Challenges
- Maintaining compliance across multiple websites, countries, and regulations
- Ensuring positive user experience while managing cookie consent complexities
- Making data-driven decisions based on reliable and privacy-compliant information
- Minimizing time and resource requirements of maintenance, like implementation of new cookies
Goals
- Simplified and user-friendly cookie compliance
- Customers feeling in control of their data
- Streamlined implementation and maintenance of the CMP
- Smarter, data-driven decisions based on reliable information
Results
- Fast implementation and expert support
- Seamless user consent experience across websites and reliable scalability
- Reduced time spent on system and compliance maintenance
- Enhanced customer trust and high quality, consented data
The company
ZGS Bildungs-GmbH was founded in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, over 50 years ago, and is the company behind the Schülerhilfe brand. They’re a leading provider of tutoring services in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (DACH region.)
Schülerhilfe has grown substantially, over the decades, providing students with support in a variety of subjects and offering a range of programs that includes exam preparation and holiday courses, tailored to individual learning needs.
In addition to academic assistance, the company also emphasizes the development of social skills, such as reliability, discipline, and punctuality. The team aims to build students’ self-confidence and prepare them for the challenges of modern life.
ZGS Bildungs-GmbH has a network of over 1,000 locations, serving more than 140,000 students annually in person and online. The team continues to innovate its offerings to make learning fun and help to deliver highly effective learning outcomes.
Challenges
We talked to Daniel Otto, Teamlead Digital, about the company’s challenges and goals with data privacy and customer experience: “We want to give our customers control of their data.”
The company’s websites serve multiple audiences across the DACH region, and need to stay compliant with relevant privacy regulations like the GDPR. Its customers are understandably sensitive about the handling of students’ personal data, so consent information and choices must be clear and compliant.
At the same time, the team prioritizes maintaining a positive user experience across platforms, which becomes increasingly complex as the company grows.
But data is also an important resource, as Otto noted, “We also want to make decisions based on information we can rely on, so we rely on Usercentrics’ cookie consent system that makes this possible without complicated settings.”
As digital operations have scaled, so did the team’s need for a Consent Management Platform (CMP) that was reliable, flexible, and wouldn’t slow them down. In 2021 they chose Usercentrics.
Goals
The ZGS Bildungs-GmbH team had clear expectations for their CMP. It needed to be fast, intuitive, and ready to work out of the box. Consistency and scalability were also critical requirements for the fast-growing company.
As noted, the CMP also had to contribute to positive user experience and enable customers to feel in control, but at the same time, optimizing consent rates was important as the team needs high quality data for decision-making.
Why ZGS Bildungs-GmbH chose Usercentrics
As Otto explained, “We chose Usercentrics because it is very easy to use and the implementation took place in a few minutes.”
The IT lead and the rest of the team appreciated that they didn’t run into any technical roadblocks and there was no steep learning curve.
Even customizing the banner was streamlined, as Otto noted, “We did very few changes to the original banner. The pre-defined template met a lot of our needs. We experimented a little bit with the text and it was very easy.”
They also appreciated that usability was great for both the customers and on the back end. As Otto mentioned, “We like the usability a lot. It’s easy to use for everyone on our team.”
And the benefits are ongoing with time savings: “We don’t have to spend much time on the implementation of new cookies anymore,” Otto noted.
Results
Otto also highlighted the quality of support the team has received: “It was always a pleasure to work with them, always a great help when we had questions regarding consent-related issues.”
For businesses operating in regulated environments like education — especially across multiple jurisdictions and growing quickly — reliable expert support is a must.
The ZGS Bildungs-GmbH is now confident in their ongoing privacy compliance, and in their ability to make smart data-driven decisions with high quality and consented information. Plus the time they save can be spent on growing the business and supporting great educational outcomes.