Profile

• Industry: Healthcare
• Turnover: $854 million
• Business: Leading healthcare provider with more than 52 million members nationwide
• Challenge: De-scoping contact center from PCI DSS
• Solution: CardEasy Agent Assist

Benefits

• Contact center environment fully descoped from PCI DSS
• Agents and members remain connected throughout the payment process
• Works seamlessly with all payment applications and contact center platforms

Background

This US healthcare provider has more than 52 million members nationwide and offers member self-pay fitness programs for more than 460 million eligible members. With offices in Carmel, IN, San Diego, CA, and Fort Worth, TX, with over 1,500 employees.

The challenge

The organization operates contact centers with more than 600 agents, all of whom handle payment-related calls. It was important to them to provide a secure and seamless experience for their members and contact center agents with every interaction, while driving up efficiency and reducing audit costs and risks associated with their contact center payments.

Solution

Initially we delivered our patented CardEasy Agent Assist solution on premise using our Secure Voice Appliance (SVA) which allows the organization’s contact center agents to take card payments from their members over the phone in a PCI DSS compliant and secure manner. This was the client’s preference at the time as their contact center platform was also hosted on premise.

At the point in the conversation where payment card details are required, using CardEasy, the agent can either capture the member’s payment card details via DTMF (touchtones) or advanced speech recognition. The member is verbally prompted by the agent to either enter their card numbers using their telephone keypad or read their card numbers aloud. In both cases the payment card data is captured securely by CardEasy and is not seen or heard by the agent or included in either call or screen recordings. CardEasy provides the agent with a real time display of the member’s progress and the payment card data is submitted directly by CardEasy to the payment services provider without entering the contact center systems or network.

In order to simplify PCI DSS audit requirements, we met with the organization’s Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) prior to contract execution to ensure that they were comfortable with the level to which their contact center would be descoped from PCI DSS. Other vendors were quoting installation times of six to nine months whereas the lead time for CardEasy implementation was only twelve weeks.

During the implementation process the organization identified a number of use cases and agent workflows that it had overlooked. The flexibility of the CardEasy solution meant that these could be easily accommodated as part of the implementation process.

Having benefited from the CardEasy Secure Voice Appliance for several years, the organization decided to replace its on premise contact center platform with a fully cloud hosted solution. We therefore supported a transition from our Secure Voice Appliance to our Secure Voice Cloud which has completely eliminated the need for any hardware within the organization’s environment and has further reduced their PCI DSS scope. In addition to this we are also porting all Toll Free Numbers (TFNs) and Direct Inward Dialing (DIDs) from AT&T and Genesys to our US partner Flowroute.

Flowroute is a 100% cloud-based SIP trunking platform that gives contact centers everything they need to run mission-critical voice applications. The secret to Flowroute’s reliability is their patented HyperNetwork which meshes multiple carriers into a single telecom network, delivering superior reliability and reach.

When it comes to telephony, connection is key. Flowroute creates an optimal connection that maximizes call quality, reliability and control and also generates significant cost savings on call traffic.

Value

The organization wanted to retain contact between their agents and their members during the secure payment process which is standard functionality of CardEasy. There is no requirement for the agent to transfer the call or put the member on hold which provides a seamless experience and reduces average handling time.

As a result of deploying the solution the organization’s contact center environments have been fully descoped from PCI DSS and the risk, cost and audits associated with these payments has been significantly reduced. Their transition from our Secure Voice Appliance to our Secure Voice Cloud has further reduced their PCI DSS scope, eliminated the need for on premise hardware and allowed them to close down data centers which were used to host equipment. All of this, alongside their migration from AT&T and Genesys to Flowroute as their carrier, has generated significant cost savings.

What the client says

The biggest benefit has been that it’s working and that’s what you want, right? We don’t want to hear anything from our contact centers. If we don’t hear anything then that means it’s working as expected, they don’t have any complaints. I always check in and they say, “No problems, it’s working like it’s supposed to.” That’s what’s important.

Chief Information Security Officer

Looking forward

The organization is now focused on contact center efficiencies and is looking to utilize our Secure Call Recording Solution which records and redacts customer conversation, transcribes on demand and reveals true customer sentiment. In addition to this we are working with the organization to further reduce agent handling times through the use of artificial intelligence.