Myth 1: My manual audit team’s efforts are good enough.
Truth:
Having a manual audit team is a start, but the reality is that they are only able to monitor a very small sample of interactions. In addition, they spend a lot of time listening to an entire call, to find the one section where a violation may have taken place. Most customers find that implementing interaction analytics allows them to reduce the headcount of their manual audit team while drastically improving their productivity.
Myth 2: Monitoring a sample of my calls is sufficient, it represents the whole.
Truth:
This can be a dangerous attitude in today’s tightly regulated world, when every infraction counts. It’s imperative that every interaction be monitored so you know, with certainty, that no violations occurred. To do this, you need a system that scales to accommodate 100% of your interactions, and can search for any phrase, at any time, and include those phrases in your analysis.
Myth 3: I’m not in a regulated industry, so compliance doesn’t affect me.
Truth:
Compliance is about more than just industry violations. Corporate and brand standards are just as important, and having a system in place that ensures these values are upheld on every call, by every agent is an integral part of protecting the customer experience.
Myth 4: Real-time alerting is enough to make me compliant.
Truth:
By the time a real-time alert has happened, the violation probably already occurred. In addition, many companies believe that they can send alerts to supervisors so that they can intervene when needed to correct inappropriate behavior, but oftentimes the supervisor to agent ratio may not make this possible to maintain at a consistent level. Real-time alerting can help remind and reinforce appropriate behavior, but must be paired with post call analytics to measure agent adherence, augment coaching and maintain policy adherence.
Myth 5: I’m already recording. I could provide the audio requested by a regulator if required.
Truth:
Regulatory agencies often ask for large quantities of audio that they want delivered in a short amount of time. Are you sure you could extract and deliver the volume they want, of the call types they want, if you aren’t already categorizing calls? And what’s more, wouldn’t you want to know what’s in them, before turning them over, so you don’t have to worry that you’re about to be fined for an infraction? Interaction analytics helps remove the anxiety associated with an audit by helping companies ensure they’re prepared.
Read Part 1 of our Myth Series.
Mike: I’m glad to see you taking on this topic, as I think it’s grossly under-represented in business development, marketing, and sales. Your Myth #3 is particularly important. Every offshore company doing business in the US, and every US company doing business overseas are subject to the compliance provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Revenue from violations has blossomed substantially in recent years. In fact, in 2010, over half of the civil and criminal penalties the US Government collected were from the FCPA. Many executives simply don’t recognize the risks and the associated costs.
One good way to manage the risks is to make ongoing compliance training available to every team member involved in marketing and sales. My company provides this service. As one attorney told me, “companies that breach regulations have better cases if they can prove they have provided employees ongoing training about ethical and legal obligations and boundaries.”
A recent post I made on this topic,”Sales Governance and Compliance: It Takes a Village,” might be of interest, http://customerthink.com/sales-governance-and-compliance-it-takes-a-village/