There are two rather large TCPA class action lawsuits in the works right now; one with AT&T and the other with Bank of America. The potential financial ramifications are staggering, with the AT&T settlement expected to be $45 million, the BoA settlement, which has receive approval, which is $32 million.
The accusations are that these companies, or their collection agencies, contacted customers using an auto dialing system and did not obtain consent from the customers before making the calls.
Following the guidelines is incredibly important, as the settlement amounts in these two cases indicate. This got us to thinking about some of our customers who must adhere to TCPA regulations when making outbound calls to their customers, whether the calls are for collections activities, or marketing-related.
How to Achieve TCPA Compliance
So, how can companies go about adhering to TCPA regulations and make sure their companies, all the way down to their call center agents, are compliant with the laws?
Luckily, there is an entire federal website dedicated to TCPA compliance. Sounds like exciting reading, right?
In all seriousness though, there are some easy-to-obtain ways of monitoring calls for compliance, which can help you identify specific non-compliant departments, agents, supervisors and more.
Technology advancements in contact center solutions has made it possible for any size business to efficiently and automatically monitor the content of their phone calls and identify the presence or absence of specific keywords. What does this mean? Essentially, call recording and monitoring tools scan conversations in near real-time and automatically identify specific calls that are non-compliant. With a speech analytics solution, a business can create audio mining searches that will focus on keywords that are relevant to questions and answers stated by call center reps as part of the company guidelines to stay compliant with TCPA. As the technology scans the calls, the non-compliant and compliant calls are categorized for easy access and listening, and analysis.
The call center managers, supervisors, and directors then have coach-worthy calls to use with agents when addressing compliance issues, and other training opportunities that may arise in the recorded conversations with customers.
We have several customers who use this methodology and they’ve been able to achieve 100% compliance among all of their agents.
Learn more about using audio mining technology to maintain compliance in your contact center.
