Consumers may be willing to forgive a company that’s suffered a data breach, but only if they receive timely notification about the breach, according to a recent survey by Experian.
The credit bureau said that 93% of consumers responding to its survey expected to hear from a bank within three days of a data breach occurring, and the vast majority (83%) expected to hear from a financial institution within 24 hours.
When asked how they would respond to slow or ineffective communication following a data breach, 66% said they would stop doing business with the company and 45% said they would tell their friends and family to do the same.
Ninety percent of the survey respondents said they would be at least somewhat more forgiving of a company if they knew it had a prior plan in place for communicating following a data breach.
Experian hired the consulting firm KRC Research to conduct the survey. It was fielded online in July this year with a little more than 1,000 U.S. adults responding.
Experian’s findings, issued this week, also suggest that financial services companies may take a greater blow to their reputation if they bungle the response to a major data breach.
Survey respondents consistently held financial services companies to a higher standard than they did health care organizations, government agencies or retailers. Three-quarters of respondents said they expected a government agency to notify them within 24 hours of a breach, 73% said as much for health care organizations, and just 61% held retailers to that standard — all lower than the 83% who expected banks to do so.
