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Companies, large and small, often hire a Business Process Outsourcing provider (BPO) to handle a portion of their calls, while keeping some portion in house. Companies outsource to remain more focused on their core business, to save money, and leverage the expertise that BPO providers have in hiring, motivating and managing call-center staff. Whatever the reasons, the BPO acts as a proxy for the company that hired them, even answering the phone as though they are employees of that company. When the BPO call center encounters a security breach, there can be some tense ambiguity as to where the fault lies. Was it a breakdown in people, process, systems, or a combination of these? Who is ultimately responsible for protecting the customers’ information?

 

The company will most often hold the BPO responsible because well trained, ethical customer service representatives are the BPO’s responsibility. So, it stands to reason, unethical or unwitting errors by the customer service representative is also the BPO’s area a responsibility.

 

In most cases, the company that hires the BPO dictates the terms of the arrangement. Since it is the company’s customers, they want to drive a specific, consistent experience so that customers feel no difference whether the call is handled by their in-house or BPO center. This typically means that the BPO is required to use the company’s processes and systems (technology).  Companies avoid using BPO systems in order to avoid “entanglements” that would complicate changing providers. The BPO responsibility is primarily on the people side – hiring, training, and managing performance. When it comes to handling sensitive customer data, the BPO owns the “people” component, while the company owns both the “process” and “system” components. To answer the question of responsibility, we must understand the source of the breach.

 

While BPO providers need to screen employees, and maintain solid site security procedures, it is the company that decides how and what customer data will be seen and handled by the BPO agents.

 

There are BPO sites that include paperless environments, full-body pat downs when coming/going, and posted security guards around every 10-15 agents. But none of these measures can prevent an agent from memorizing a customer’s SSN or Credit Card Number. In many of the common BPO locations, an agent can double his/her salary by memorizing and selling (on the black market) customer data. The only sure means of fraud prevention is to deploy procedures and systems that don’t require agents to have access. Is this possible?

 

The short answer is “yes”. Several companies, including KomBea Corporation, develop products that enable call-center agents to verify a customer’s identity or process a credit card without ever needing to see it or hear it. The agent is still able to open a customer record and handle their requests, but they don’t need a full view of the customer’s sensitive information, whether that be their SSN, account number, address, phone number, or credit card details. By leveraging the features of smart phones and even touch tones (on the customer side) and the capabilities of soft phones (on the agent side), information can be exchanged without the agent seeing or hearing it.

 

With this technology in place, companies can completely remove the temptation and risks of their BPO agents mishandling their customer’s credit card or social security numbers. The BPO’s can go back to hiring, motivating and managing call-center staff, while the company can deploy solutions that eliminate the risk of call center fraud once and for all. No need to finger point over call center breaches, when there are no call center breaches.

 

To learn more, watch this video.  

 

KomBea Corporation is based in Salt lake City, Utah and specializes in software solutions for call center operations allowing them to be more efficient, secure and profitable.  KomBea is leading the industry with SecureCall, which allows call center agents to take sensitive information without ever seeing or hearing that information. KomBea’s other products include ExactCall and ProtoCall. More information is available at www.KomBea.com.

Art Coombs is currently, President and CEO of KomBea Corporation. Art has been developing and marketing tools that blend human intelligence and automation to improve call center phone interactions. Art has also served as; Executive Vice President of business development and strategic initiatives for FirstSource; CEO and founder of Echopass Corporation world's premier contact center hosting environment, CEO of Sento Corporation; and Managing Director and VP of European business development for Sykes Enterprises.