Plum Voice, a communications platform-as-a-service (cPaaS) provider, has released SecureAssistant, a virtual agent that can be conferenced into calls to accept and mask sensitive payment details while the agent remains on the line.
By masking transmission of consumers' payment information to the live agent or contact center equipment such as call recorders, SecureAssistant descopes the contact center from Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards.
The Plum Voice cloud has been PCI certified since 2013 and handles many millions of payment dialogues annually.
"The secure Plum Voice cloud has long been the preferred platform for many payment processors and enterprises looking to automate sensitive voice dialogues, such as those related to payments," said Matt Ervin, CEO of Plum Voice, in a statement. "SecureAssistant lets us introduce the security of automation into a dialogue where the agent remains on the line talking to the consumer throughout the call. So we are synergistically pairing live human customer service with AI voice automation."
Plum SecureAssistant can be conferenced into a phone call by a simple command from the agent. SecureAssistant then communicates with the consumer or the agent via a conversational interface, supplemented by touchtone detection for rapid input. Once SecureAssistant is invoked, the agent cannot hear sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, but the agent can hear and participate in the rest of the conversation. The agent can remain on the line after payment is processed to attend to other issues.
SecureAssistant can be set up as a cloud or on-premises solution.