Sid Parashar, Chief Revenue Officer, Firstsource Solutions
Anyone in e-commerce knows: the more gates you put in between hitting ‘checkout’ and finalising payment, the more customers drop out of the purchasing chain. Millions of pounds and countless hours have been spent streamlining this consumer journey, but the latest regulation is set to throw a spanner in the works.
Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) is set to reshape many online payment processes. Coming into effect on 14th September 2019 as part of the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), the regulation will require online payments over £30 in the European Economic Area to be subject to standard two-factor authentication. While the objectives of reducing fraud and enhancing security are good ones, online businesses are under pressure to update their payment flows – fast. Banks will be declining many payments even with new authentication measures in place, due to users not understanding the process and inputting incorrect details. This will put a great deal of pressure on contact centres and internal administration teams.
Customers are likely to be confused and frustrated by the changes. They may well not be aware of the regulation or how it works — and they’ll likely be frustrated. Additional authentication may lead them to abandon the shopping cart. Or they might decide to call their credit or debit card provider with questions.
If businesses don’t prepare properly, existing infrastructure and resources will come under strain. It is always a challenge to quickly hire agents and managers to ramp up and down in sync with fluctuating call volumes. But, the consequences of failing to do so goes beyond a one-time influx of customer complaints. Businesses could face fines, a damaged share price, and ultimately long term impact to their brand reputation. HR will time to fill the necessary positions, and then there is the onboarding process. New hires need to be trained around SCA to give them the confidence to deal with frustrated customers.
The training challenge
A surge in call volumes in the aftermath of SCA is going to create headaches for contact centre leaders and heads of workforce planning. As demand ramps up, the natural instinct for management is to grow the workforce and make additional hires to fill the void. For the unprepared, however, it may be too little too late for this to be effective. HR departments can take 10-12 weeks to fill positions, and once that is done, there is the challenge of training these new staff.
To support the roll-out of SCA, contact centre staff will need to be able to handle queries from non-tech savvy customers with empathy. Moreover, they will need to ensure the accuracy of mobile phone contact information during customer engagements. Today especially, customers are very aware of the importance of protecting their personal data. And rightly so. Due to this, contact centre staff will need to be sensitive, and understand how to engage with people who are reluctant to provide the necessary information.
But, who will provide this training? Existing teams will be overwhelmed by staffing, scheduling and operational issues, left without any bandwidth to carry this out. With retail ecommerce sales expected to surpass $400 billion in 2022, balancing SCA compliance with consumers’ growing preference for one-click check-out process is going to be a tough task. Under contact centres can have a disastrous impact on customer experience and over staffing hits the bottom line.
One solution is for businesses to partner with an experienced contingent workforce solution provider partner that can allow them to scale up their contact centres to meet demand. This way, organisations have access to trained, experienced staff, which can be ramped up or down to adapt to customer response.
A flexible solution
Some leading UK banks are already putting measures in place to get ready for their anticipated call deluge. Rather than hire additional temporary staff, and taking on the burden of training and onboarding themselves, they are tapping into flexible contingent workforces to make sure they have SCA-trained workforce they need.
These organisations have started their preparations early, and are ready to provide strong customer experience around this incoming regulation. They will be able to ensure their contact centres are staffed with the right number of trained agents at all times to guide their customers — without the associated hiring headaches or infrastructure burden.
Beyond ensuring people are in place to handle requests, banks will also see value in wider consultancy around the customer engagement process. With these strategic partnerships established, contact centre experts can help banks develop best practice and processes for internal teams to handle requests even after the initial influx has died down.
For these leading banks, a lot of hard work has gone into ensuring the back-office can handle the arrival of SCA. However, for front end advisors and contact centres, the work is just beginning. Ultimately, what businesses need during this time are partnerships that provide a balance of flexibility and expertise. Nobody knows exactly how customers will react to SCA, which is why organisations must have every angle covered before the September deadline.
