Privacy Policy

We at Institute of Customer Service & Relationship Management™ (ICSRM^®) and our Chapters (collectively, "ICSRM," "we" and "us") know you care about how your personal information is used and shared, and we take your privacy seriously. Please read the following to learn more about how we collect, store, use, and disclose information about you when you interact or use our websites (collectively the "ICSRM sites") or any related events, trade shows, sales or marketing, and/or if you use any of our products and services (collectively the "Services") in any manner.

The goal of ICSRM is to develop and maintain standards for customer service, contact center operations, and customer relationship management for the certification of practitioners around the world. To achieve this vision, membership in ICSRM is open to international professionals, who may also participate in local country and city Chapters.

To communicate with members and promote the goals of the organization, ICSRM uses a variety of methods including local meetings, international conferences, the official ICSRM website and local Chapter websites, newsletters, and email communications, most of which require the use of a member's personal information.

This Privacy Policy covers our treatment of information that we gather when you are accessing or using our ICSRM sites or Services or when you contact us in any manner. We gather various types of information, including information that identifies you as an individual ("Personal Information") from our users, as explained in more detail below.

Please note that for users located in the European Economic Area (EEA), the term "Personal Information" used in this policy is equivalent to the term "personal data" under applicable European data protection laws.

"Sensitive Data" means personal data or information that discloses an individual's racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade-union membership, criminal proceedings, biometrics, and data concerning health.

We do not intentionally collect - and will not request - Sensitive Data. If an ICSRM employee discovers that we have received Sensitive Data, the employee will inform a designated contact within our company who will assess the processing of such data.

Information that we collect can be classified as Personal Information or Personal Data. This information is categorized into information that you provide to us and the data that we collect automatically.

When you use our ICSRM sites or Services, we receive and store information you provide directly to us. The types of information we may collect directly from you may include: first name, last name, user names, email addresses, birthday, postal addresses, phone numbers, job titles, transactional information (including Services purchased), event attendance, video, and pictures as well as other contact or other information you choose to provide us or upload to our systems in connection with our Services.

When using our Services and executing a financial transaction with us online (e.g., membership, donations, or online certification registration), we never collect your financial information. We only retain information that the financial transaction has successfully completed. Online financial transactions, such as credit card payment, are processed with PCI compliant third-party providers.

When you use the ICSRM sites, we automatically collect certain information related to your device, such as your device's IP address, referring website, what pages your device visited, and the time that your device visited. Collecting this information may include the use of cookies. For more information on how ICSRM uses cookies, please review the ICSRM Cookie Policy.

In addition to cookies, we also keep track of user activity on the ICSRM sites through application audit controls and log files.

We use the personal information we collect under this Policy for our legitimate business interests, which include:

• Provision of services: To provide and operate our ICSRM sites and Services, fulfill your orders and requests, process your payments, for bug and error reporting and resolution, to perform upgrades and maintenance, and for similar purposes.
• Customer support: To communicate with you about your use of the Services; respond to your communications, complaints and inquiries; provide technical support; and for other customer service and support purposes.
• Personalization: To tailor content we send or display to you to offer location customization and personalized help and instructions, and to otherwise personalize your experience using the Services.
• Marketing and promotions: For marketing and promotional purposes. For example, we may use contact information such as your email address to send you newsletters, special offers or promotions, or to otherwise contact you about ICSRM products or information we think may interest you. If you are in a jurisdiction that requires opt-in consent to receive electronic marketing messages, we will only send you such messages if you opt-in to receive them. You may opt out of receiving marketing emails by following the opt-out instructions in the email. We may still email customer service and transaction-related communications, even if you have opted out of receiving marketing communications.
• Advertising: To assist in advertising the Services on third party websites.
• Analytics and improvement: To better understand how users access and use the Services, and for other research and analytical purposes, such as to evaluate and improve the Services and to develop additional products, services, and features. For more information on how you can opt out of analytics, please refer to the ICSRM Cookie Policy.
• Protect legal rights and prevent misuse: To protect the Services; prevent unauthorized access and other misuse; and where we believe necessary to investigate, prevent, or act regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person, or violations of our Terms and Conditions or this Policy.
• Comply with Legal Obligations: To comply with the law or legal proceedings; for example, we may disclose information in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including responding to national security or law enforcement disclosure requirements.
• General Business Operations: Where necessary to the administration of our general business, accounting, record keeping, and legal functions.

Below is a chart for users located in the European Economic Area EEA, which outlines the legal basis for processing personal information in accordance with GDPR.

We do not rent, trade or sell your Personal Information to anyone. We may share and disclose information (including Personal Information) about our users in the following limited circumstances:

• Vendors, consultants, and other service providers:
  • We may share your information with third-party vendors, consultants and other service providers who we employ to perform tasks on our behalf. These companies include (for example) our payment processing providers, website analytics companies (e.g., Google Analytics), product feedback and surveys (e.g., Survey Monkey, Formstack), CRM service providers (e.g., MS Dynamics, Salesforce), or email service providers and others.
  • If ICSRM has received your Personal Information and subsequently transfers that information to a third-party agent or service provider for processing, ICSRM shall remain responsible for ensuring that such third-party agent or service provider processes your Personal Information to the standard required by our Privacy commitments. Unless we tell you differently and you consent, our agents do not have any right to use the Personal Information we share with them beyond what is necessary to assist us.
• Other ICSRM Entities:
  • We may also share your personal information with our affiliated chapters and other ICSRM entities for purposes consistent with this Privacy Policy and your ICSRM sites profile preferences.
• Protection of ICSRM and Others:
  • We reserve the right to access, read, preserve, and disclose any information as necessary to comply with law or court order; enforce or apply our agreements with you and other agreements; or protect the rights, property, or safety of ICSRM, our employees, our users, or others.
• Disclosures for National Security or Law Enforcement:
  • Under certain circumstances, we may be required to disclose your Personal Information in response to valid requests by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.

We use appropriate technical, organizational, and administrative security measures to protect any information we hold in our records from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction. Unfortunately, no company or service can guarantee complete security. Unauthorized entry or use, hardware or software failure, and other factors, may compromise the security of user information at any time. Among other practices, your account is protected by a password for your privacy and security. You must prevent unauthorized access to your account and Personal Information by selecting and protecting your password appropriately and limiting access to your computer or device and browser by signing off after you have finished accessing your account.

We keep your personal information for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes set out above. We will retain your account profile data as necessary for our legitimate business purposes or to comply with our legal obligations (such as record keeping, accounting, fraud prevention, and other business administrative purposes). However, we will maintain your personal information longer where required for tax or accounting purposes to ensure we would be able to defend or raise a claim, or where we have a specific need to retain, though we will generally not keep personal information for longer than seven years following the last date of communication with you. Legitimate business purposes that we may rely on to keep your personal information when you are not a customer include direct marketing (where you have not opted-out) for up to two years, facilitating the restoration or establishment of a user account in the future, maintaining business intelligence systems for analytics and other internal purposes, etc. Where your information is no longer required, we will ensure it is disposed of in a secure manner.

Please consult our Cookie Policy for more information about the type of cookies that we use on the ICSRM sites and why, and how to accept and reject them.

We also utilize Google Analytics, a web analysis service provided by Google, to better understand your use of our ICSRM sites and Services. Google Analytics collects information such as how often users visit the ICSRM sites, what pages they visit and what other sites they used prior to visiting. Google uses the data collected to track and examine the use of the ICSRM sites, to prepare reports on its activities and share them with other Google services. Google may use the data collected on the ICSRM sites to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network. Google's ability to use and share information collected by Google Analytics about your visits to the ICSRM sites is restricted by the Google Analytics Terms of Use and the Google Privacy Policy. The Cookie Policy outlines an opt-out method available for Google Analytics.

If you would like to access, review, update, rectify any Personal Information we hold about you, or exercise any other data subject right available to you, please email us at privacy@icsrm.org.uk.

If you registered with ICSRM and want to be removed from ICSRM's systems, please LOGIN and complete the relevant form. This process will automatically remove your user profile information within 10 business days.

If you are NOT registered with ICSRM and want to be removed from all email communications, please complete the relevant form. Our Privacy team will review and process your request within 10 business days.

If you use a 3rd party presence or privacy management services to submit your request to be forgotten, ICSRM will contact you directly to validate the 3rd party service request. ICSRM will NOT process a request from a 3rd party service unless that request is validated directly. To avoid any processing delays, please use the above links for registered and non-registered users instead of a 3rd party service.

Please note that we may still use any aggregated and de-identified Personal Information that does not identify any individual and may also retain and use your information as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding our privacy policies, please send us a detailed message to privacy@icsrm.org.uk, and we will try to resolve your concerns.