Exceptional CX compliance is a crucial consideration for every contact center.
No matter which industry you’re involved in or what kind of conversations you have with customers, there will be strict regulations and guidelines surrounding your company. Failure to adhere to the rules in your industry or location could lead to hefty fines, lost customers, and a damaged reputation.
Fortunately, as the regulatory landscape evolves, the tools and technologies available to business leaders are transforming too. Today’s companies can work with various CX compliance companies to access state-of-the-art technology. The right tools can help with everything from automatic data redaction, to data storage.
Most business owners’ biggest challenge is figuring out which compliance solutions and tools they should invest in for their teams. This step-by-step guide will give you the direction and insights you need to choose a secure CX strategy.
Step 1: Assess Your Regulatory Landscape
The first step in comparing tools for CX compliance is learning which regulatory guidelines affect your company. The policies you’ll need to follow will vary depending on your location, industry, and the type of data you collect.
For most contact centers, there are two kinds of compliance to consider: data security and industry-specific standards. Data security covers GDPR, CCPA, and frameworks like SOC 2 and ISO 27001. These concepts are relevant to virtually every type of contact center.
Industry-specific regulations examine how companies manage and use data in a specific sector. In the healthcare landscape, patient information is regulated by HIPAA guidelines. In the financial industry, there’s PCI compliance to consider. Conducting a full assessment of your current regulatory landscape will ensure you choose tools and resources crucial to your business operations.
Step 2: Define Essential Tools for CX Compliance
Once you have a clear view of the regulatory landscape, you can identify the critical tools to preserve your company’s reputation and protect your data. For instance, many contact center and CX compliance regulations require companies to record and store data safely.
This means you may need to invest in tools to collect valuable information, such as voice recordings, screen recordings, and shared text across various channels. You’ll also need to ensure your compliance tools can help you make the most of the data you collect.
Look for platforms with integrated capture and data management tools, reporting capabilities, and advanced analytics. Depending on your regulatory landscape, it may be necessary to search for additional features, too, such as the ability to redact or encrypt financial data in recordings.
Step 3: Ensure Integrations are Available
Staying compliant in the omnichannel contact center means ensuring you can collect and manage data from every communication channel in one environment. An end-to-end solution that allows you to draw screen and voice recordings from every platform into one space is crucial for complete visibility. It can also help to minimize gaps and issues with your data.
Look for solutions that integrate with your business’s tools, from your CCaaS platform to collaboration technology like Microsoft Teams. You may also need to find tools connecting to legacy PTSN systems and existing on-premises platforms.
Most of the top CX compliance technology providers will support integrations with all tools and devices or offer APIs so you can streamline your connections.
Step 4: Prioritize Ease of Use and Automation
As the communication and customer service landscapes continue to evolve, maintaining high levels of regulatory compliance is growing more complex. Investing in a solution that’s not only easy to use but helps to minimize repetitive tasks can help to make your teams more efficient.
When comparing CX compliance tools, look for solutions that offer access to automated services. For instance, some tools will allow companies to automatically redact sensitive information from recordings before submitting it to a CRM or database.
Other solutions will automatically request permission to record a conversation from a customer, minimizing the work your team members need to do. Some tools allow companies to set up their own automated compliance workflows. With these resources, companies can automatically notify the right members of their team when compliance problems arise, mitigating disaster.
Step 5: Consider Innovative CX Compliance Tech
Speaking of disruptive technologies like automation, companies can also use other powerful tools to improve their compliance strategy. For instance, many top CX compliance solutions now have built-in artificial intelligence.
AI recording tools with natural language processing and understanding capabilities can more accurately transcribe conversations for auditing purposes. They can also draw insights from each discussion, helping with quality management and training strategies. AI solutions can also take over the work of your team members, asking for permission to record data or sending recordings and summaries to database systems automatically.
The latest AI advancements and machine learning technologies can even analyze compliance trends and provide insights into how companies can improve security and privacy standards. Some tools can generate automatic reports, dashboards, and real-time insights into compliance issues.
Step 6: Make Sure You’re Ready to Evolve
Finally, it’s essential to recognize that the compliance landscape for contact centers and CX professionals is constantly evolving. As new forms of communication emerge, government and regulatory agencies will implement new standards for businesses to follow.
Working with a compliance vendor that adapts to your changing needs is crucial. It’s also worth ensuring it’s easy to add new channels for recording, compliance, and archiving purposes into your tech stack anytime.
The best vendors will make it easy to scale and provide consistent guidance and support to help you make the most of your security strategy.
Choosing the Right CX Compliance Tech
Finding the right CX compliance technology for your business can seem complex. The contact center has many different regulations to consider, and they all come with unique demands. With the steps above, you should be able to ensure that your compliance strategy preserves your data, protects your business, and defends your reputation.