10 Things to Ask When Choosing a Secure Platform to Handle Critical Customer Inquiries

My data may have been compromised in the recent hack

It took 4 calls and 42 minutes for Equifax to help with a simple question. As Brian Fung called the company’s Incident Response Line in an attempt to connect with a human vs. a “dedicated website”, he was uncomfortable leaving his information online. He stayed incredibly patient while dealing with Equifax’ scripted and unhelpful answers, automated messages, and disconnected phone calls.
This recent cybersecurity breach ranks among the largest in history, with 143 million American consumers’ SSN, birth dates, addresses, and driver’s license numbers compromised. That’s 143 million angry and distrusting consumers seeking answers and confirmations, seriousness and respect from Equifax’s helpline staff. That’s an incident that causes financial losses and the consumers’ lack of confidence in the Equifax brand on an indescribable scale, especially since the company had given itself some time to announce the news and to prepare how to handle this critical situation.

I just want to do it over the phone with you

No wonder these kinds of news make the financial industry nervous when engaging with digital services. Technology and finance have been in a symbiotic relationship for quite some time now but it is cybersecurity incidents like this that make the finance world nervous when dealing with FinTechs. And they make consumers nervous as well, when asked to deal with machines and websites vs. a human being who can sympathize and provide a well deserved peace of mind.
It is no surprise the latest and hottest technologies explored by the Finance industry, such as AI, machine learning, and blockchain will provide both excitement and a headache at the same time. There is no sense in refusing to participate in upgrading and innovating the rather conservative Finance industry with new digital and tech capabilities, and in the area of customer experience, especially since consumer expectations have shifted so much.

How to make your Customer Experience a little more human

It is in moments like the Equifax breach companies realize customer care needs attention and there are a lot of platforms that help with this task. One great example includes integrating co-browsing with your Incident Response Line flow, to make sure the human element is not lost, when consumers inquire about the status of their personal data. How to make sure the solution you choose to handle these interactions does not pose any additional security risks?

10 things to ask when choosing a platform to handle critical customer inquiries

We compiled a short list of questions you should ask when picking the right and secure technology meant to improve customer experience for your consumers interacting with your brand that may be under a storm. These questions are co-browsing solution focused but can be applied to other platforms as well:

1. Make sure cybersecurity is a core focus of the solution you are choosing and that it is designed to be extremely robust. What kind of industry standards are the providers compliant with?
2. Is there a need to gain or give access to a computer? Any installations of software or plugins required?
3. For co-browsing solutions specifically, is the shared web session fully isolated to a single browser tab, and does the session end automatically when the tab is closed?
4. Can you clearly separate who’s in control of the session and who can see what?
5. Is the solution built and deployed with a secure-first approach monitored 24/7?
6. Do they offer a secure cloud solution and the option to self-host the solution on-premise?
7. When nothing is being stored, nothing can be lost. Does this solution store any session data and personal information?
8. How strong is their encryption for data in transit? Is it the same one banks use?
9. Who can access the servers and are there comprehensive and audible logs of user activity?
10. Are their uptime and performance stats available publicly and will you receive disruption notifications immediately?

Nothing will bring the Equifax consumers’ data losses back, but the enormous frustration created by how the company chose to handle their customers’ inquiries could have been fixed. With a secure tool that also brings the human element to the interaction, the trust in your brand may be saved from being completely tarnished.
You guessed it, there is a secure CX solution that fulfills the above 10 criteria. You can try it today and see how it can help you become more trustworthy in the eyes of your customers.