The importance of data in the 21st century can be perfectly described by Clive Humby’s quote “Data is the new oil”. In today’s digital world where the data is extracted, broken down (refined), and analyzed, it becomes indispensable knowledge. The more data a company has on the market, customers, and customer behavior, the more advanced its products or services and the easier our lives will be. However, regardless of the advantages, privacy concerns that come with such data exchange did not wait long to arise.
It is paramount to respect the right to privacy of every individual and ensure the legal effective protection of it on a governmental level.
In the past years, a wide range of notable cases such as SMO v TikTok Inc, Facebook Cambridge Analytica, ZXC v Bloomberg, etc. proved that data protection laws do not evolve as quickly as technology.
Meanwhile, it is already undeniable that big data is a new factor of innovation and growth. Following the accelerated development of Generative Artificial intelligence (AI), companies compete for users’ data to feed their systems with.
At the same time, users are becoming more cautious with their personal data as well. If before data was not valued and customers had a tendency to provide massive amounts of personal information when using free applications, they are now more reluctant to do it and prefer knowing how companies use their shared information.
Remote visual assistance solutions are used to provide after-sales and technical support which surely leads to the processing of large amounts of users’ data (geolocation, devices used to connect to the video call, video recordings, chat conversations, shared media files, and so on). In this article, we will discuss data privacy legislative regulations, and how solutions like ViiBE ensure compliance with them.
The following questions will be answered:
- What is the main driver of big data?
- What is the government’s influence on data privacy regulation?
- What data privacy laws caused major changes in the way data is treated?
- How do remote visual support solutions ensure data privacy compliance?
1. The network effect and its role in Big data
The network effect describes a situation whereby the value of a product or a service increases as more users start leveraging it. E-commerce platforms and social media applications are the primary examples of this phenomenon. Search engines apply too.
Consider Google, for example.
Its success is not defined by the technological advantage it has over its competitors but by the wider adoption. By repeatedly choosing it, users feed Google with more data than they have ever fed any other search engine. It gives Google a perpetual source of improvement.
Understanding the power of data, in 2014, Facebook paid $16 bn to acquire WhatsApp which had no assets, but an enormous amount of data about the users.
If before, the predominance of one company was called a monopoly, now, in the digital era, we can talk about data-opolies where data serves as an entry barrier. How can this expanding influence be supervised and applied to the best usage? The answer is regulation.
2. Government regulation of data privacy compliance
Data collection has become one of the primary concerns for governments worldwide. Although, the wide adoption of digital solutions is the driver of innovation, the influential consequences that big data imposes cannot be ignored. The proper functioning of the digital market can be at risk without a regulatory framework that values transparency and users’ control over their personal data.
The basic right to privacy is addressed as far as the US Constitution and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Later on, following the technological advancements, history saw the introduction of the EU Data Protection Directive in 1995, the EU Data Protection Directive in 2002, the EU Right to be Forgotten in 2012 (to name a few). The highest number of data privacy laws were adopted in the past 10 years as a consequence of the social media boom, cloud solutions revolution, and so on.
The major milestone occurred in 2018 when the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was enforced within the European Union and the European Economic Area (EEA) pertaining to data collection. The aim of GDPR is to give customers their power back. To begin with, they must grant permission for the collection of their data. Companies are prohibited from burying their data collection practices in complex terms and conditions; instead, they must ensure they are easily comprehensible to all users. Furthermore, GDPR mandates that companies provide users with the right to access their data, the ability to transfer that data to other services, and the option for consumers to request the complete deletion of their personal data from the company’s records.
Although it may seem that data privacy regulation is designed to limit, control, and subordinate, it actually gives companies a helping hand when it comes to building solid relationships with customers. Research shows that consumers are more inclined to share their data when they have a higher level of trust in a brand. Users understand that progress is not imaginable without companies studying them. What actually matters, is how they do it.
3. Remote visual assistance and GDPR compliance
When it comes to remote visual assistance, we already talked about how companies can use data generated during video sessions to improve their products and services. But who can access this data? What information is shared during the support sessions? What are the privacy settings that ViiBE offers?
ViiBE puts data security as one of the pillars of its product development. First of all, the role-based approach is used for the subscription. Each user, depending on the role, has different access rights and therefore, views different dashboards. The highest role is administrator which allows 360° visibility across all teams (call centers), video archives, and shared data. It is the only role that permits modification of the archive settings.
What is ViiBE’s archive?
When a support agent/expert finishes the video call with the customer/technician, the recording of the session, snapshots, chat conversation, and shared media files are stored inside the ticket/work order.
As a ViiBE administrator, in the advanced settings, you can:
- Disable archiving of the session
- Enable automatic deletion of shared documents after each call
- Enable permission for guests to delete their own documents
- Enable sending the SMS link with the session summary to all participants of the call
Moreover, when the call is finished, the customer is redirected to the page where he can easily access session details or details of the ticket. He/she will see the entire interaction with the agent, the timeline (when the call started/ended), the call duration, and the video recording (if it is enabled by the company).
Thanks to such privacy settings, ViiBE allows companies to be in alignment with whatever privacy regulations they operate under. With their help, companies are able to show that their support flow is reliable and transparent which increases customer satisfaction and chances that the customer will use the company’s service again.
Before joining the call, the customer needs to allow access to the camera and microphone. As for the expert’s side, he can see the customer’s journey: if the SMS to join the call was delivered, when the customer was in the “lobby” of the call, and if the customer enabled the camera and mic. There is also information on the customer’s location and device used. These help to determine whether the customer has a good Internet connection which is essential for the good quality of audio and video streams.
4. Conclusion
Technology keeps developing, and although it takes time for legislative regulation to keep up, in the coming years we will see further adoption of new laws regarding data privacy. What is important is that digital solutions must be able to grant companies tools that would facilitate data privacy compliance and ensure that customers maintain ownership of their information.
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