Why Cyber Security is important for your Customer Service Teams

Ultimately, your business relies on trust. Your business is built on that as customers will only work with you if they feel they can trust you, particularly with their information. The minute a customer feels they cannot trust you then that is business lost.

Most of your teams will understand the importance of trust, but that does not necessarily mean that they understand security in the procedures they do and more can be done to protect our customer service teams to prevent the damage that can be caused by cybercrime.

Many of your customer services team may feel resistant to new cyber security measures in place as they can fear it hinders their practises and can complicate the ease with which they can use their systems. However, there are solutions at hand they can be simple to ensure the protection your business needs from cyber-crime. However, the biggest hurdle is often out-dated infrastructure, lack of knowledge and budget restrictions.

How can you implement cyber security into your customer service teams?

Use your IT team

Your IT department are an imperative area of your business. But they are just one team, and the whole business needs to be engaged to protect the company. Ensure that your IT is fully integrated into your customer services teams and works closely with the managers to ascertain goals and implement best practise. It makes sense that your customer facing team that handles potentially the most sensitive data, should work closely with the team that protects the company from cyber-attack.

Ensure you have user friendly Implementations

Your customer services teams are dedicated to making your customers lives easier and that every interaction is hassle-free. However, they can be concerned that by implementing more cyber security measures, will create complications in their service to their customers. However, you can implement easy 2-step authentication that does not hinder, nor compromise the customer experience and allows you to keep your customer data secure from cyber criminals.

Consider the cyber software you need

Regardless of how many times you change your passwords, you can never be entirely convinced your network is secure without the use of essential cyber security software’s. Some businesses we work with are implementing all-encompassing cyber security software suites. However, there are also other measures that you can implement to increase your cyber protection. These include, anti-virus software, anti-malware software, and virtual private networks (VPNs). While the first two-act more like firewalls, VPN software acts more like a curtain.

VPN’s hide your IP address to make it untraceable to hackers, which is essential if you have remote working customer service teams using their own Wi-Fi or working in different locations, so your device is connected but you are not public.

Keep educating the Team

Never assume that your teams know about cyber security. It is imperative that you keep your customer service teams fully up to date with the latest advice on cyber security and ensure there is regular company training. Ultimately your front-line staff need to understand how to protect your customer data, so the more education you can provide, the greater your protection as regardless of the solutions you have, human error has to be factored into any cyber security measures, so ensure that your teams are as educated as they can be, will only protect your teams more.

And lastly…

Cyber security is key regardless of the industry you are in. Many businesses may be foolish enough to consider that simply implementing software is sufficient, but that is not so, so communicating with your teams is imperative particularly for those teams dealing with customers and their data as your customer services team do.