Why Most Customers Don’t Read Your Privacy Policy

Many of your customers are increasingly concerned about how organizations store and share information. They opt out of mailing lists and sign up for do-not-call lists. In the online world, they tweak their Facebook privacy settings, avoid untrustworthy sites and (hopefully) safeguard their passwords.

Moreover, consumers pay little attention to one of the most powerful authorities over their personal information: privacy policies. They rarely read them, and they blindly agree to the terms of service when they download an app or complete a transaction.

It’s not breaking news that most privacy policies are long and tedious. Now we have some stats to prove it. Last week, Mashable posted a great infographic from a study that examined the privacy policies of the top 1,000 websites:

• The average privacy policy is 2,462 words long.
• Based on average reading rates, the equals about 10 minutes of reading time.
• The longest privacy policies were about 11,000 words, or roughly 45 minutes of reading time.

Inside most organizations, it’s an uphill battle to rewrite a privacy policy with more customer-friendly terms. Even if the legal team won’t revise the core policy, it’s worthwhile to consider approaches like Pandora.

The online music provider leads with a friendly, plain-language summary followed by the detailed, legal-approved privacy policy. It’s a worthwhile compromise – and one that will ultimately serve the needs of those customers you work so hard to attract and retain.