Automating contact centers to support regulatory compliance efforts.

Corporate America is facing ever increasing controls over how it deals with customers and manages business. Wide-sweeping regulations have been passed in the last decade that affect nearly all businesses. If you are managing an organization that provides inbound or outbound telemarketing, you are painfully aware of the additional efforts required to ensure your company is complying with the appropriate regulations.

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Telecommunications service providers have been operating under the watchful eye of the FCC and the anti-slamming regulations described in the Telecommunications Act for several years. These same requirements will now have a bigger impact on wireless providers as customers can switch carriers more easily as a result of the Wireless Number Portability legislation that took effect in 2003. The telecommunications marketplace, however, is not the only one that has been affected by increased regulatory pressures. Healthcare companies must adhere to controls laid out in the Health Insurance Privacy Assurance Act (HIPAA). HIPAA defines requirements for the disclosure of privacy practices for client information as well as the methods used to market to patients. The Graham-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB) applies similar regulations to accounting, banking, insurance and brokerage firms.

Based on more recent legislation, compliance is no longer industry-specific. With the passage of the Federal Trade Commission's Telemarketing Sales Rule, telemarketing organizations in all industries must keep a watchful eye over how and when they contact potential customers. The focus on customer contact and information management has also been raised to the highest level of the corporate ladder with the advent of the Patriot Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Now, senior executives are focused on compliance issues regarding security and corporate governance which

require tight management of the use and retention of personal data such as customer records.

When considered as a whole, the dizzying array of potential compliance pitfalls can be daunting. The impact of a mismanaged telemarketing sales call or an improperly filed customer record can be disastrous. How can anyone hope to comply with all the regulations when there are potentially millions of customer interactions on a daily basis? One way to minimize the risk is to automate as much of your customer contact and data management activities as possible. Interactive voice recognition and speech recognition technologies have evolved dramatically over the past few years and the resulting advances can be used effectively to address many compliance issues.

Third-Party Verification Is Tailor-made For Automation

Many telecommunications service providers now ensure they are complying with anti-slamming regulation through automated means. Third-party verification (TPV) is an ideal candidate for automation for a number of reasons. By the very nature of the regulations, TPV mandates that a consumer is asked a consistent set of questions to independently verify that he or she is agreeing to change services. The customer experience with a live-agent call center can vary substantially. However, the consumer must know what he or she just agreed to buy. Anything less opens a window for dispute, which can be very costly for the service provider. Automation solves this problem with a high degree of accuracy by posing these sometimes very specific and sometimes complex legal questions in a consistent fashion.

Automated TPV not only meets the letter of the law but it benefits the service provider as well. When proper attention is paid to the exact manner in which the questions are asked (i.e., phrasing, tone of voice and intonation), the carrier is likely to solicit a positive response from the consumer while meeting the FCC mandates. When combined with speech technology, these scripts can allow for a safe, friendly verification process that meets all the requirements and leaves the consumer with a clear understanding of the choices he or she made and when the changes will take effect.

Recording both sides of an IVR call is also a key component of the FCC's TPV legislation. Integration between the IVR and the call recording equipment provides the carrier with the peace of mind that any "slamming" complaint can be easily defended using the consumer's actual recorded voice.

Beyond the benefits of third-party verification and the resulting auditable record of the transaction, the service provider also reaps rewards by automating the order process. Once the TPV system has validated the customers' acceptance of the changes to their service, their records can be automatically created or updated in the order processing system. Thus, human error in the service provisioning process is minimized and the costs associated with creating the customer record are reduced.

Rely On Systems To Ensure You "Do Not Call"

The FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) governing outbound telemarketing activities has created a unique opportunity to leverage automation. The TSR defines consumer rights to include permissible call times and caller I.D. requirements and, most notably, specifies the creation of a national do-not-call registry that allows consumers the power to stop unwanted calls. One specific aspect of the regulation dictates that any telemarketing agency that contacts a consumer must identify the reason for their call. Often, outbound telemarketing centers use predictive dialers to place the initial call to a consumer from a predefined list which has been verified against the do-not-call list. These systems determine the most likely time that a live agent will be available to talk to the consumer and place the call with the expectation that an agent will be free when the consumer answers. On occasion, when the consumer answers the call, there is not a sales agent available. In this case, the regulations state that the telemarketer must identify the reason for the call with a recorded message within a specified timeframe. They must also provide consumers with a toll-free number that can be called for further information about why they were contacted.

Automation can play a useful role in managing this complex chain of events. In some cases, the consumer will call the toll-free number and, upon hearing that he or she was contacted for telemarketing reasons, will disconnect the call. However, it is often the case that the prospective customer is interested in further information about the offer. In such cases, the consumer can automatically be connected to a live agent, thus continuing the sales opportunity; one that has a higher likelihood of success. The balance between keeping the uninterested parties out of expensive sales centers and quickly capturing those who might buy from a sales representative is critical. A carefully designed script and tight call center integration can achieve this delicate balance.

Secure, Auditable Records Are Critical

The Patriot Act and Sarbanes-Oxley Act have added a new dimension to the importance of maintaining precise, secure and auditable records of customer interaction. The Patriot Act has implications for the use and sharing of private data with government agencies including telemarketing logs. Additionally, the Crimes Against Charitable Americans (CACA) section of the Patriot Act regulates telemarketing for non-profit organizations. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), passed by Congress in 2002, is focused on corporations' internal controls. Essentially, SOX requires corporate executives to certify that their business practices have been tightly controlled and monitored to ensure their financial reports are accurate.

These regulations raise the stakes for corporations to ensure that they are acting responsibly and ethically. Automated contact systems can provide an added dimension of control to the customer engagement process and the subsequent processing of customer data. The scripted nature of the customer interaction through an IVR system and limited human interaction with the consumer reduces the opportunity for malfeasance and improper disclosure of confidential information. Moreover, the resulting stored call flow provides a built-in audit trail that can be used by the proper authorities if required.

Effective Automation Requires Careful Planning And A Knowledgeable Staff

Customer contact automation may be the answer to many compliance concerns, but careful planning is required. Those implementing automated systems need to understand the associated regulatory requirements as well as the interplay of the network, the systems and the databases associated with the solution. Following are a few things to consider when implementing an internal or outsourced contact automation solution.

Define success. What is the desired completion rate within the automation application? Finding the right balance between self-service and ultimate completion of the call with the assistance of the live channel is critical. The application must be designed to handle as much of the customer interaction as possible but transfer the call to a live agent before the consumer is likely to give up.

Frequently monitor and tune the application. Careful consideration must be given to consistency between the manner in which the live channel obtains compliance and the flow of the automation application. It is important to ensure the quality and accuracy of the communication. As an added benefit, the automation of a compliance process will often identify small loopholes and inconsistencies in the live channel method that can be rectified to improve compliance or client uptake.

Ensure that corporate business systems are made available for ease of data interchange. Integration of the automation application and the live agent is key. The ability to pass whatever information was gathered by the automation application to the live channel to enable the call to continue seamlessly must be given serious consideration.

Train the call center staff to use the automated system appropriately. A perfectly designed automation application in the hands of an untrained sales agent is of little value. In the example of third-party verification, ensuring the sales agent and the IVR consistently coach the customer to listen to the questions and answer clearly is important. The consequences of not doing this must be made clear to the consumer. Nobody wants to repeat the process of buying telecommunications services, so telling the consumer that his or her order will not be processed unless the compliance process is completed successfully is important. Clarity is the joint responsibility of both the sales agent and the IVR system.

Striking the right balance between legal, friendly and concise communication is at a premium in a compliance application. Compliance legislation is written by lawyers to be read by lawyers. Turning the resulting regulations into something to which a consumer will pay attention and respond in the affirmative is hard, but vital. An IVR can help this process but it requires subtle phrasing and intonation to ensure the consumer remains focused and alert regarding when to respond to the question.

Automated contact center solutions are a practical and viable means of navigating the increasingly complex regulatory landscape. Weigh the advantages of outsourcing contact automation against the total cost of the project to include network fees, equipment costs, staff expenses, application development and overall system maintenance. Whether you decide to implement the system with internal resources or hire experts to do it for you, do your homework. While automation may provide an answer, the responsibility for compliance still rests with the enterprise.

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BY Paul Logan, Contact Solutions

Paul Logan is president and CEO of Contact Solutions (www.contactsolutions.com), a provider of outsourced hosting of automated customer service solutions.