Contact centre governance a positive move

Despite being viewed as an operational headache, contact centre compliancy can set up companies to deliver better customer service through process automation, says Simon Cranswick, General Manager of Customer Interactive Solutions for Dimension Data's Western Cape region.

Contact centres that deal with payment card details should aim to become certified as a Level 1 compliant service provider with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) - the industry's highest level of payment account data security certification.

Practical examples of how this impacts contact centres can be as basic as:

* Credit card numbers cannot be read out over the phone to an agent and at the time of payment detail capture, the interaction needs to be passed over to an IVR so that the customer inputs this data on the telephone keypad.
* At the same time, the contact centre has to dynamically cease voice recording so that the details remain private.
* Once these have been captured, the call must be routed back to the agent who receives details via integration that the person's details have been verified as valid. This obviates the need for agents themselves to do the back-end validation queries, which thus saves on AHT of a call that, in turn, contributes to the realisation of driving over all contact centre efficiencies.

A licensed Financial Services Operator needs to be compliant with the NCA requirements with regards to responsibly offering consumers any credit or additional credit.

Since this has come into effect, the financial services organisations have embraced it as an opportunity to further automate processes that drive both compliance and efficiencies.

An example of this is the automation of the many background checks (for example, credit bureaus) and balanced score card look-ups that determine the risk and affordability profiles of the consumer. So the process of offering credit is faster, in compliance with requisite governance and empowering for the agent to provide the consumer with the outcome, while he or she is still on the line. So overall, better efficiencies have been gained in the call centre, the consumer is protected through more responsible allocation of credit and the overall customer experience is improved through almost instantaneous feedback.

This Act has differing implications to the contact centre relative to the industry rendering the consumer service; however, whether the “sale” is a financial service product, a magazine or a widget, all organisations need to adhere to a “cooling-off” period.

This has implications to the contact centre in recognising sales targets for a day and allocating revenue for commission recognition purposes until such stage as the “cooling off” period has terminated.

In addition to this, the complexity of “returns and cancellations” in the cooling-off period can have logistical implications that end up costing the consumer some money. This needs to be stated to the customer at time of purchase.

The bottom line is that whether the governance process is to offer best advice on a financial product or notifying the consumer of delivery charges, the opportunity is for organisations to once again review their processes and encapsulate the business rules/governance criteria in a contextualised and intuitive interface to the agent handling the interaction. This can be in the form of a “scripted pop up” at the right moment in the transaction process, not allowing the agent to proceed until that governance criteria has been executed. This further provides the organisation with a mechanism for assurance that any “outsourced or franchised” processes will comply with the governance standards set by the organisation that they are rendering services on behalf of.

Although most organisations have been viewing adherence to these two Acts as a corporate headache, it has forced many of them to undergo the beneficial process of much-needed data cleansing. Companies have the opportunity to update its consumer knowledge database, which ultimately enhances targeted selling and customer satisfaction.

At its most basic, this compliancy standard protects personal information in that a company cannot share a customer's data with other organisations. This knowledge has to be refined across the organisation and once-off data-collection campaigns have to be integrated back into the organisation as a whole. If a customer rejects all further communication, this has to be honoured across all departments, branches and channels of interaction.

Most importantly of all, organisations are now going to find it difficult to pass on customer data by selling/passing on “lists” for direct marketing activities. For instance, how is it that in the insurance industry, e-mail and SMS promotional traffic to an individual increases at the time of policy renewal/expiry? If a consumer had to get serious around tracing the origination of the “data” leak, there are a number of organisations today that could find themselves in trouble.

“All of the above laws are impacting South African companies at the moment. The consequences of non-compliance can affect finances, reputation, or even cause a complete loss of business,” says Cranswick. “But rather than focusing on the negative aspects only, contact centre companies should realise that there are many positives that can be gained from implementing adherence to them.”