The FDCPA regulates “cruel or deceptive” collection practices. These regulations explicitly prohibit any behaviors that could be construed as intimidating, including misrepresentation and false threats of legal action as well as abusive language and aggressive tone. We put our agents through stringent training to ensure they not only understand the idiosyncrasies of the regulations but also that they have the best temperament for the job – and speech analytics technology helps in this effort.
How do you apply a metric to positivity?
With our speech analytics technology we can closely monitor 100% of our consumer interactions in real-time. This gives us a distinctive advantage for ensuring the highest level of performance standards for our agents. The technology is applied to two specific metrics to offer us the best perspective on the consumer experience; keyword and phrase recognition, and emotional analysis.
Monitoring keywords and phrases is a handy tool for ensuring agents stick to scripts and provide consumers with the proper information for compliance. Aside from monitoring the right words, it can also alert us to the wrong ones. Our speech analytics system sends alerts to supervisors in the instance any risk language is discovered on a call. Risk language can range from obscenities to words such as “attorney” or “harassment” and be uttered by either an agent or patient. Identifying these calls for immediate intervention not only protects our business but the reputation of our clients.
The technology also provides analysis for emotional content, such as tone, pitch, and volume. This offers a three-dimensional impression of the consumer experience without the necessity of listening in. The system can generate alerts when a consumer or agent is experiencing stress, or other negative emotions, even if no risk language is used. Inappropriate emotional content on a call may be indicative of a negative consumer experience. Alerts provide us an opportunity to coach agents, and when applicable intervene, to turn a bad experience around.
Failure to comply with FDCPA regulations can result in hefty fines, but you can’t put a price on reputational harm. That’s why we continue to evolve our processes based upon the analysis results supplied by our speech analytics system. Employing this technology offers us more than just a second line of defense for compliance efforts; it also provides us with an unbiased means to measure performance as well as insights into every consumer’s experience. With this data and knowledge we continuously improve our processes and training for the benefit of our clients and their patient communities.
This blog for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular question or issue.