Customers give out payment details over the phone even when they aren’t confident or haven’t considered whether the information will be stored safely, new research by Ultracomms has found.
The contact centre specialist surveyed 1,000 consumers on their experience of dealing with brands and presented the results in its comprehensive report It’s still good to talk: Consumer contact centre experiences in the age of the GDPR.
Despite strong public awareness around GDPR regulations, 45% of respondents who gave their payment card details either weren’t confident or didn’t consider whether their card details would be stored safely - 71% of these gave their details to a person over the phone.
Of this group, only 3% were aware that using secure payment technology is the safest method of providing payment details over the phone.
Derwyn Jones, CEO at Ultracomms, said: “This research tells us that there is a need for consumer education around what a secure transaction over the phone looks like and the right to demand secure transactions.”
“In face to face and online environments security has improved considerably by the introduction of Chip & PIN and Verified by Visa. This, whilst great news, has resulted in telephone payments being an open target for fraudsters. Proactivity by businesses to provide Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard services is vital to protecting consumers and ensuring they continue to feel confident.”
The research also highlighted concerns around consent to contact customers with 66% of those who were contacted by a brand stating that they had not given their consent for the contact to take place.
Derwyn continued: “It’s also important that after putting GDPR plans in place these are being executed effectively. With an increase in GDPR data breach reports, contact centres need to be transparent about why they are contacting people to avoid penalties. This needn’t require a complete overhaul of practices or processes, it can be quite simple - with the right guidance, companies can design great relationships with customers and build compliant processes into their existing contact centre workflow.”
The full Ultracomms report – It’s still good to talk”: Consumer contact centre experiences in the age of the GDPR - can be downloaded here.
We also took a look at some specific industry sectors to discover their particular characteristics: