What is contact center compliance?

Contact center compliance refers to the processes and practices put in place by contact centers to ensure that they adhere to the laws, regulations, and standards established by governing bodies.

While compliance regulations vary by country and industry, notable compliance acts include GDPR, PCI-DSS, and HIPAA.

As well as legal requirements, there are also standards that businesses can aim to meet — for instance, the ISO 27000 family is focused on cybersecurity and data privacy. There are no legal penalties for not meeting these standards, but successfully implementing them can help with your compliance efforts, as well as boost your reputation.

Why contact center security is important

Contact centers often handle incredibly sensitive data. Personally identifiable information (PII), such as addresses and phone numbers, along with credit card details and health records, can be exploited by attackers for nefarious purposes. So ensuring contact center security and compliance is paramount for safeguarding this data from evolving threats.

Let’s take a look at why contact center security is so crucial.

Preventing data breaches

A data breach is any security incident in which the sensitive data held by your company is stolen, accessed, lost, or disclosed by an unauthorized party.

Whether it happens accidentally or deliberately, a data breach can have damaging consequences for your business. According to IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report, the global average cost of a data breach is $4.88M — the highest it’s ever been.

By implementing contact center security compliance measures, you significantly reduce your risk of being the victim of a data breach. Compliance regulations stipulate the guidelines and best practices that you should follow to help you secure your data against accidental and nefarious threats.

Avoiding legal and financial risks

Compliance security regulations are enforceable by law. So failing to comply can put your business at risk of legal action, as well as substantial fees and hefty penalties.

Take the company Dish Network. In 2020, they were hit with a $210 million verdict after allegedly making unsolicited telemarketing calls to non-customers on the Do Not Call (DNC) registry. Other big brands, like Papa John's and Bank of America, have also been forced to pay million-dollar settlements for TCPA non-compliance.

This serves as a cautionary warning that failing to respect data privacy and security can financially hurt your business. But with strict security policies and procedures in place, you can avoid finding yourself in hot water with the legal system.

Maintaining customer trust and brand reputation

If customers don’t trust you, then they won’t do business with you — it’s as simple as that. One of the fastest ways to erode customer trust and loyalty is by failing to protect their sensitive data.

A data breach can do widespread, long-term damage to your brand’s reputation. Even if a customer wasn’t directly affected by the breach, they’ll be reluctant to support you going forward, resulting in masses of lost customers.

This can be seen in a recent report by Vercara. In their research into the importance of consumer trust, 66% of customers said that they wouldn’t trust a company if they were a victim of a cyberattack that successfully exposed their private data. In fact, 75% are happy to sever ties with a company after a cybersecurity incident — regardless of whether they were impacted directly.

What are the industry standards for contact center compliance?

Your company’s location and industry will dictate the standards you need to meet —  for instance, healthcare and finance have very specific regulations. That said, contact center compliance generally consists of the following industry standards.

Gaining consent when recording customer conversations 

Recording your customer phone calls has various use cases and benefits for call and contact  centers. It can help you conduct quality assurance, as well as ensure agent compliance, resolve disputes, and improve your training and coaching programs.

But if you want to record calls, you need to abide by the rules set out by the TCPA (or the equivalent in your country of operation) and obtain your customers’ consent.

This typically means letting your customers know in advance that the call is going to be recorded. You can do this efficiently by playing an automated message when the caller connects to your company, such as “calls will be recorded for quality and training purposes.”

Protecting customer financial data

For some industries, such as hospitality, healthcare, and professional services, over-the-phone payments have become standard, providing customers with a fast, convenient way to make payments.

However, accepting payments over the phone can also leave you vulnerable to security risks. This is why all contact centers must comply with PCI-DSS, which is a set of rules designed to protect customers’ financial data.

PCI-DSS regulates how contact centers store, handle, and use customers’ cardholder data to protect it against breaches and threats while it’s being used to process over-the-phone payments.

Safeguarding health information

For contact centers within the healthcare industry, special measures need to be implemented to protect your customers’ health information. This data includes things like medical records, test results, and diagnoses, as well as medical appointment details and healthcare invoices.

If your contact center stores sensitive and personally identifiable health information, then you need to strictly comply with the HIPAA act. This is to ensure that your customers’ health data is secure and protected from unauthorized access.

Eliminating spam/nuisance calls

From telemarketing to transactional communications, there are lots of reasons why your contact center might reach out to customers by phone or SMS. However, contacting customers without their permission is a violation of their privacy — and, as it happens, a violation of TCPA regulations.

TCPA regulations aim to prevent contact centers from reaching out to prospective or current customers who don’t want to be contacted. For outbound call centers, respecting customers’ wishes for privacy helps you maintain a positive reputation and build customer trust, all while keeping you compliant.

3 key contact center compliance acts

PCI-DSS, TCPA, HIPAA — we’ve mentioned these three compliance acts throughout this article, but what exactly are they? Let’s explore the three key contact center compliance acts that you need to know:

1. PCI-DSS

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) is a set of rules that govern how businesses process, store, and transmit debit, credit, and other card payment transactions.

PCI-DSS was jointly created by five leading credit card companies — Visa, Mastercard, Discover, JCB, and American Express — to protect cardholders’ information, such as card validation codes (CVVs), expiration dates, and PINs. It covers card payments made over the phone, as well as online and in person.

PCI compliance for contact centers involves implementing specific measures and processes, such as:

• Installing and maintaining firewalls

• Implementing strict password protection practices

• Encrypting stored and transmitted cardholder data

• Installing and maintaining anti-virus software

• Regularly updating and testing systems and software

• Restricting data access using strict access controls

2. TCPA

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) was put in place to prohibit businesses from engaging in irrelevant, repetitive, and unsolicited calling practices. Specifically, it limits how contact centers can make telemarketing calls, use automated phone systems (such as autodialers), and send prerecorded messages.

The aim of TCPA is to protect customer privacy and ensure ethical use of customer data. To comply with their guidelines, you should:

• Allow customers to opt out of receiving marketing communications

• Create and regularly update an internal “Do-Not-Call” list and ensure that customers on this list are not contacted

• Only contact customers during reasonable social hours (typically between 8 am and 9 pm in the customers’ time zone)

• Obtain prior express written consent from customers before using automated phone systems or prerecorded messages to send marketing calls or texts

3. HIPAA

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a strict set of rules that any contact center handling protected patient information must comply with.

These guidelines center around privacy and security, dictating how patient information should be recorded, accessed, stored, used, and shared with third parties. This ensures data privacy, security, and confidentiality, protecting patient data from data breaches, fraud, and theft.

Non-compliance with HIPAA can have severe legal and financial implications. Notable security measures stipulated by HIPAA include:

• Data encryption at rest and in transit, including phone recordings

• Secure text messaging solutions

• Strict access controls

• Consistent HIPAA compliance training for contact center agents

• Regular audits

How businesses ensure their contact centers are compliant

There’s no one single way to ensure contact center compliance. Instead, it requires a mixture of careful strategies. Here are some key methods you can use to ensure that you’re abiding by rules and regulations.

Contact center monitoring

Monitoring and evaluating customer phone calls can provide insight into potential compliance failings and risks. With the right contact center solution, you can not only monitor calls live, but also evaluate call recordings in depth and at scale, unlocking a true representation of your compliance adherence.

Agent coaching and training 

Regular agent training and coaching can increase agents’ understanding of compliance regulations and company policies. Along with empowering agents to take accountability for their adherence to regulations, it helps them spot potential compliance risks and failings happening around them.

Secure contact center technology

Outdated call center technologies, such as traditional landlines or legacy systems, can put your business at risk. Modern communications solutions like Vonage Contact Center are built with enterprise-grade contact center security, delivering certified compliance with key regulations including PCI-DSS and HIPAA, along with ISO 27001 and SOC Type 2.

10 best practices for contact center compliance monitoring

Staying on top of contact center compliance isn’t easy. Not only must you implement the security measures we’ve discussed, but you need to consistently monitor and evaluate your compliance adherence.

How do you do it? Here are 10 best practices for monitoring contact center compliance.

1. Develop a compliance policy

A compliance policy is a document that outlines your compliance processes, guidelines, and expectations. It’s essentially the framework for establishing contactl center regulatory compliance.

A well-defined policy provides transparency to contact center employees, helping them follow legal regulations, internal policies, and ethical standards. It will also help your IT team deal with data in an appropriate way.

Just remember that your compliance policy isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it document. It needs to be continuously updated in response to changing legislation, regulations, and internal processes. Reviewing and updating your policy helps you monitor compliance in alignment with the evolving regulatory landscape.

2. Maintain and update your Do-Not-Call (DNC) list

A “Do-Not-Call” list details the phone numbers of customers who have opted out of receiving telemarketing calls, emails, or texts. By regularly updating your DNC you can ensure every customer’s wishes are respected.

Agents should be trained on how to identify and respect DNC requests, as well as how to ensure that the DNC is accurate and complete.

3. Regularly review call scripts

Call scripts are resources given to your agents that help them navigate phone calls compliantly. They outline responses and actions that should be taken when handling different situations.

Failing to regularly update call scripts puts you at risk of widespread non-compliance. Stay up-to-date with the latest changes in regulations and periodically review and update your call scripts to ensure that they remain compliant.

4. Update agents on regulation changes as part of your regular training program

The importance of agent training cannot be overstated. In addition to continuously refreshing your agents on key standards, you should also update them whenever any regulatory or company policy changes occur. This will help you foster a culture of compliance, reducing risks and ensuring that everyone is up-to-date about the latest changes.

5. Follow consent and opt-in best practices

We’ve covered how important it is to get consent from customers before you contact them or record their calls. Additionally, you should keep accurate, updated consent records and opt-in requests. This eliminates the risk of accidentally contacting a DNC customer. And, should a customer raise a dispute, your records can help you defend your case.

6. Review your access controls and permissions

Allowing current or ex-employees to have access to data they shouldn’t can put you at significant risk of data breaches. According to the Cybersecurity Index’s 2023 Insider Threat Report, 74% of businesses say insider threat attacks have been getting more frequent, citing motivations ranging from monetary gain to theft, fraud, and reputational damage.

Regularly reviewing access controls and permissions can help you identify suspicious access, quickly spot risks, and prevent accidental or malicious breaches.

7. Monitor agents using their unique identity number

With insider threats on the rise, monitoring agent activity can help you protect customer data from data breaches, fraud, tampering, and other cybersecurity incidents. PCI-DSS regulations state that every agent should be assigned a unique identity number that tracks their activity relating to sensitive data.

This means that should an incident occur, you can trace the agent responsible and hold them accountable.

8. Enforce clear documentation and reporting policies

Clear, transparent documentation can help you monitor compliance, as well as  increase your defense against compliance disputes.

Along with a clearly documented compliance policy, you should also maintain records of call logs, call recordings, consent information, and other relevant data.

Make sure that these documents are stored in a highly secure environment and are protected by access controls.

9. Use automated call monitoring 

With the right contact center solution, you can monitor calls automatically to streamline and validate compliance. AI-driven contact center technologies can also monitor and analyze calls for you, immediately notifying you of potential compliance violations.

Using these swift insights, you can promptly identify, respond to, and mitigate compliance issues before they do serious harm.

10. Conduct compliance audits

A compliance audit reviews, monitors, and analyzes the success of your attempts at compliance. This involves tracking and analyzing call records, customer feedback, agent performance metrics, and other relevant documentation to form an accurate picture of your compliance environment.

As a best practice, aim to conduct a large-scale compliance audit either annually or every six months. You might want to consult a third party occasionally, too, as there’s an increased chance they’ll see something you might overlook.

Common contact center compliance challenges and mistakes

With so many rules to follow, contact center compliance can be a challenge for ill-informed businesses. This can lead to serious mistakes being made, such as:

• Recording conversations without consent: TCPA states that both agents and customers should be aware that their phone calls are being recorded. Failing to obtain consent can lead to hefty fines and legal action.

• Contacting customers on DNC lists: The penalty for making unsolicited telemarketing calls to customers on DNC lists can be financially and reputationally ruinous.

• Disregarding state-specific regulations: Data privacy regulations can vary by state. Failing to understand and keep up-to-date with the specifics of laws in your state can lead to non-compliance due to negligence.

• Mishandling customer data: Mishandling PII, financial data, or health information is a serious compliance violation that puts businesses at risk of incidents like data breaches, data loss, fraud, and theft.

• Providing insufficient training: When contact center employees are uneducated about compliance regulations and policies, it puts your business at risk — they might fail to seek consent or accidentally mishandle data.

• Using outdated contact center technologies: Outdated legacy phone system technologies are often incapable of supporting modern security needs, meaning that businesses using them struggle to comply with regulations.

Impact of non-compliance in contact centers

Failing to comply with regulatory requirements can have a severely negative impact on your contact center’s finances, reputation, and revenue:

• Penalties and fines: If you’re found to be in violation of compliance regulations, you could be fined thousands — or even millions — of dollars, causing significant financial strain.

• Legal action: Regulators or customers may raise a lawsuit against you, which can be costly, productivity-draining, and reputationally damaging.

• Reputational damage: Non-compliance can hurt your company’s reputation, especially if your non-compliance results in a data breach or directly affects customers.

• Eroded customer satisfaction, trust, and loyalty: Non-compliant practices can harm customers, leading to complaints, dissatisfaction, lost trust, and widespread churn.

• Lost revenue: Lost customers equates to lost sales, meaning that your revenue will take a massive hit from non-compliance.

• Disrupted contact center operations and productivity: Regulatory violations can grind contact center operations to a halt as you’re forced to tackle legal action, correct non-compliant practices, and educate employees.

How can software help ensure contact center compliance?

There are some fundamental data security measures that every contact center software should enforce, such as end-to-end data encryption, hardened system security, secure call recordings, and vulnerability testing. But it doesn’t end there.

Take advantage of some of the most up-to-date technology available, including:

• AI speech analytics: Speech analytics software can automatically monitor your calls to quickly determine adherence to call scripts, flag certain key phrases, and analyze calls and texts for non-compliant language and other compliance failings.

• Interactive voice response (IVR): Automated IVR systems can greet incoming callers with a message detailing your call recording process. This streamlines compliance by eliminating agent error, ensuring that every caller is aware that  their call is being recorded.

• Live coaching: Many contact center solutions come with live coaching features that enable supervisors to provide on-the-spot assistance to agents. With Vonage, you can even do this in “whisper” mode to minimize disruption for your customers.

• Automated reporting: Instead of manually collecting compliance reports — which can lead to human error — you can automate reporting to confidently generate accurate reports for auditing.

Stay on top of contact center compliance

Maintaining a compliant contact center comes with challenges, but it’s vital to adhere to regulatory requirements if you want to avoid legal action, financial loss, and reputational ruin. The best way to maximize compliance is to invest in compliance-first software, like Vonage Contact Center.

Vonage offers enterprise-grade contact center security compliance, helping you navigate the regulatory compliance minefield. Along with data encryption and robust system security features, Vonage invests heavily in security and privacy measures and maintains a wide range of compliance certifications across our product lines. They include ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, SOC, HITRUST, and CSA STAR, to name just a few.

This is all alongside a customizable IVR, intelligent speech analytics, automated reporting, and live agent coaching. And, of course, you get powerful communication features on top.

Discover the role Vonage Contact Center can play in helping you with compliance — get in touch today.