What is the FDCPA and Why Should You Care?

Author:  Allyson Boudousquie, Director of Business Process Marketing at Aspect

Collections agencies have been around since the 1920’s, usually bringing in debt that credit issuers were not able to collect for various reasons. The environment then was much different than it is now, however. Most of these agencies had few clients, few employees, and everything was manual. Collectors used index cards to write notes on, and when mail and phone didn’t work, these collectors would become “door knockers”, actually walking to the debtors’ homes to collect on debts.

It wasn’t really until 1977, when the United States Congress cited “abundant evidence of the use of abusive, deceptive, and unfair debt collection practices by many debt collectors”, that regulations were established around debt collections. That’s when the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA) set guidelines on how, when, and where a consumer could be contacted, began to require collectors to identify themselves and the company they worked for, and limited the information that could be given to a person that was not the debtor.

Due to these new rules of collections, businesses had to change the way they viewed their collectors.  They needed to refine business processes, including introducing new technology to optimize the use of their collections agents as well as ensure they comply with the FDCPA because failure to meet regulation requirements could result in big fines. In fact, they still can – the largest fine to date is $2.25 million.

The good news is that today’s technology is better than ever, which means that compliance can be virtually automatic. A variety of capabilities like quality monitoring, list management, and performance management tools, are configured to help organizations meet FDCPA requirements. In particular, some areas that require particular focus include:

• Dialing and tracking based on your customers’ time zones. Your system must be able to differentiate time zones, and base calling on those time zones, in order to both meet FDCPA and individual state requirements.
• Scheduling callbacks to avoid harassing your debtors.
• Reducing work phone calling at the account level or through exclusion process to ensure prohibited numbers are not called.
• Monitoring and tracking to ensure collectors are not using abusive or profane language, revealing specifics of the debt to any third parties, or using language that could be considered threatening.

The goal of technology used in collections call centers is to help mitigate risk and improve collections as much as possible. How else can companies like Aspect help? We’d love to hear your suggestions.

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Practical Applications for On-Demand Solutions

Author:  Gary Barnett, CTO at Aspect

Not too long ago, a Top 5 bank decided it wanted to focus more on maximizing “share of wallet.” In order to do that, the bank needed to align its voice portal with its overall bank strategy, a process that required getting rid of multiple, inflexible legacy dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) systems. The bank ended up replacing these systems with a tightly integrated on-demand inbound self-service solution that included a financial services voice portal. The pay off was huge. The bank’s customers noticed the change immediately as they began to experience a single phone call view of their entire bank relationship, rather than just bits and pieces of disparate information. As customer satisfaction increased, the bank saw impressive results. It experienced a 10 percent increase in its voice portal containment rate, and a dramatic decrease in the average time customers were spending in the voice portal, driving $25 million in cost savings per year. The bank also was able to reduce callbacks by 25 percent, and increase the cross-sell response rate by 7.5 percent, driving $56 million in new bank revenue during the first year after implementation.

Another example is an online global travel company that saw a big business impact when it began using an on-demand voice portal for customer care. When the company entered the market in 2001, it immediately recognized that outstanding customer experiences could help set it apart from its competition. The company’s differentiating strategy was to deliver timely information to its customers within seconds of a change. In order to achieve this goal, the company began using data from its customers’ travel itineraries to provide the most relevant information, and then utilized an on-demand proactive customer care solution to communicate that information to customers via high quality recorded messages. Since the company has implemented the on-demand solution, its sales have doubled per year, while inbound call volume has remained approximately the same. What’s more, 80 percent of the company’s customers have indicated that they would refer a friend and 25 percent said they would use the company to book another trip within 12 months.

We’ve seen several of our customers use on-demand solutions for collections. It’s widely known there is significant value in proactively contacting delinquent customers within the first 15 days of their delinquencies. Some companies are using on-demand voice portal solutions in early stage collections to deliver reminder messages about outstanding bills and provide customers with the option to pay by phone or make arrangements to pay. These types of automated interactions sometimes result in more in-depth discussions with agents. However, managing initial contact on demand with automated messages or self service reduces the burden on agents and enables them to focus on the mid- and late-stage delinquencies, which are often more complex to solve.

How do you feel about using on-demand solutions?

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Regulation Sometimes Leads to Improved Processes

Author:  Lynne Levy, Senior Business Process Product Manager at Aspect

A few weeks ago, the final piece of the 2008 amendments to the federal telemarketing rule took effect. As a result, telemarketers no longer are able to make calls that deliver pre-recorded messages (robocalls) without a previously obtained signed, written agreement from the recipient. In instances where the consumer has provided written consent, the pre-recorded message must provide the consumer with the ability to opt-out either through a toll free number or through Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or key pad entry. This is no joking matter as the fines can be quite steep – up to $16,000 per call. It is important to note that this regulation applies to business-to-consumer calling vs. business-to-business interactions.

Believe it or not, I actually think this change is good for the telemarketing industry. This new amendment will compel companies to really get to know their customers and give them the chance to show their customers that they are good organizations with which they’ll want to do business. It will also force companies to run more targeted calling campaigns to the consumers who are most likely to be interested in their offers. By reaching out to key segments of customers with live agents, there is more of an opportunity for companies to explore their customers’ pain points, increase their sales through solutions-based selling, and strengthen customer relationships. When used correctly, this type of personalized approach results in positive brand building – again, the kind that makes people actually want to interact with a company.

I also think that companies using the right tools in their contact centers – tools with telemarketing compliance capabilities – will see that their compliance process will be largely automated. Centers should be using capabilities like high accuracy answering machine detection (AMD) to identify when a consumer, answering machine or voicemail service has answered the call. And by taking advantage of extensive list management capabilities that allow for highly segmented lists that can be updated automatically. Or high transfer speeds to quickly move answered calls from the predictive dialer to a live sales person. According to the new amendment, 97 percent of telesales calls that are answered by a live person must be connected to a live sales person within two seconds. In addition, there needs to be a way for a call, when being handled through a voice portal, to enable the consumer to add his/her number to the Do-Not-Call Registry.

Other technologies are designed to help companies increase the effectiveness of their campaigns while ensuring regulatory compliance. For instance, advanced pacing algorithms allow companies to track call result history over time and predict the best phone number and hour of day to place calls. With some solutions, such as Advanced List Management within Aspect Unified IP, that information is automatically used to create optimized calling strategies that are based on campaign objectives and prioritized by user-defined criteria. Then, those optimized accounts are fed to the predictive dialer for execution, and record levels are dynamically adjusted as agents log in. The automatic adjustment ensures that enough agents are available to handle successful outbound contacts as they are made so that abandonment rates remain acceptable.

Success in this new paradigm will not be based on technology alone. Agent training will also be key. Companies will need to provide agents with in-depth sales and product knowledge so they can up-sell and cross-sell products that customers actually want. Relying on canned scripts could result in constantly trying to sell consumers something they don’t need, which negatively impacts brand perception and a customers’ desire to conduct business with a company.

This new amendment will definitely impact the way contact centers conduct business. Has it affected you? If so, how?

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Four Key Areas for Data Protection in Your Contact Center

Author:  Brett Williams, Director of Product Management at Aspect

We’ve all heard about the “mass hijackings” of consumer data that have occurred in recent years. Each case involved a serious security breach that resulted in the downloading (and subsequent misuse) of thousands of consumer records. While the main vulnerability in these types of cases has generally pointed to corporate systems such as mainframes, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERPs), and Customer Relationship Management (CRMs), it’s still extremely important that you consider the security of your contact center technology.

Of the 12 key compliance requirements set out by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SCC), protecting stored cardholder data (requirement #3) is the place where the contact center can play the biggest roll. In order to reduce the exposure of your cardholder data, I recommend that you take a good look at the following key areas.

Your database – when cardholder data is imported within the database for outbound dialing, a person with access to the database can view this information. To protect your customer data, look for solutions that allow your center to place outbound calls from its own external database. Alternatively, if you import data for outbound dialing purposes, use access control and encryption to limit employee access to the data.

Agent and supervisor user interfaces – cardholder data is sometimes delivered to your agents’ desktops with screen-pops, and can be exposed as part of the supervisory desktop. Keep your customers’ information more secure by excluding sensitive data from outbound records and/or the user interfaces. If you must deliver the card holder data, make sure that it is delivered securely using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and ensure that any temporary files are encrypted.

Log files – cardholder data is often captured as part of a voice portal process, as part of an inbound call screen-pop, or in call data for an outbound call, and stored as log files. You can put some safeguards in place such as restricting access to your log files, or encrypting log files using standard encryption tools.

Recordings – cardholder data can be recorded as part of an agent-customer conversation, an automated speech-based self-service application, or an agent desktop screen recording. Presently, there are a few ways to protect your customers when it comes to recorded data. First, you can encrypt recordings and ensure that playback is conducted over SSL. You can also restrict access to the recording files during playback, archival or transfer. Alternatively, you can pause recordings when sensitive customer data is entered so that sensitive data is never recorded in the first place.

What tips and tricks have you already implemented to protect the customer data in your contact center? How can we help?

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How Serious Are You About Protecting Your Customer Data?

Author:  Brett Williams, Director of Product Management at Aspect

Any way you look at it, protecting your customers’ data is just good business practice.  As a consumer whose friends have had their personal information compromised, I look at data protection simply as the right thing to do. But for companies that aren’t convinced they should make changes based solely on altruistic ideas, here are a few other reasons to protect customer data: people are much more likely to do business with companies that keep important information, such as credit card numbers and social security numbers, safe; and, a breach can cost ridiculous amounts of money in combating bad press and fending off or settling lawsuits.  Oh yeah … there’s one more important reason to protect customer data – the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC).

A few years ago, the PCI SSC laid out the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), a 12-step process designed to regulate and standardize the methods merchants use to protect credit card data. These are basic guidelines that companies should follow. Until now, participation in this program has been somewhat discretionary (but again, good practice) with punishments for non-compliance being imposed only by the credit card companies that created the guidelines.They range from things like hefty fines to credit card companies flat out refusing to conduct future business with your company.

Local government will soon be entering the game. Beginning on January 1, 2010, Nevada will become the first U.S. state to mandate complete compliance with the PCI DSS. Nevada’s law is not designed to punish those that do not comply.  Instead, it will protect those that do comply by shielding them against liability for damages resulting from security breaches.

What does this mean to the contact center industry? The good news is that IT departments largely handle many of the requirements relating to PCI DSS. These include things like building and maintaining a secure network and maintaining a vulnerability management program complete with anti-virus software and secure systems. But, the contact center can and should be supporting IT whenever possible, especially when it comes to protecting cardholder data.

Next week, we’ll talk a bit more about how you can help with PCI DSS compliance in your contact center. In the meantime, I’d like to hear your opinion on whether or not other states or federal governments should implement laws like Nevada’s.

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Preparation is the Key to Successful Change

Author:  Lynne Levy, Senior Business Process Product Manager, Aspect

If your contact center conducts business in the United States, take note.  A notable amendment to the FTC Telemarketing Sales Rule is set to go into effect in the not-so-distant future. And, if you haven’t already begun taking action to ensure your centers are in compliance, now’s the time to get started.

Effective September 1, 2009, you will no longer be able to place calls that deliver prerecorded messages to customers with whom you have an existing business relationship (EBR). After that date, you’ll be able to initiate these calls only to customers who’ve already provided you with express written consent to receive such calls.

But don’t frown. This can actually be good news. If you take the time now to build a database of customers who want to opt in, your outbound efforts can actually become more fruitful. Instead of wasting time and money reaching out to customers who will immediately hang up, you’ll be focusing more of your efforts on customers who are interested in what your company has to offer. This should yield better results for your telemarketing campaigns, and your customers will be happier because they’ll be getting exactly what they want.

The trick is to start building your database now, if you haven’t already begun to do so.  You can use your voice portal to proactively call customers and ask if they wish to continue receiving information about your company. Your database script can give customers the option to “press 1 to continue to receive information” or “press 2 to no longer receive information.”  Taking that a step further, don’t be shy to ask how customers prefer to be contacted – home phone, email, cell phone, text message, etc.  Once you have all this information, you’ll be able to mail the appropriate written communications for your customers to sign.  Then, after September 1, you’ll be ready to use your Advanced List Management capabilities to create targeted calling lists that are in compliance with the law, and outbound dialer functionality to initiate your more targeted campaigns.   

How are you preparing for the upcoming FTC Telemarketing Sales Rule amendment?

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Are we entering the Age of the Cell Phone?

Author:  Bob Kelly, Senior Vice President of The PerformanceEdge Group at Aspect

A lot of people in the U.S., myself included, use their cell phones pretty extensively on a daily basis. And, some have even ditched their land line – almost 15 percent of U.S. households are using cell phone service exclusively .  Plus, when you focus on younger consumers that number rises significantly, with about 33 percent of 18 to 29 year olds saying they currently use only a cell phone or the Internet to make phone calls.

The shift from landline to mobile phone is beginning to have ramifications on U.S.-based organizations that make their livelihood connecting with consumers via telephone. As a result, we’re seeing credit card and mortgage companies change their policies and accept cell phones as primary contact numbers for applications. They’re also amending their terms and conditions for existing accounts so they are able to legally contact their customers via cell phone for collections purposes.

But, are companies tailoring their communications strategies and technologies to account for cell phone usage?  If not, they should be! Why?  Because “contact-ability” is different at different times of day for every phone number listed on an account, and this varies by consumer. For instance, some people carry their cell phones with them at all times and have them on virtually 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  Obviously, the best way to reach these customers is via cell. Others carry their personal cell phones in the morning, the evening, and on weekends, but turn them off between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. It might be easiest to reach these customers on a business phone number during the work day, and on a cell phone after 5 p.m.

By using the right technology, companies can sort customer records by type of phone number, and automatically score the probability of making contact at certain times of day at specific destinations versus answering machine or no contact at all. Best Time to Call applications combined with outbound dialers, for example, can track the probability of successful contact on multiple numbers on each account, regardless of whether they are cell or landline numbers. It then identifies the optimal phone number to call, based on the time of day the campaign is being run and the phone availability within the types of contact numbers. In the end, employing this type of technology means that companies have to make fewer call attempts while achieving better results.

Let’s face it. Increased cell phone usage is already adding another variant to strategies of who companies call, when they call, and what resources they should apply. Are you prepared to deal with the rising number of mobile phone-faithful?

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Complying with Labor Laws is About to Become Much Easier

Author:  Gary Barnett

There are different laws around the world that dictate when and how long agents can work.  While these rules and practices are good in some ways by protecting workers; they can also increase the challenges associated with managing a workforce – particularly a workforce whose schedule stringently revolves around call volumes and flows.  Management responsibilities can become even more difficult when companies must comply not only with the rules of their own countries, but also the legislation of an overarching body.

The European Union, for example, has put forth certain protections for workers in all member countries.  They include things such as limiting number of hours employees can work each week (the maximum is 48), limiting the number of consecutive days each employee can work (the maximum is six), and ensuring that employees have an adequate amount of time off between shifts (at least 11 or 12 hours depending on the employee’s age). 

The European Union has also established “Fairness and Equity,” which basically says that companies must find the balance between good and bad.  In other words, managers cannot consistently assign the unfavorable shifts to the same agents; they must be equitably spread amongst all agents.  Unionized companies in countries such as the United States face many of these same challenges.

I’m hearing that these types of circumstances can give you a huge headache while you’re trying to manage your staff and simultaneously ensure proper adherence to all of the rules.  The good news is that workforce management tools will soon be available to automate this process, and enable you to simply input rules for each applicable country.  This technology will also enable you to incorporate fairness and equity logistics so that when you’re scheduling or forecasting, you can consolidate database rules and set the schedule accordingly. 

Are you complying with a multitude of labor laws?  If so, I’d like to hear how you currently do it.

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Safeguarding Against a Security Crisis

Author:  Gary Barnett

TJX Companies, the parent to retail stores T.J. Maxx, HomeGoods, Marshalls, and A.J. Wright, is in the midst of a security-related nightmare.  The company recently disclosed that its customer information database was hacked.  As a result, credit and debit card data for thousands of customers have been compromised.  The hackers also nabbed customers’ drivers’ license numbers and related names and addresses.

Can you imagine dealing with a security breach of this magnitude?  If your contact center has a database of customer information, it could happen to you if you aren’t vigilant against attacks and behavior that puts your information at risk.

The SANS Institute recommends that you protect your contact center by deploying five layers of technology.  These five layers cannot, however, be your only solution.  Research shows that up to 70 percent of all identity theft starts on the inside. While I don’t know how the theft occurred at TJX, I do know that it is imperative that companies employ clear personnel and operational guidelines, and conduct ongoing security audits that identify potential areas of vulnerability. 

By honestly answering the following questions, you can determine if your operational procedures are adequate, or they require some changes:

• How are background checks of contact center agents conducted? 
• How many technology defense walls are implemented?
• Are laptops used and, if so, what type of information is stored on them?  
• Do contact center employees sign affidavits saying they will not access customer information for personal use?
• What systems are in place for disabling network access when employees are terminated?  
• Is there a list of contact center employees who have access to sensitive information? 
• How are passwords set up and how often are they required to be changed?  What level of encryption is used?
• What safeguards are in place with respect to documents that leave the building with employees?  
• Do you outsource any transactions?  If so, how are vendors screened?  
• Do you have published guidelines for information handling that specifically addresses practices such as using publicly accessible computers or downloading sensitive data and removing it from your business locations?

Following a layered approach and addressing questions and issues such as those listed above will help you keep identify thieves at bay.

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Sarbanes-Oxley in the Contact Center

Author:  Gary Barnett

Sarbanes-Oxley is no longer an unknown quantity for American companies.  In fact, many corporations across the country have been working diligently since 2004 to comply. So, why I am writing about this now?  I recently read a San Antonio Express-News article on TMCnet.com, entitled The Good and Bad of Sarbanes-Oxley.

Sarbanes-Oxley is associated with documenting business processes and, while it isn’t directly connected with customer contact, the legislation has a significant impact on contact centers.  From a contact center perspective, Sarbanes-Oxley includes a lot of controls, but must also take into account the human nature characteristics of being Sarbanes-Oxley-compliant.  In the end, it comes down to employees knowing corporate policy and processes, as well as government regulation, and ultimately making the right choices. 

Contact centers can help agents comply by giving them tools that guide them across transactions and give them the information they need to consistently make the right decisions.  And, they can use technologies such as call recording, monitoring, reporting and archiving capabilities to ensure that agents are adhering to all appropriate internal and external rules and regulations.  These technologies can store recordings with time and date stamps over the long term, and protect contact centers from incurring costly violation fees, damaging their brands, and jeopardizing customer relationships.   

Many companies today are recognizing that the majority of the legislation was created out of consumer demand and sensitivity regarding customer relationships with companies. By managing and controlling the frequency of interactions, improving the relevance of offers, and focusing on appropriate timing, companies are demonstrating the value that they place on successful customer relationships and the importance of customer satisfaction.

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