The Art of War (and Compliance)

Despite the good and important purpose of compliance, one could expect that adjusting to its complexities and frequent changes would make for a bit of a battle in the contact center.

But now that we’re in the trenches, what exactly do the challenges looks like? To find out, we surveyed 200 decision-makers at companies across the US and Europe, each with between 1,000 and 10,000 employees. The gory details were fascinating.

Internal Conflict
A full 96% of companies admitted to having challenges in managing compliance. 52% said their top challenge is retrieving interactions at the request of specific data subjects. Given that some companies are housing data that has accrued over several decades, sifting through it all can understandably be a real struggle – like finding a needle in a haystack. 26% said their biggest challenge is accessing and managing data held in legacy systems. Which means that organizations need a solution capable of tagging, organizing, and searching through easily accessed data – no matter the systems of record. The takeaway is that contact centers struggle in a big way internally to effectively command their own often unwieldy ranks and systems.

External Challengers
A most obvious showdown takes place when auditors charge in from the outside and take on contact centers. 36% of companies said that while looking into recorded interactions, auditors scrutinize whether personal information is held appropriately. Other focus points include PCI and Payments as well as whether data from legacy systems is being managed right. These touchpoints of holding and management demand a certain amount of visibility – and organizations benefit from having a system in place that provides such visibility so that everything looks proper. The point is, like with any battle today where outside entities are watching – optics matter.

The Trials of Ordinary Folks
Big battles may be waged amongst big players – but it is the small, regular people who determine the ripples. Our survey shows that 88% of companies are getting requests from their customers on data privacy – asking to exercise the right to be forgotten under GDPR, for example. The contact centers must then be able to quickly and thoroughly delete all data pertaining to them. Even the most powerful organizations ultimately must contend with the masses – the customers who are their reason for existence. And since customers are increasingly knowledgeable of their rights and making privacy requests, contact centers need compliance systems that can meet their demands.

As next-level compliance establishes itself even further in the contact center, the battle is happening on three fronts – internally in terms of system management, and externally with auditors as well as with customers. Smart organizations are arming themselves with top-level platforms like NICE Compliance Center that allow them to meet the challenges on all fronts. Because ultimately, this battle should not be a battle at all, but simple growing pains, opening the way to a new more harmonious reality in which customers are – rightfully – protected by organizations, auditors, and systems alike, all working together.

To read the full report on compliance, click here.

To speak with a NICE representative, contact us.