite brands, or when Netflix uses my viewing history to make surprisingly accurate recommendations for other shows and movies I’ll enjoy. How does a smart company make the distinction between the helpful and the intrusive?

With the awful possibility of new friends hanging over my head, you can imagine my relief when, in the course of researching this year’s US consulting market report, I spoke with a consultant who says one of his aims is to make sure clients are asking whether or not they should, thus helping to ensure their forays into big data don’t turn intrusive or, worse yet, creepy.

As Christopher Miller of Capgemini Consulting explained it: “Consumers feel like, ‘I’m giving you a lot of data. I’m doing it willingly, and I know you’re going to do things with it—hopefully things that will delight me and make me a loyal customer. But there are other things you could do with it that are going to make me angry or creep me out, and those things will cost you my business.’ The question we are defining with our clients is: How does a company know the difference?”

Well, I for one will certainly sleep better knowing that management consultants are on the case, working to find the sweet spot between helpful and menacing. Christopher, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you. And though I’ve mercifully never actually spoken to her, I assume Sonia appreciates your efforts as well. After all, as Jerry Seinfeld once told an over-eager fellow at his gym, I already have three friends; I’m not taking applications.