Staying compliant is essential for any business, and the risk of a data breach is getting higher every year. Not only are lapses financially costly, they can also lead to significant brand damage and serious legal repercussions (especially in sensitive sectors like financial services or healthcare).
Looking at the research, we can see that the number of data breaches in 2012 was only 447, compared to 3,200+ in 2023 alone.
Having a call center compliance checklist is more essential than ever. It can streamline your compliance practices and ensure that nothing is missed. It’s a roadmap for how to stay compliant—and what to do when something goes wrong.
In this article, we’ll walk you through our compliance checklist, show you how it works, and give you some tips on how you can tweak it to fit your industry. Your 2025 contact center compliance checklist
Your call center generates a ton of new information every single day, and data security protects this sensitive customer and business data from unauthorized access and breaches. Essential measures should be put in place, such as:
With regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, and PCI DSS, data security is crucial for call centers, as a single breach can cost $4.88m on average, on top of reputational and brand damage.
By integrating quality assurance tools, you can spot potential risks in real-time, ensuring data stays confidential and safe—while also reinforcing customer trust.
A secure network defends sensitive data, minimizes downtime, and maintains compliance with cybersecurity standards. You can shield your network from vulnerabilities and bad actors using:
Regular assessments are essential to patch and protect weak points, and QA tools integrated with network protocols allow for continuous monitoring. A solid network security strategy keeps your call center operations safe from cyber threats.
Your physical contact center location is another critical avenue for potential compliance issues—so protecting tangible assets like servers and workstations from unauthorized access is essential.
Effective physical security includes:
Quality assurance software supports physical security by tracking adherence to protocols, like workstation log-off policies. Making sure these measures are followed keeps your business’ data safe from internal and external threats—while protecting your critical assets and enhancing your overall security.
Authentication prevents fraud, ensuring that data is only accessible to authorized individuals, and can be done in a variety of ways, such as:
Using QA tools can help monitor authentication practices, ensuring that agents are following the right steps to prevent unauthorized access risks.
Agent training is essential for your contact center compliance checklist, since your agents are the backbone of your operations. Giving them the tools and training to handle sensitive data and follow security protocols can go a long way in staying compliant.
Your QA solution can play a part here too, allowing you to track agent performance in real-time and assess the impacts of non-compliance. Analyzing calls can identify areas where additional training may be needed, or where gaps in compliance might crop up.
Depending on where your call center is located, you must ensure you’re complying with any local laws and regulations around recording phone calls—whether that means getting explicit consent or simply letting customers know they’re being recorded.
These recordings may contain sensitive data as well, which means storing them in a secure, encrypted environment with clear data retention policies and procedures.
Your QA system can help automate this process, flagging potential issues and offering insights into call quality and compliance.
Dialing compliance in your contact center compliance checklist means preventing intrusive or excessive customer outreach by respecting Do Not Call (DNC) lists, following telemarketing guidelines, and adhering to dialing restrictions.
Regulations like the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) mandate:
A clear dialing strategy in your call center compliance checklist can go a long way to avoiding fines and improving customer relations. QA software can track dialing patterns and verify adherence to these regulations, including opt-out handling and approved calling hours.
Tracking opt-ins is essential in preventing unwanted contact, reducing risks of complaints and penalties. Explicit consent is also required for many tasks, such as marketing activities or data processing, so you must make it easy for customers to opt in or out.
Quality assurance tools help verify your consent records, allowing agents to only reach out to those who’ve opted in. By tracking and maintaining these logs, you respect customer choices and build a compliant system.
Regular call center audits and compliance reviews identify gaps before they become issues. Consistent reviews and audits reveal vulnerabilities and help ensure your call center is adhering to standards. This protects your call center from potential fines by maintaining a trail of documented findings and prompting corrective actions when needed.
Analyzing quality assurance data helps you collect the info you need and track compliance metrics. Combining your QA function with routine audits allows you to create an audit trail and better support reviews in the future.
Possibly one of the most important parts of a comprehensive compliance checklist for your call center is having a plan for when things go wrong—whether it’s a data or security breach, or just compliance violations. In the event of an incident, make sure you have plans for:
As well as defined roles and responsibilities for team members during an incident.
Having routine drills and exercises can help keep your teams prepared in case of an emergency. QA software can also help refine your response protocols by reviewing incidents and analyzing what happened.
Know your industry or location-specific regulations, such as:
Staying informed on regulatory changes and updating policies is essential for avoiding legal penalties and maintaining customer trust. This extends to your third-party vendors too—they must comply with any relevant regulations and have their own measures in place.
It’s also critical to keep accessibility in mind when building a compliance checklist in your call center. Providing alternative ways for customers to reach out and teaching agents how to accommodate them can help ensure you’re compliant and accessible.
Finally, a comprehensive compliance policy outlines your call center’s commitment to regulatory standards and guides how data is handled and stored securely. It strengthens your accountability overall—and shows your team how they should view compliance.
Keep your compliance policy clear, visible, and readily accessible for all of your agents. You can use the data collected from your QA platform to help keep these policies up-to-date as teams and regulations change.
Data privacy and security is paramount here, and so is staying compliant with regulations like PCI DSS, GLBA, and KYC—which all govern how you store and handle financial data. To protect your customer’s data (and your own data!), your checklist should prioritize:
Regular audits (both internal and external) help identify vulnerabilities and ensure ongoing compliance. Keeping your agent training up to date with these regulations, implementing secure payment processing systems, and using strong authentication procedures should all be core features of your contact center compliance checklist.
Your call center compliance checklist needs to adhere to strict regulations like HIPAA to protect patient information. It should focus on safeguarding personal health information (PHI), insurance details, and personal info through:
On top of this, agents should receive specialized training on HIPAA standards, how to handle PHI, and getting explicit consent for calls that involve it. Regular reviews and audits also help ensure that your policies remain effective and nothing slips through the cracks.
Within the education sector, compliance often involves protecting student’s personal information under the Family Educational Right and Privacy Act (FERPA) and state laws.
Call centers that handle student data (like grades or disciplinary records), financial aid information, or employee data all need to be secured. That includes using access controls, data retention, and security—and ensuring any third-party vendors remain compliant as well.
Call centers within government and public sectors handle various types of sensitive information, from citizen’s personal data (like social security numbers, addresses, and tax information) to classified details.
Compliance requirements in this sector may vary depending on the specific agency and the data involved, but typically include:
Contact centers within these industries often deal with a mix of customer data (such as usage data, personal, or billing info), intellectual property, network infrastructure information, and other corporate data. This means they need to stay compliant with laws like GDPR and CCPA, as well as cybersecurity and telecommunications regulations.
These checklists should include more in-depth cybersecurity measures, such as:
Legal call centers manage highly confidential information, including client’s personal information, case details, and attorney-client privileged communications.
A contact center compliance checklist here should include protecting client-attorney privilege and ensuring data confidentiality, encryption, secure data storage, and restricted access to sensitive information.
Agents should be strictly trained to handle confidential information and adhering to strict protocols when sharing or discussing client information.
One slight mistake in your compliance can lead to a massive issue down the road. A single data breach can cost you $165 per record on average, making them an incredibly costly mistake—not to mention the damage to your reputation.
If you want a second line of defense in your compliance strategy, you need effective QA software like Scorebuddy. It enhances your overall compliance by:
Reach out to us today for a demo and take a look at how Scorebuddy can keep you compliant with 100% interaction coverage, compliance-focused scorecards, automatic audit trails, and more.
