Answer
Dec 31, 2020 - 05:31 PM
Image Credit: Pixabay
Knowing just how much work goes into building a loyal customer list, it is a viable concern to want to keep them safe from overly-ambitious employees.
Former employees are armed with information on how your business works and so they can turn into your biggest competition in one fell swoop. Following are a few ways you could safeguard your e-commerce clients list from theft.
Have Your Employees Sign Binding Agreements.
This is the most general method you can use. These agreements generally state that an employee is not to contact clients for a certain period after they stop working for you.
While courts will often side with the employees rather than the company in case of anything, give your company a fighting chance with a good agreement. A lawyer will help you draft a good document so don't try to cut costs by using online resources.
It is important to note that if you make the penalties more specific within this non-compete document it will be more effective. Spell it out in a clause that if the employee leaves and solicits your clients, they will pay 'X' amount of money.
Although these agreements don't provide a permanent fix, they will give you a headstart. According to Legal Zoom, you need to have confidential information that you want to protect, and include a statement that employees are not prohibited from leaving their jobs.
Go a step further and add a clause saying that no employee can deal with clients of your company regardless of who initiated contact.
Also, it's a fact that you cannot keep even your most valuable employees on your payroll forever. For instances like this when you let go of employees who had access to sensitive information, you need to have preventative measures in place.
The other provisions available include:
-
a non-poaching covenant to keep employees from poaching and recruiting former colleagues.
-
a non-compete covenant to stop your employees from leaving your organisation or company to go work for a competitor of yours.
-
a non-solicitation covenant to make sure your employees don't take your customers
-
a confidential information covenant to restrict employees from using confidential information.
Note that a non-compete agreement is different from a non-disclosure because it outrightly prohibits anyone signing it from getting into competition with you.
A non-solicitation agreement only deals with clients, employees, and contractors and is therefore not very broad.
Limit Access to the Customer Database
Making sure that the only people who have access to your customers details are those who really need it is important. It serves no one to have everything easily accessible. Your employees each know their respective roles so it will be sensible to only allow them access to what they need in order to work efficiently.
On the other hand, don't make it overly difficult for your staff who need the information to access it. This only means they will end up having an extra workload and stress while they're only trying to do their respective jobs.
Naturally, some roles will be in more direct contact with your clients than others. A legal advisor for example will talk to clients and deal with them more closely than your company book-keeper. For these employees, you need to draft contracts that have non-solicitation and non-compete clauses.
Set up Communication Monitoring Policies
Once you identify the most sensitive employees, you can introduce non-invasive monitoring policies on their communications with clients. Reserve the right to look at all incoming and outgoing communications like work emails, text messages, WhatsApp communication etc.
Let your employees know about this so you discourage list theft even more. For work devices like desktop computers, laptops, phones and faxes, set up the relevant monitoring applications.
If you are aware of what communications are going on then you have an upper hand to nip theft in the bud.
Image Credit: Pixabay
You can take an extra step beyond monitoring and encrypt communications that come in and go out of your company. Let this be known in your agreements and contracts so that there is transparency in everything.
Vet Your Employees Carefully
Integrity is an important aspect for most positions. If you are in an industry with sensitivity to client lists, this is much more important. When taking in employees who will be tasked with sensitive information, always run the relevant background checks.
Make sure that you know enough about them and do your best to judge their character beforehand. This will ensure you have peace of mind to some extent, but it is prudent to also have the other measures discussed in place.
Dealing with people has no fool-proof method in the end and someone crafty enough may get the information and use it to their advantage despite your best efforts.
If you know that you've done your part to make this a bit more difficult though, you will be more at ease while dealing with the other demands of your business to make it grow.
Also make sure that you offer your clients the very best products and services so that it won't be too easy for them to get wooed to go elsewhere.
Add New Comment