In a modern, globalized business environment where organizations must provide services across multiple jurisdictions, managing customer interactions to provide high-quality customer service and support is an increasingly difficult task. While there are practical, organizational, and financial challenges that can make it difficult to deliver services, the regulatory environment of a given jurisdiction is just as, if not more important than, these other areas due to how it directly impacts an organization’s ability to do business if compliance is not achieved.
AI agents can provide an efficient, effective, and dedicated solution to many obstacles facing organizations today. These benefits are enormous and scalable, but many users have questions about regulatory compliance issues, especially within the European Union.
In this article we’ll explore the benefits of AI agents in addition to regulatory issues and their solutions.
Improving the Customer Experience with an AI Voice Agent
The ability to deploy AI voice agents has revolutionized customer service and many other industries, allowing organizations to provide inbound and outbound calls with a dedicated, professional service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. By using AI voice agents, organizations can reduce operational costs by hiring and deploying a much smaller human workforce where it is needed while avoiding the chance for human error in customer service and other applications. An AI agent can be the perfect worker: it does not get tired, can work constantly, does not make costly human errors, and can operate in multiple languages seamlessly.
An AI voice agent can significantly improve the overall customer experience while reducing operational costs and increasing the overall efficiency of a service. Through ordinary phone calls, users can direct these phone agents to perform often quite complex tasks, reducing the need for human intervention without compromising quality.
AI agents provide consistent, scalable service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. While they don’t necessarily eliminate the need for human call operators, virtual agents can provide dedicated service at a fraction of the cost while reducing the need for human intervention. This can reduce operating costs, making them a cost-effective solution for many businesses that need to provide dedicated customer service.
The provision of high-quality, dedicated customer service and support by AI agents has revolutionized the industry. Such technological advancement is not without issue: many jurisdictions have regulatory environments that present a significant obstacle to the deployment of AI agents.
GDPR Requirements and Penalties for Non-Compliance
A set of far-reaching principles and requirements governing data management and collection, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation seeks to protect users’ personal data and sensitive information from potential data breaches.
The consequences of non-compliance can be severe: whichever is the highest of a €20 million fine or a fine of 4% of annual global turnover may be levied against non-compliant organizations.
Seven main principles govern the General Data Protection Regulation:
Lawfulness, Fairness, and Transparency: Data processing should be lawful, fair, and transparent to the data subject.
Purpose Limitation: Personal data must only be collected for a specific, explicit, and legitimate purpose and should not be processed in a way that is incompatible with these purposes.
Data Minimization: Data collected should be limited to what is necessary and relevant to the purpose for which it has been collected.
Accuracy: Personal data must be accurate and up to date wherever possible.
Storage Limitation: Data must not be kept any longer than is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected.
Integrity and Confidentiality: Data must be stored and handled with appropriate security measures, such as protection against unauthorized access, accidental loss, or accidental disclosure.
Accountability: The data controller ensures compliance and deals with potential compliance issues.
Customers and clients have several rights, including the right to access data, the right to the erasure of personal data, and the right to obtain their data in a machine-readable format.
How does GDPR affect AI voice agents?
AI voice agents are bound by GDPR. Whether used as a customer service agent, a chatbot, a virtual assistant or any other application, AI agents must operate within the framework provided by the General Data Protection Regulation. This presents several challenges. The areas where GDPR impacts AI voice agents the most involve consent management, transparency, data minimization, and security measures.
AI agents will often be required to collect data as part of their operation, which means users must be sufficiently informed about what data will be collected, how it will be used, and about their rights to modify, access, or delete their data. To comply with the transparency principle, users should know and understand why and how their data is being used.
Although it is easy to collect multiple kinds of information automatically when users access an automated service, the minimization principle means that unless there is a specific and reasonable purpose for collecting data, it should not be collected at all. Therefore, if data on e.g. location is being collected, users must be able to give explicit consent for this and understand exactly why the information is being collected and how it is being used. For security, AI voice agents must have sufficient data encryption such as end to end encryption, access controls, and regular system audit trails. As end users have several rights, such as the right to access or right to erase data, AI voice agents should be designed to facilitate these rights — or point users to human agents who can.
How can AI voice agents achieve and maintain GDPR compliance?
To ensure proper compliance, build customer trust, and provide a superior customer experience, AI voice agents should be built from the ground up to integrate GDPR principles into their function. The principles as outlined in GDPR legislation form a comprehensive set of fundamental areas that must be addressed by any system to maintain compliance.
End users must be able to give explicit consent prior to any data collection; such data that is collected must be necessary and protected using sufficient security measures. The system can easily scale and be quickly trained to deal with changing regulations, ensuring ongoing compliance despite new regulations.
By ensuring users are adequately informed about the nature and function of the AI agent using plain language to explain data protection and secure handling practices, AI agents can maintain regulatory compliance.
Gaining Strategic Advantage with fully GDPR Compliant Voice.ai Voice Agents
Voice.ai offers a comprehensive, compliant AI voice agent solution to businesses at all scales: from independent small businesses to large multinational corporations, voice agents can revolutionize customer interactions and provide dedicated, consistent benefits. Unlike many other systems, Voice.ai’s voice agents are simple to integrate and set up. Seamlessly integrated into existing systems and phone-based workflows, the AI agent works 24/7 and is always ready to handle calls professionally and efficiently.
Available in more than 29 languages, the system is capable of operating in multiple languages seamlessly and simultaneously across multiple user interactions, serving multiple countries with ease — while building all important customer trust and improving efficiency by allowing customers to use their native language for assistance.
With an easy setup, seamless integration into existing phone systems, natural language processing, and data synchronization in real time, voice.ai agents offer a superior customer experience that’s scalable, cost-effective, and tireless. Our system helps organizations remain compliant thanks to expert training on relevant regulations in industries as diverse as healthcare, e-commerce, insurance, banking and finance, and beyond. Compliance is not just essential, it’s at the very heart of what we do. With a fully compliant system, meeting GDPR requirements is not only effortless, it’s built in.
Fully Automated Service and Compliance: The Future of AI
Customer expectations grow year on year. Organizations must provide increasing levels of service to a customer base that’s increasingly demanding of fast, bespoke solutions. Dedicated, consistent service at scale — and affordable cost — becomes ever more necessary for businesses to maintain a competitive edge.
AI agents can provide dedicated and scalable solutions that respect data privacy, protect sensitive customer data, and maintain compliance tirelessly — freeing up valuable human resources. By investing in fully compliant agents, businesses and other organizations can stay ahead of the competition, prevent potential breaches, and maintain all-important customer relationships in a demanding environment.
