By Krishna Baidya, Industry Manager, APAC Customer Contact Practice and Sathya Subramanian, Senior Research Analyst, Customer Contact Practice
Organizations globally, recognize that superior customer service can both increase revenue and be a competitive differentiator for them in an increasingly competitive business environment. Contact center plays a big part in that effort for organizations across different verticals and sizes. Many of these organizations outsource their contact center operations in order to concentrate on their core business. Such third-party outsourcers are usually specialists in the area of contact center outsourcing. Still, many organizations prefer to maintain their contact center operations in-house, although they realize the benefits of outsourcing. Security of sensitive data shared with outsourcers is one of the key concerns for such organizations. Although risk of consumer's personal information being compromised is not new, slew of incidences and the scale of its coming to light recently is enough to make consumers feel nervous about their personal data. The recent scam, exposed by the British media, of data sold by agents of outsourcing firms in India is an example. In this Market Insight, we discuss the best practices followed by some of the best outsourcers globally:
Factors behind data thefts:
Data thefts could be due to internal or external factors. Corrupt contact center employees act as internal agents for data thefts. Agents who have access to confidential customer data and proprietary company information are often soft targets for crime syndicates. Data can be routed out through e-mails, entered into a mobile phone or a USB device or through software installed on the system (eg. Spyware, network sniffers). Information can then be sold to fraudsters and tele-marketing companies.
