For how long do you store the information of your customer?
Tags: Data retention policy, Hosting
Almost every business gathers tons of customer related data such as name of the customer, address, business name, telephone numbers, credit card numbers, invoices etc over a period of time. The volume of information thus gathered directly depends on the type of business and the number of customers a business has. Similarly, in hosting business, a company will keep on gathering such information and store it for various purposes. But how long do you store this information with you? Is there a certain data retention policy that your business follows or you just don’t bother about it?
For how long people store the customer information?
There is no average number to mention but so far what we have learnt from reading some threads in various web hosting forums is some like to keep it forever, some delete the data after 6 months of customer leaving them while majority of others keep it for not more than a year or two.
What information should you retain and what you can delete?
The following is a list of information set that you may safely delete but retain some of it for future purpose.
Customer’s name, business info - This data can be retained for extended period of time. If a customer chooses to come back, you can always refer to his history of relationship with you.
Email address - At the time of customers leaving your business, have them opt in or out of a newsletter that will keep them informed about promotions and offers in future.
Contact numbers - This may not be very useful set of data over a long period of time since the contact numbers change and your marketing department may not want use an outdated set of contact numbers to contact the old customers.
Credit card numbers - Delete it after an year. You will not need this data for filing anything anywhere.
The duration of time till which the data should be retained will directly depend on what you will do with it. If you will not use it, why not just get rid of it?
[tags]Data retention policy, Hosting[/tags]
