With customers looking for greater flexibility and more empowerment, facilitating payments through your contact centre is now almost a must-have. Particularly in the wake of COVID-19, with so many customers unable to visit physical stores or offices, contact centre payments can be a safe and convenient way to help people make purchases, pay utility bills, and drive profitability. It is estimated that more than 80% of UK merchants leverage their call/contact centre to collect payment details.
But are organisations safeguarding payment processes, using the right security measures? That’s where pause and resume come in.
What is Pause and Resume in a Contact Centre?
Pause and resume (also called stop/start) is a contact centre functionality that allows agents to manually pause call recordings whenever any sensitive data is shared on a call and resume the recording once the data exchange is complete. It prevents any personally identifiable information (PII) or protected details like card CVV/CVC, social security number, etc. from being stored as part of contact centre records.
Given that so many contact centres use call recording technology today, pause and resume is among the most straightforward data security measures you can take.
The Case Against Pause and Resume
In the last few years, security and compliance advocates have been extremely vocal about the potential flaws in the pause and resume system, and the risk of compliance lapses. Agents might forget to press pause before details are shared, or might forget to press resume, which would hinder the recording’s quality and hold back QA/training. And when you upgrade your IT/telephony systems, you might need to revisit existing pause and resume configurations as well.
Further, pause and resume don’t restrict data access from agents. In case there is an insider threat already present in your organisation, your customer’s transaction information and PII could be at risk. For this reason, alternatives to pause and resume like DTMF masking and voice recognition-based payments are gaining in popularity, eliminating the need to have a listen-in in the first place.