When it comes to meeting the needs of non-English speaking customers, many of today’s leading contact centers partner with a language services provider (LSP) for telephone interpretation support. As with all third-party vendors, it’s important you take the time to carefully vet your LSP. How are they maintaining the confidentiality, integrity and security of the personal information your customers have entrusted you with? From account numbers, to billing records, to genetic information, telephone interpreters come in contact with many different types of personal information in the daily discharge of their duties.
Are you currently partnered with an LSP? Are you considering partnering with an LSP for interpretation support? Here are five questions every multilingual contact center needs to be asking their language services vendor!
1. Have your employees and independent contractors received privacy awareness training?
All employees and independently contracted interpreters should be given a specific set of instructions on the proper way to handle personal information, the process for reporting a potential data breach and penalties for non-compliance.
2. How are you monitoring the activity of your independent contractors?
Your LSP should have a dedicated Quality Assurance team in place. These individuals should be monitoring and evaluating independent contractor activity on a daily basis to ensure compliance requirements are being met to the fullest.
3. Have you engaged a third party vendor to conduct a risk assessment?
A third party security firm should have carefully assessed your LSPs policies, procedures, information systems and network infrastructure to ensure the complete privacy of your customers current and future personal information.
4. Have you developed security policies and procedures with regards to private information?
Your LSP should have a specific set of security policies and procedures in place for the following: password authentication, e-mail and Internet usage, inactivity timeouts, sending and receiving personal information by fax, encryption, document shredding, data loss prevention, clean workstations, mobile device management, independent contractor credentialing systems and content management systems.
5. What happens in the event of a data breach?
It’s important your LSP have a written policy in place detailing the action steps that will be taken should there be a breach in data. This policy should also state if the organization will hold the breaching party accountable for his / her actions (i.e., accidental vs. willful).
These are just some of the many questions multilingual contact centers should be asking their language services vendor to ensure the protection of their customers data.
