Jul 24, 2020

How automation can enforce regulatory compliance

Ensuring compliance at contact centers today requires managers to navigate through a long list of regulations and standards in a changing regulatory environment. It is a resource-draining task for managers, compliance, and IT professionals! According to a NICE survey in 2019, 88% of contact center professionals highlighted the pressing need to implement a proactive and speedy mechanism to detect violations quickly and efficiently (26%), provide better visibility across tools/systems (21%) and quicker resolution (18%).

The study showed that a quarter of the contact center IT staff’s time is being invested in compliance-related activities alone. As far as the ability of their organization to meet the compliance requirements of today is concerned, 97 percent of them have at least one concern, ranging from introducing new regulations and the growing threat of cyber-attacks to the increasing complexity of internal systems.

Is there an effective solution to cope with the never-ending challenge of compliance? Fortunately, there is - automation! Compliance automation, aka automated compliance, is an emerging category of solutions that provide organizations with workflow capabilities related to compliance, including self-assessments, control analyses, corrective action planning, and controls testing. It can help contact centers optimize resources, empower employees to ensure compliance, and build trust among customers.

In a contact center, for instance, automation can enable outbound dialers to check every number real-time against the state, federal, and other do-not-call lists, and either allow the call or block automatically. It can also help the dialer consider the factors like time zones, daylight savings, holidays, calling curfew, and emergency restrictions to ensure that all outbound calls are done legally. This means that contact centers have bulletproof protection against all calling regulations. Automation can also enforce internal policies, helping to onboard staff, and instill a compliance-focused environment.

If the contact center compliance isn’t automated, you will have a tough time spending your valuable resources and time to stay on top of the latest regulations. Whereas when you automate compliance, you’re freeing up a lot of time to aggressively hit the best prospects and close deals in your markets.

Benefits of compliance automation

• Cost-effective and straightforward implementation compared to manual controls.
• Free up your agents’ time and help them focus on complex problems.
• Accurate and efficient management of potential risks
• Quick access to compliance status and audit information
• Instant risk management based on real-time data.
• Uniformed implementation of compliance policies and process across multiple platforms in the entire organization
• Unmatched visibility and audibility
• Automated auditing and reporting process
• Reduced number of inadequate or inaccurate reporting mistakes

It is cumbersome and ineffective to maintain a dedicated staff of specialized attorneys and IT managers to remain on top of complex and constantly changing federal and state regulations. Therefore, to be 100 percent certain they do not violate applicable laws, regardless of dialing method and equipment, consider an automated, real-time, and always-current compliance service that integrates with their internal systems.