To be truly effective, the cloud contact centre tools that agents use must all converse to paint the end-to-end customer journey, and be multi-channel.
Compliance is a broad reaching term in the context of contact centres. Where do you start? It encompasses so many regulatory bodies; FCA, Ofcom, PCI DSS, TCF, SRA, Client Quality Assurance, to name just a few.
How can contact centres effectively manage all of these elements whilst processing millions of calls and customer interactions every month. Falling foul of just one of the regulatory bodies on one of these interactions could cripple an organisation either by way of a large regulatory fine, or worse still, irreparable reputational damage.
The stakes are huge. The level of scrutiny has never been any higher, the potential fines never been greater, which ultimately calls for action.
So, how can comprehensive compliance be achieved given the scale of contact centre interactions, both from a process efficiency and cost perspective?
The answer is simple; the key is system automation creating centralised reporting, control and visibility.
Centralisation drives cost efficiencies and creates the essential cradle to grave audit view for every single customer interaction which is so crucial for compliance. The demands across each regulatory body inevitably vary, but the centralised customer interaction view is the one common pre-requisite across all of them; making centralised technology the key to managing contact centre compliance.
To be truly effective, the everyday tools agents use must all converse to paint the end to end customer journey, regardless of interaction medium. This will encompass CRM systems, diallers, call recording, screen recording, payment portals, SMS portals, email portals and more as contact mediums continue to grow. The key term here is ‘every’. Compliance can only be managed effectively if you can see and physically link every customer interaction.
A simple call recording is no longer enough to paint the picture. Evidence must now encompass so much more.
In today’s multi-channel contact centre, there must be an ability to interrogate every customer interaction at the touch of a button all the way down to the lowest transactional level, even where calls are launched but stop short of connecting to the customer; even that needs recorded to satisfy any regulator. Only then can the customer journey be truly traced and evaluated.
Traditional call recordings are key, but for true compliance visibility you must also demonstrate cascading access to every single dial attempt, screen recording, call outcome, payment processed, call scored, SMS sent, email sent in one linked view.
A clear market shift away from non-compliant legacy technologies which cannot achieve above has ultimately driven the way we build our contact centre technology; it should shape your contact centre also. Our systems are built, operate and interface in the seamless manner required above.
Compliance is the requirement; technology is the enabler.
Only the sum of all customer contact points can paint the customer journey and ultimately let an auditor decide whether or not they think you are compliant. An absence of evidence will inevitably lead to a judgement that favours the end customer. An auditor will ask to see it, therefore contact centres must track it effectively, or ultimately risk non-compliance. Without joined up visibility, you risk focussing on only parts of the customer journey, leaving black holes any auditor will inevitably find upon inspection.
In other blogs, we reference the extent of the growing compliance pressures on the Contact Centre industry as a whole. Those blogs have traditionally focussed on Ofcom with regards to the way outbound contact strategies are managed, however it is not only Ofcom that needs to be controlled in the contact centre, compliance is much wider reaching.
In a world of ever increasing data security, the way we manage card payments and PCI DSS is also evolving. Whilst it may have been traditionally compliant with PCI DSS to simply pause call recordings during payment capture, that is no longer the acceptable contact centre industry standard. The acceptable base level requirements are now effectively above the minimum compliance levels, the industry itself is pushing itself above in what amounts to a self-regulation step. There is a need to protect customer card details from not just the call recording, but also the agent who traditionally still handled and processed those same details onscreen.
Technology is again the enabler in this scenario. Our technology enables customers to key card data from the security of their telephone keypads at home whilst masking the DTMF tones that are transmitted from the customer key presses live on call and links these same payments and transaction details to the customer interaction history, in the same way it does SMS, email, call outcomes and every other auditable piece of system information. The view is so comprehensive; even the agent screens are recorded and reported and retrievable.
Screen recording is another key compliance driver in the contact centre and a sign of the compliance focus shift, linking back to the earlier point that call recordings now only form one small part of the compliance jigsaw. Compliance breaches can occur onscreen without any audio trigger, therefore the compliance view needs to be representative of that and comprehensive, not just audio but visual also.
This is where screen recording closes the gap.
Just as technology is the enabler to compliance, it is also the key to driving greater performance, addressing the focus on the all-important commercial elements of the operation. What gets measured, gets done.
In the modern, agile contact centre, you need not be compliant at the expense of productivity, far from it, these compliance tools and levels of performance insight are the springboards to even greater productivity.
The use of screen recording takes call monitoring to the next level. It exposes the audio and visual aspects of customer interactions with calls played back similar to online videos, driving truly effective performance management and coaching. This ensures that the focus is on performance just as much as compliance. Both function in harmony together, cementing the fact that compliance across all areas can be embraced and that technology is the ultimate common enabler and protection mechanism in the modern-day contact centre.