A company dedicated to regulation compliance, customer experience and support in the communication space, NICE have been leading the way for companies concerned about the looming deadline of GDPR this year. As organisations consider what they can do to protect themselves from astronomical fines, we thought we’d talk to NICE about their products, services, and proven path to success.
I had the fantastic opportunity to sit down with Simon Jeffrey, Director of UK and Ireland Enterprise Core Solution Sales for NICE. Simon has been with NICE for around 16 years now, starting his career in the services space, then moving over to sales management cycles. Today, he’s responsible for various core solutions in the NICE portfolio and manages multiple teams across EMEA.
How Does Compliance Look for the Contact Centre Today?
Simon began by telling me that the face of compliance in the contact centre has begun to see some significant changes. “The world is more heavily-regulated today than it has ever been. In the past, contact centres didn’t need to worry as much about compliance. Most of the time, they recorded for quality management purposes, to improve agent performance and ensure they had the right records for growth. Now, brands are being forced to record their financial transactions for regulatory purposes. They need the right compliance solutions in place to help them maintain compliance in a proactive way, as well as deal with the multiple compliance policies revisions that are happening in the new contact centre eco system.”
As regulations continue to change, Simon noted that larger contact centres seem to take the evolutions more seriously than smaller companies. “A lot of it comes down to perceived risk and budget. However, there are some larger businesses out there that are still taking the risk and simply trying to avoid the complexity of GDPR.”
Why Is Compliance So Complex?
The changes in compliance that will take place with the introduction of things like GDPR will lead to some fundamental changes in the way that many businesses operate. There are a lot of legacy systems out there that will need to be organised and replaced, including a vast selection of unstructured databases that clients will need to manage to meet new regulations.
“Many of our customers have begun to proactively approach us and ask what we can do to help them become more compliant. The end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018 have been very busy in the compliance space. There are hundreds of systems out there that need to be updated”.
Ultimately, preparing for compliance in the contact centre isn’t just about considering today and tomorrow, but about looking at yesterday too. All the unstructured data that’s still sitting on databases is a serious cause for concern for many companies, and few organisations have the structure in place to help them progress into a new world of data management.
How Are People Responding to Things Like GDPR?
Simon told me that NICE have seen a mixed response to the looming changes in compliance factors. Some organisations are trying to bury their heads in the sand, while others are tempted to delete all their previous data and start again from scratch. Of course, that latter option wouldn’t be possible for everyone, as evidence-keeping can trump GDPR.
“The commonality we’re seeing in GDPR preparation right now is that many companies are mapping their data and looking for guidance on what they can do to respond to GDPR – particularly the right to be forgotten. After all, if a company has ten years of data across multiple systems about previous customers, it can be difficult to find a way to extract and remove that data when the right to be forgotten emerges.”
Organisations are increasingly turning to vendors like NICE for support with contact centre compliance. In fact, NICE has recently begun offering free compliance days, where they ask customers to come along and find out more about GDPR, and how they can solve the problems they have today.
How Are NICE Supporting Compliance in the Contact Centre?
Simon noted that NICE have been offering both one-on-one support and group sessions for customers as needed to help reduce some of the panic that businesses are feeling around GDPR. On top of that, NICE also have many products in their portfolio that can help with managing compliance.
“What we have done is develop a proactive holistic offering, dedicated for contact centres, which we call the “Compliance Centre“. This sits on the recording platform and uses assurance dashboards to highlight interactions of concern for the customers – meaning, to highlight the compliance violations. When issues are highlighted, customers can use a policy manager to investigate those violations and take a corrective action in order to mitigate the risk and adhere to the regulation.”
The Compliance Centre has been something of a godsend for NICE’s clients, and there are even compliance APIs available for brands that want to integrate their own CRM solutions into their end-systems. “This has been a huge differentiator for us, as none of our competitors are offering anything close to the level of support that customers can get from NICE – particularly not with CRM integration.”
NICE products are also omnichannel-enabled so that customers can flag interactions regardless of where they might be located – whether it’s an audio conversation, video chat, SMS, or anything else.
What Do You Think the Future Looks Like for Contact Centre Compliance?
Looking into the future, Simon told me that compliance in the contact centre is becoming increasingly complex. “It’s becoming much harder for people to keep track of everything. That’s why we designed our Compliance Centre solution with a strong roadmap going forward. We’re constantly staying on top of changing regulations, so we can stay ahead of the curve to help to keep our customers compliant.”
The NICE Compliance Centre is set up in such a way that if any regulations changed, or new compliance guidelines emerged, they would be able to implement the changes easily. “We know that protecting our clients with compliance solutions is something that never just stops. It’s like the omnichannel world, it keeps evolving.”
Top Tips for Contact Centres in 2018?
As we came to the end of our conversation, I asked Simon for any major tips he had to offer the contact centre in the complicated compliance era of 2018. He told me that his view is, “Plan, plan, plan. Prepare, prepare, prepare and take the regulations seriously.”
For Simon and the experts behind NICE, staying ahead of compliance is all about making sure that you don’t take unnecessary risks or simply bury your head in the sand.
“Companies need to show that they’re proactively making attempts to deliver on compliance.”
Eventually, Simon believes that those who try to avoid compliance requirements will end up getting caught, and this means a fine that could wipe out most organisations.
“Ultimately, it’s about taking it seriously and teaming up with the right people. Get the right advice, map all your data, put your plan together, and show that you’re actively striving to meet with new regulations.”
