Chatbot Security Archives - BotCore

5 Tips To Ensure Your Chatbot Is GDPR Compliant

Abhishek Shanbhag — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 12:35:00 +0000

5 Tips To Ensure Your Chatbot Is GDPR Compliant

Chatbots are the latest emerging technologies used by organizations to improve customer service and reduce costs. Most companies today have deployed chatbots in various messaging apps, websites and portals to provide the first line of service and self-help to customers.

With the advent of GDPR, companies are required to follow the strict guidelines prescribed by it while dealing with sensitive customer data and these rules apply for the company’s chatbots as well. Unlike a traditional web form, chatbots don’t capture user information in a straightforward manner. However, users still share their data with a bot via conversations. Bottomline – ensuring your chatbot is GDPR compliant is mandatory if your customers are citizens of the European Union. This blog shares five actionable tips to ensure your chatbot is GDPR compliant.

but first, what is GDPR?

GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation came into existence in May 2018 and aims to give users and customers in the EU better control over their data. It makes organizations handling customer data more accountable, transparent and requires them to take clear consent from the customer regarding the usage of their data and privacy.

The kind of personal data protected by GDPR can be broadly categorized as:

Basic unique identification such as name, contact details, address, unique ID numbers, etc
Race or ethnicity
Health, genetic and biometric data (for unique identification)
Sexual orientation
Religious or political beliefs

There are three parties that are involved in GDPR compliance:

Data subject: whose data is processed by a data controller or processor
Data controller: who determines the purpose of collecting data
Data processor: who processes customer or personal data on behalf of the data controller

Irrespective of their industry or size, all organizations have to abide by the regulation. Failing to do so may attract fines to the extent of €20 million or 4% of annual global revenue (whichever is greater).

Now, let’s go back to how you can ensure your bot is GDPR compliant.

use user data only for the stated purposes

Users provide their personal data to chatbots for various purposes such as signing up for newsletters or email notifications, product launch updates, downloading gated content like eBook, whitepapers, etc.

Companies must inform users on why they’re asking for a specific piece of information and how they plan to use it. Also, you should make sure that the data collected is only being used for the stated purposes. For example, if you’ve told them that the chatbot will use their email IDs to send email newsletters about your company’s thought leadership content, you should use the data only for that purpose and nothing more. Leveraging user information for any purpose other than the stated one can attract a hefty penalty under GDPR.

obtain user consent

For sending personalized responses to user queries and delivering an enhanced user experience, your chatbot is required to collect and process a lot of personal data. However, in order to use this data, you need the consent of the user.

Right at the beginning of a conversation, the chatbot must provide a consent form to the user. Ensure that the language used in the form is jargon-free and easy to understand for users. People should easily understand why the data is collected and how it’ll be used.

give seamless information-accessibility to users

Transparency with respect to data collected is highly important. Users should have full control of and access to the data they provided to the chatbot.

The chatbot should give them this information anytime and through a simple response to their query. Besides, they should be able to download this data for their reference or delete any details.

Upon a user’s query, the chatbot should also be able to answer if his/her data is being used for purposes which are beyond you’ve communicated to them.

update your privacy policy

Users should be given an option to see your company’s privacy policy before the chatbot starts collecting data. GDPR advises companies to have a clearly stated privacy policy which should address the following concerns:

What data is the bot collecting and on whose behalf?
What will the data be used for and for how long?
Who will be using this data and why?
How can users withdraw their consent?

ensure secure data handling

Merely having consent isn’t all. Any data security threat or breach may prove to be a direct violation of GDPR and can be detrimental to your business.

That’s why once you have consent from the users or customers, you will need to make sure you have stringent data collection and processing measures in place so that it’s immune to unauthorized access. One great way to go about it is encryption. It will ensure that even if an unauthorized user accesses the data, he/she won’t be able to leverage it completely.

conclusion

The face of sales, marketing and customer service has transformed with the advent of GDPR and organizations will have to abide by the new rules. The points listed above are only a few key tips which will help you stay GDPR-compliant when your chatbot interacts with and collects data from your customers.

GDPR is a vast subject and if you’re planning to build a GDPR compliant chatbot, taking the help of a trusted consultant can make the process smooth.

Acuvate has helped large and medium-sized companies across industries like insurance, banking, financial services, etc. in building GDPR-compliant chatbots and follow a stringent procedure to ensure the chatbot is compliant at every step of its functioning.

For more information on this topic, feel free to reach out to our GDPR and AI experts for a free consultation.

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The post 5 Tips To Ensure Your Chatbot Is GDPR Compliant appeared first on BotCore.

10 Key Chatbot Implementation Considerations You Should Be Aware Of

Jagan Jami — Fri, 24 Aug 2018 10:40:00 +0000

10 Key Chatbot Implementation Considerations You Should Be Aware Of

According to a report featured by Business Insider, 80% of businesses want chatbots by 2020!

Chatbots today are being deployed across large, medium and small organizations to simplify business workflows and reduce customer service costs. Chatbots provide seamless self-service options to your customers and employees. They help your IT support, HR and customer service teams focus on productive activities and reduce time and effort involved in mundane tasks.

Any technology is only as good as how it’s implemented and leveraged across the organization

Implementation and deployment of enterprise chatbots are fraught with a few challenges as well. Without a robust bot strategy and being aware of some key governance, privacy and security considerations, organizations can’t make the most of their chatbot implementation. Many CIOs and IT executives who consult us at our Build-A-Bot strategy workshop, seek advice on some common chatbot deployment challenges in their organization.

Based on our learnings and after deploying chatbots for several Fortune 500 companies, we have enlisted those below to help you plan your chatbot implementation better and achieve maximum business value from your chatbots-

security and privacy

Any organization implementing chatbots should pay close attention to privacy and security. One should ensure that chatbots are compliant with GDPR or any other industry-specific or location-specific regulations and policies. Providing information to users based on their authorization levels is also crucial to ensure the privacy of information. User identity authentication, intent level authorization, channel authorization, end to end encryption, and intent level privacy, are some ways to enhance the security and privacy of your chatbot.

Learn more: 9 Ways To Enhance Chatbot Security

chatbots implementation can get expensive without proper expertise

Building home-grown chatbots without prior experience and understanding of the do’s and don’ts can make the implementation a mismanaged, disorganized, and costly venture. Especially customized chatbots may require a lot of lead time and technological understanding in implementation. Choosing “off-the-shelf” ready solutions from experienced chatbot service providers is one option.

setting the right expectations

Owing to the hype around Artificial Intelligence in the media, chatbots are largely considered as the one-stop solution that can solely streamline all business operations. However, this is not true. It’s imperative for a service provider to set the right expectations for their clients. Users must be made aware of the capabilities of a chatbot before they are deployed. This can be achieved by

Recognizing the champion user: There may be a large number of user groups or internal departments working together on or with the chatbot, however, it’s crucial to identify and thoroughly train one champion user from each department on the functioning of the bot.
Internal Marketing: Prior to deploying the chatbot, all users should be educated on the various use cases, capabilities and benefits of this new tool. If employees are not made aware of the bot functioning, there exists a high risk of low adoption and thereby low project ROIs or even failure of the project.
The right time to market: Large corporations may have thousands of employees in several departments dispersed across different countries and languages. Considering the needs and nuances of all the business divisions and cultures involved may take a lot of time. The extensive wait for the chatbot deployment might result in lowered enthusiasm.

infusing NLP and machine learning

In order for users to like and adopt chatbots, they should find them to be useful, relatable, and trustworthy. Users should be well aware of the capabilities of the chatbot. Though bots cannot entirely conduct human-level conversations, they should give a feel of meaningful interaction and people should be satisfied with the responses either through text or voice. Infusing NLP and Machine Learning into bots is a must for an enhanced and personalized user experience.

understanding how successful your chatbot is

The user experience with chatbots needs to be gauged. You may take feedback from your users and ask them about their chatbot experience and understand how the chatbot could be improved which helps you to find out if they are any developmental areas. You can also assign some business KPIs to your chatbot performance. Direct KPIs can be a reduction in customer service or HR or IT costs, a difference in the number of tickets raised, etc. A few indirect KPIs are employee engagement, customer experience, and so on.

future-proofing your chatbot

Chatbot technology is advancing at a very fast pace. Ensure your chatbot can leverage any AI service available today and will scale for future services. This can be achieved by choosing bot platforms with cognitive abstraction. This abstraction layer also ensures you’re not locked down to any specific AI chatbot vendor or product.

improve chatbot capabilities with data

Data gathered by the chatbot can be leveraged for user insights, allowing you to understand the user needs and improve the capabilities of the chatbot continuously. Robust enterprise chatbot platforms usually are equipped with chatbot analytics to harness user data.

human hand-off

There’s always some cases when a chatbot simply cannot drive a query to its conclusion, so organisations need to ensure that there is always a human that can take over the conversation if necessary. Transferring the conversation to a human should be as seamless as possible without reducing user experience.

overcoming resistance

There could be a fear in many employees that AI and chatbots may pose a threat to their jobs. Employees should be made aware and ensured that a bot has the capability to relieve them of their repetitive work and make them more productive.

ensuring your chatbots fit in with your brand identity

Bots have to be tailor-made to match your brand identity and tone. This also helps in enhancing the user experience.

Chatbots are undoubtedly one of the most promising enterprise AI technologies. But maximizing the value from them requires extensive technical and functional expertise and a robust implementation methodology.

If implemented in an effective and data-driven manner with all challenges managed efficiently, chatbots can bring a huge transformation in your employee and customer service workflows.

If you’re planning to implement chatbots for your company, feel free to get in touch with us for a personalized consultation with one of our Artificial Intelligence and chatbot experts. Acuvate’s highly regarded expertise in AI and bots can help you overcome all teething issues and implementation challenges and help you achieve maximum returns from your chatbot investments.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please feel free to get in touch with one of our experts for a personalized consultation.

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