Contact Center Rules: Staying Consent Compliant
This post is a must-read for anyone running a cloud contact center solution. With the EU GDPR now in effect, these are some of the ways you can ensure to stay consent-compliant for your Customer Service Center.
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is now in full effect, so it’s time to start understanding what we need to do as contact center owners and operators to ensure compliance with this new law.
It’s a drag when you call up an organization, only to be met with an answering machine or cyborg assistant. But there are some phone numbers where you’ll get people on the other end as soon as possible.
Cloud contact center solutions are notorious for violating people’s privacy. After all, they need to know your name and address just to process your query!
But there’s a problem with that: It is not impossible that we receive the same response. In fact, it is almost guaranteed that we will—and if you’re not aware. An organization whose phone number has been given to you will know.
This makes it so that both the requestor and the receiver have a definite incentive to violate your privacy, just to make sure the request is passed on to the next unsuspecting person.
Understand the Regulations
The GDPR is a regulation passed by the European Union regarding the protection of privacy and data protection rights in EU member states. It applies to companies that provide services to EU customers. The TCPA is a law enacted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Applies to most U.S. telemarketing calls to residential phone lines, including those of contact centers.
Clear and Transparent Consent
Ensure that consumer consent for the collection of personal information is clearly and concisely stated and that it is readily available upon request.
Data Subject Rights
As an international contact center provider, you are required to respect the rights of the data subject under GDPR. For example:
The data subject has a right:
Request for information about a collection of personal data, including its source; access to his or her personal data; rectification of inaccurate or incomplete personal data; erasure of all personal data; portability of one’s personal data (if applicable); restriction of processing; objection in regards to processing.
No Call Lists
You are also required to follow the TCPA. In the United States, the TCPA is intended to protect consumers from robocalls and other unwanted commercial phone calls. It contains a list of call types that cannot be placed without prior consent (e.g., outbound calls to cell phones require prior express consent).
Prepare for Fines
Data protection laws also come with penalties for violation – and increasingly this includes fines for violating data protection laws in the EU and GDPR as well as in other regions like Australia. Ensure your organization is prepared financially and legally if you get fined by local regulators or authorities for a breach of data protection or privacy law.
Privacy and Data Protection Compliance Manager
Your organization needs a person in charge of data protection and privacy compliance, who is accountable for decision-making on any operational issues.
Implement an Accessible Privacy Policy
Because GDPR compliance requirements are quite strict, your policy should be simple, easy to comply with, and understandable for consumers.
Operational Procedures
Regulators are looking for specific procedures to ensure that data is collected and used responsibly, including how to handle complaints if any, as well as what you do with consumer data upon request or after the cloud contact center solution closure.
Credit Monitoring and Data Breach Prevention:
If your organization has a business sip trunk provider to help process personal information, it should have detailed processes in place to investigate data breach incidents, including notification of affected individuals.
Data Protection Impact Assessments:
You must ensure you have a process in place that demonstrates how the processing of personal data is likely to impact the privacy rights of individuals and requires consent under GDPR.
Customer rights:
Be prepared to facilitate customer privacy-related complaints. This means:
Request and provide customer data upon request; Provide a permanent deletion of the consumer data after the closure of the contact center (if applicable); Provide credit/debit card information as well as any other payment data requested by consumers to make payments for a service or a product; and Comply with data security requirements and process under all applicable laws in respect of handling, storing, maintaining, using processing and disclosing personal information.
Maintain records:
As corporate business phone solutions get bigger their services become more complex and require more training to understand. The larger your agency grows, employees need to fill out more paperwork, enter more data into CRM systems, and file more forms with authorities.
Regular Audits and Compliance Checks:
Regularly review your policies and practices to ensure they comply with GDPR regulations. Ensure that each staff member understands the importance of complying with all regulations and how to follow the organization’s policies.
Security Measures:
Implement appropriate technical, operational, and physical security measures to protect personal data in transit, while stored on site, or during processing.
Data Retention Policies:
Designate a data retention policy for your company that includes the length of time data. Data items may retain. Have a plan in place for regularly reviewing and assessing current retention practices as you may need to update them over time (e.g., when incorporating new technology).
Partner Contractual Requirements:
Because your contact center partners also process personal data. On behalf, you are responsible for making sure they comply with all relevant regulations, including GDPR. Understand the requirements of any partner contracts that relate to privacy and data protection rights before signing them. The contract must be clear about who is responsible for what, and communicate the nature of the service provided. Any specific clauses must be sufficiently clear and conspicuous in their meaning. If you are creating a new contract containing additional terms for your existing partner. Consult your legal counsel to make sure of the scope of any contract.
Managers maintain a contact center data protection policy. It specifies how they will protect the privacy of their customers. The types of personal information that will be collected and transferred. It gets access to collected information; what security measures are in place to protect this personal data; and what happens if this information is lost or stolen. This policy should be reviewed and approved by the company’s legal department.
Conclusion:
The pressure to conform to data protection regulations is increasingly high. Make sure you work with a business sip trunk provider to identify the requirements of your organization. According to the terms of privacy and data protection laws. Contact center personnel should be trained about this data protection policy, as well as customer privacy policies in general.
Published: October 25th, 2023
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