How call centre software can improve compliance and reduce fines

The challenge

An Irish debt management company required a telecom solution that would assist in its compliance with the financial codes of conduct. The business had decided that it needed to stop breaking the regulations, resulting in heavy fines and improving the overall compliance within the business with GDPR being announced.

All debt collectors, private individuals and debt collecting agencies are covered by the Consumer Protection Code 2012 and Section 11 of the Non-Fatal Offences against the Person Act 1997. These codes of conduct stop financial businesses from making contact too frequently that could subject a person or their family to alarm, distress or humiliation. Breaking these regulations could result in fines of €5,000 per bad call.

It was established that the main reason for the fines, was due to the lack of visibility agents have within the CRM. Agents would accidentally call customers who had reached their monthly limit and there was no automation in place to stop the call or text from going out.

• No more than 5 call attempts per month
• Up to a €5000 fine per bad call
• Agents cannot see live call data

What was required

To provide this solution in2tel had to:

• Integrate with this company’s custom CRM
• Monitor all inbound and outbound contact attempts and SMS messages.
• Record all inbound and outbound calls
• Provide agents with live customer contact records
• Manage dialler lists provided to agents
• Complete PCI level 1 card payments over the phone

What we did

Automatically block contact attempts outside of daily limit

in2tel’s Call Centre solution comes with call monitoring that tracks all inbound and outbound calls and SMS messages. This allowed us to block any call that was associated with a customer who had reached their monthly contact limit.

The business had a bespoke CRM system, so in2tel’s development team had to build custom integration paths, for the two pieces of software to be compatible. Once integrated, agents could see a live data record of each customer’s profile. This could show if a customer was currently on a call with another agent and stopped the chance of duplication.

Automatic and on demand call recording

To assist the company with its compliance, the firm began using in2tel’s call recording software. This allows all agents to record both inbound and outbound calls automatically and on demand. With compliance and data heavily scrutinised in the financial industry, it was important for the business to have easily obtainable records of all conversations with customers.

Agents and management now have access to their recordings through the CRM and these can be downloaded onto any device for analysis, training and compliance.

Calling lists that automatically update based on system data

Due to the previous solution in place, dialler lists could not be updated based on live customer records. This led to agents having numbers on their lists, which had already passed the calling limit for the month.

in2tel implemented new software that automatically updated the dialler lists based on our call monitoring. Any customer record that had reached its contact limit, would have all its associated numbers removed from the dialler’s list and would be blocked from all future outbound calls.

A secure method to accept card payments over the phone

With debts being paid over the phone, the business required a phone payment system that could transmit, process and store credit card data to the highest standards. PCI Level 1 is the highest level of compliance these card payment systems can have.

in2tel supplied a card payment system that integrated with the company’s systems and provided a smooth customer experience over the phone.

The problems in2tel faced

The initial rollout was problematic due to a third-party piece of software running on the company’s systems. This heavily affected the performance of our solution. Due to the non-disclosure of critical information, in2tel had to discover what was blocking our solution from working and then report back the findings.

After working closely with management, in2tel discovered that a piece of monitoring software that was not disclosed was blocking the solution from operating efficiently, once this was confirmed and actioned, the solution worked as originally intended.

The outcome

Agents now have complete visibility of customer contact attempts for both inbound, outbound and SMS notifications within the CRM. These records are now live and agents can see calls that are currently being sent or received.

Dialler lists now automatically remove customers who have reached their contact limits and for those customers, all associated numbers are blocked from outbound calls for that month.

The company has now greatly increased its compliance through its new systems. Agents are now no longer unknowingly breaking financial regulations.

With the CRM now integrated with call monitoring and call recording, much of the manual process has been removed from an agent’s day-to-day activity. The results have reduced their admin workload and allowed them to concentrate on customer service, increasing overall workplace productivity and customer experience.