Email UsCutting The Cost of Regulatory Compliance
By Phil Norris, Infinity CCS
On July 6th of this year, the FSA announced plans to create a more consistent and transparent framework in which they fine non-compliant organisations; a move that can see the scale of fines in some circumstances treble. These guidelines include fines of up to 20% of a company?s income from products or business area lined to the breach and up to 40% of an individual?s salary and benefits from their job relating to a breach.
It is highly likely that other regulators such as OFWAT, OFTEL and OFGEN will follow suit, making compliance even more critical to individuals.
However, as we strive to control the costs of our contact centres, how can we ensure we do not fall foul of the regulators while at the same time minimising the cost of compliance?
In my experience, contact centre managers and their staff can spend as much as 36 minutes per agent, per week auditing activity to ensure that they comply with the rules of the regulators. This can equate to 30 hours each and every week for a 50 agent call centre ? a high cost to pay for compliance.
The reason that this time is so high is that many contact centres still use paper-based forms to monitor calls, record evaluations and file for auditing purposes. It is this constant shuffling, copying and filing of paper that is escalating the costs of compliance.
By automating your QA and compliance processes, making forms screen based and letting the application do the hard work of recording, compiling reports and keeping audit trails, organisations are able to reduce the time spent on such tasks by at least 50%.
We know this for a fact as we have seen this level of cost reduction achieved by our customers when they have implemented Infinity QA. One of our clients, who is involved in FSA regulated work, reduced the time spend on quality and compliance monitoring from 36 minutes per call to under 18 minutes per call; a 50% saving.
What is more, we all know the inherent problems and inaccuracies that can arise from using paper-based systems. By automating compliance monitoring, you ensure that you have a fully auditable process, one of the first things the regulators look for. By using your QA system to enforce corrective action, you can demonstrate that you are behaving responsibly and taking immediate action to rectify any issue as and when it arises.
Having worked in the financial sector for many years, I believe this is one area where organisations can not only instantly save operational expense, but can significantly reduce the risk of receiving heavy fines.
To find out more about Infinity QA for compliance, please visit www.infinityccs.com/automatingcompliance