Nationwide Credit Corporation. Finds that Silence is Not Golden and Improves Compliance with Interaction Analytics

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1 Nationwide Credit Corporation Finds that Silence is Not Golden and Improves Compliance with Interaction Analytics

2 Industry Collections Business Value Risk and Compliance Agent Performance Management Contact Center Efficiency Objectives Silence in not golden, especially when it comes to improving the efficiency of your call center and the productivity of your agents. In addition, collections firms must be able to prove compliance with various regulations or face exposure to costly legal actions and fines. It is essential to be able to provide the reports that can prove compliance. It is also vital to be able to identify areas for improving efficiency, increasing collections and enhancing the customer experience. Improve compliance Minimize escalations, legal action mentions and FDCPA violation language Improve agent efficiency Reduce silence Improve the customer experience Create customized reports to client-specific needs Solutions CallMiner Eureka Interaction Analytics CallMiner MyEureka Performance Feedback Portal Results Nationwide Credit Corporation (NCC) has been successfully providing collection services to government, healthcare, utility, telecommunications, financial, education, retail and commercial industries, since the company was founded in Located in Alexandria, Virginia, the company is one of the largest collection agencies in the mid-atlantic region. Because of the nature of the collection industry, NCC had been considering ways to improve its compliance adherence, agent monitoring and reporting capabilities. It had also been looking at ways to improve collection rates and the customer experience for its clients. With the increased spotlight on the CFBP and FDCPA regulations, NCC wanted to create a full compliance safeguard to minimize complaints, escalations, risk of fines and legal actions. In addition, the company was looking to optimize its QA efficiency to develop agents into better collectors and increase their productivity. To do this, NCC needed to be able to monitor, score and analyze 100 percent of its agents interactions. 12% reduction in calls that included silence 15% reduction in escalation language 6% reduction in legal action mentions 3% reduction in FDCPA violation language

3 This is why NCC deployed CallMiner Eureka Interaction Analytics. Very quickly, the company identified several areas for improvement. These included: excessive silence on its agents calls, escalations and compliance adherence. The company also found that the new analytics reporting capability enabled it to customize its reports to client-specific needs. The insights from the Eureka automated analytics platform identified non-compliant agent behavior. This and other performance metrics were presented in an easy to understand format on the myeureka performance feedback dashboard. These insights resulted in a 15% reduction in escalation language, a 6% reduction in le gal action mentions and a 3% reduction in FDCPA violation language. NCC was also able to achieve a 12% reduction in calls that included silence which had much more significance for the business than it first seemed. Silence is not Golden Excessive silence on the call can be a sign of an agent handling problem or a system issue. This is why understanding why it occurred and how it could be eliminated was very important for NCC. The company used CallMiner s Eureka analytics to analyze 100% of their agents calls, including acoustic factors. In order to identify excessive blocks of silence on the calls, the system was set to flag agents interactions with silence blocks greater than two minutes. An automatic report was generated approximately three times a week and sent to the training manager for review. The insights in these reports helped the company establish that the excessive silence was predominantly a result of agents call handling problems and time abuse. For example, agents would often remain on the line with customers who had already been transferred to another agent, until customers hung up the phone. Managers, who were previously monitoring their agents by looking at a dashboard which indicated agents were still on the call, had no idea that valuable call-handling time was being wasted. They also discovered that new agents were putting customers on hold or did not speak to them, while they were trying to locate the correct information. Thanks to Eureka s acoustic analytics, these issues were identified and necessary improvements implemented quickly. Using targeted coaching, NCC reduced calls that included excessive silence by 12%. This significantly improved the call center s productivity as less time was being wasted, agents spent more time making or answering calls and resolving accounts. It also improved the customer experience. After all, no one likes to be put on hold or transferred. Percentage of calls that contain silence blocks greater than 2 minutes

4 Tackling silence was easily understandable, easily configurable and it contributed to making our call center more productive and helped our agents become more efficient with their collection efforts Using root cause analysis of voice interactions, including acoustic factors, companies can identify excessive cases of silence on their calls. They are also able to spot where these occurred within the interaction. These can include: an agent staying on the line too long with an answering machine, call avoidance, difficulty in finding the information on the system, difficulty with following the scripts, or problems with answering questions. It also helps to identify, with greater certainty, if there are any underlying system issues. Customization to Satisfy Client Specific Reports Requirements Call centers specializing in collections on behalf of other companies need to be able to develop client-specific reporting. NCC wanted to be able to customize the automated reporting to fit both the needs of their clients and their own business. These reports focus on identifying escalations, legal action mentions and complaints. They are also designed to help the company be proactive in identifying issues with the services provided. Using Eureka analytics, NCC can automatically generate daily reports on these specific topics, which are then sent to QA agents for review. This makes it possible to find and rectify any issues immediately, before they escalate into a serious problem. Eureka analytics automatically tags, categorizes and scores contacts that contain certain language or characteristics. This enables the rapid search and location of specific sets of interactions. Scores are used to measure performance trends over time and compare relative performance across different agent groups. This gives companies such as NCC the ability to report to its clients on all issues and trends. It also enables their clients to prove compliance with greater speed and certainty. How Measuring 100% of Interactions Improves Productivity and Compliance Reducing escalations, violations language and legal actions mentions, can have a big impact on call center productivity and limiting the risk of fines. It can decrease the management time spent on de-escalation, thus increase time available for reviews and coaching. It can also reduce the exposure to potential lawsuits as well as time to research or respond to regulatory complaints. Being able to monitor and analyze 100 percent of agents interactions also increases the certainty that these issues will be spotted quickly and not by a chance, as is the case with random sampling. For NCC, improving compliance for all their clients was crucial as it would provide a significant trust advantage. This is why, Eureka analytics was used to identify any interaction that included escalation language, legal action mentions and/or FDCPA violation language. This provided the QA teams with a pool of calls to review that potentially had non-compliant content in it. As a result of the insight provided, some clients scripts needed to be reviewed and changed, or agents retrained. This allowed NCC to address these issues immediately and prevent further escalations. The ability to use Eureka analytics to draw calls from the database that focus on specific areas, was a big step in the resolution process for us. Being able to focus on specific areas provided us with a great advantage of preventing potential escalations or even lawsuits, rather than waiting for the issues to come to life

5 Thanks to the use of Eureka Interaction Analytics, during the period from January to August 2016, NCC achieved significant reductions in non-complaint agent behavior. This resulted in: 15% reduction in escalation language 6% reduction in legal action mentions 3% reduction in FDCPA violation language When you factor in the consequences of non-compliance, such as legal actions or lawsuits, the amount of money saved on potential fines, and time spent on listening and analyzing calls, become far more significant! Improved Agent Performance Management and Feedback NCC wanted to automate the entire monitoring process to free-up QA s agents time to perform other tasks. Before implementing Eureka interaction analytics, NCC used manual scorecards to evaluate agents compliance-related performance. This was a time consuming and risky approach, as only a small and random selection of calls was being analyzed. To reduce its non-compliance risks, the company deployed an automated Eureka scorecard that can be constantly adjusted, to identify patterns of consistency and non-consistency across 100 percent of agents interactions. It was quickly identified that some agents were failing to disclose the correct 3rd party language or were giving improper information about the payment disclosure. Being able to identify the occurrences and guide agents in the right direction is exactly what we needed to improve our agents as collectors, improve their productivity and decrease complaints. Without Eureka analytics, we would not have enough resources to achieve our objectives This helped to identify and eradicate cases of potential non-compliant behavior, which resulted in reducing compliance risks and lowering the likelihood of fines and lawsuits. Compliance Measures

6 NCC is now also looking to provide its supervisors and agents access to their scorecards to allow them to use this objective feedback to work on improving their own performance. This can benefit the coaching team as they gain access to information on exactly which agent, or groups of agents, need additional training and what they need to be trained on. It also promotes agent self-evaluation and improvement. Perhaps more importantly, the scorecards allow agent and coach alike to monitor performance after coaching has taken place to see how quickly they improve and what new areas they might need to work on. The scorecards enable top performers and positive behavior to be recognized. They also make it easy for agents to share their success cases with their peers. What s Next... Using Interaction Analytics provides the ability to analyze all interactions between contact centers and customers (telephone, , web chat, social media, etc.) which unlocks an enormous amount of valuable information hidden in this mountain of data. It is very important to have a clear strategy and identified objectives from the start of the project to avoid taking on too much too quickly. This is why, after proving the initial value of using Interaction Analytics, NCC is currently looking to expand its use of CallMiner s Eureka technology to further improve its call center productivity and compliance. These new initiatives include the introduction of: Additional client-specific reporting capabilities for sector related reporting e.g. utility or healthcare A Scorecard for stalls and objections - to analyze how effective agents are at handling these issues A charity category to uncover charity-eligible calls for clients that were not identifiable before implementing Eureka analytics A personal scorecard that can be accessed by agents - to enhance their self-coaching and improvement efforts. Summary Silence Escalations Client Specific Reports Analyze what contributes to the blocks of silence greater than 2 minutes. Put action in place to correct and identify acceptable percent silence. Continue exception reporting for any call avoidance behaviors found. Put action in place to correct and identify acceptable percent silence. Conduct analysis on what contributes to escalation language on a call. Put action in place to correct: Performance improvement plan for collectors based on an exception report of escalations for certain reasons. (Helps to align with a compliance management system) Meet and discuss any ideas that may contribute to an effective report to increase collections or identify any areas of improvement or opportunity. The resources that our speech analytics program offers us played a big role in the ability to achieve our objectives and support the drive for better compliance and improved agent efficiency With CallMiner Eureka s analytics, NCC has made its collection center more compliant by significantly reducing cases of FDCPA violations, legal action mentions and escalation language. The company has also improved its call center efficiency by reducing silence on the calls. NCC also identified and corrected (through targeted coaching) numerous examples of potentially nonproductive agent behavior. As a result, the company improved its compliance, reduced the likelihood of fines and lawsuits, and increased efficiency and productivity.

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