Collector - January 2018 - 14

PERSPECTIVE

Evolving Compliance Strategies in
Light of Advancing Voice Technologies
Advice and insight on implementing speech analytics from an
ACA International member who has been there.
By G. Scott Purcell

"We look for the
words 'painful,'
'horrible,' 'terrible'
and 'disappointed' to
identify conversations
where there is
potentially great
feedback to consider."

14

W

e saw the business case for one
of the newer call recording and
speech analytics systems in
our agency. Now that we have one, what's
interesting is the continual evolution
of the technology's power, and how we
should, and do, continue to change how
the system is used to ensure the greatest
value is created at the lowest cost. And that
value must be evident in addressing any
immediate fires, such as a call that didn't go
well, as well as easing and eliminating the
flames of any future fires.
If you are bringing speech analytics into
your operation, our biggest piece of advice
is to schedule formal reviews at least
twice a year to evaluate how the system is
being used, challenge your assumptions
as you learn more about what it really can
accomplish, and understand the potential
impact of continued enhancements created
by your vendor. The reality is that there
are probably more than 20 different value
drivers to our organization in using a
platform like this.
Here are some of the processes that have
evolved for us. We use a call auditing and
speech analytics solution from KG-Hawes,
a sister company of ours. We have used
the call auditing solution extensively to
have a very large population of our calls
audited by humans each day-with nextday feedback to the collection supervisors.
Now we are focused on reducing the
proportion of calls audited by humans
versus machine audits done by the
analytics platform, while achieving an even
greater proportion of work audited.
This is evolving in two ways. One is
simply looking at how many more calls the
machine can audit with a corresponding

reduction in human audits. The other is
looking to see if there are any questions
the humans are testing for that realistically
could be done entirely by the machine.
Auditing certainly serves the needs of
the business by ensuring our collectors are
compliant and as effective and efficient
as they can be. It also serves the needs of
the regulators-which are already quite
aligned with the needs of the business.
At ACA International's Annual
Convention & Expo in July, there was
a fantastic presentation: "Incentivizing
Accomplishment and Discouraging
Negative Behavior." From the insights
we gained in that presentation, we're
now auditing a sample of payment
plan arrangements to ensure they are
properly authorized. We've also added
to our internal audit plan an additional
emphasis on collectors whose variable
compensation has large fluctuations to
ensure their behaviors are consistently
compliant. This is a good place to plug
the quality of ACA's conferences. The
world keeps changing quickly-and
getting practical insight from how peers
are addressing these evolving issues is
exceedingly valuable to us.
Using trend information is really helpful
to determine if coaching is paying off and
tracking word usage is one of the ways
we gather trend data. As an example, the
words "tax refund" are used in the talk-off
starting Jan. 15. On the morning of Jan.
16, I know which collectors haven't bought
into the fact it's now tax season and can
coach them accordingly.
The power of these systems allows for
very targeted analysis. For example, we
scan for various ways of saying "attorney

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Collector - January 2018
