Businesses are facing growing pressure from regulators, customers and stakeholders to prove that they are consistently treating customers fairly. But new research commissioned by Manchester-based customer engagement platform provider MaxContact suggests that confidence and evidence are not always telling the same story.
While 85.6% of FCA-regulated businesses believe they could provide evidence of fair treatment if a regulator reviewed their calls tomorrow, more than half (54%) of UK contact centre managers and directors have discovered a compliance breach outside their routine quality assurance checks.
More worryingly, 16% discovered breaches on more than one occasion and half of organisations say they have lost a sale, contract or customer as a result of a compliance issue in the past 12 months.
Demonstrating fair customer treatment is essential for businesses in regulated sectors. Instead of relying on procedures, assumptions, or good intentions, they need clear evidence of fair customer outcomes and that vulnerable customers are given the help and support they need.
As expectations rise, organisations are increasingly being asked to answer questions such as:
· Can you prove a customer was treated fairly?
· Can you prove signs of vulnerability were identified?
· Can you prove the correct process was followed?
· Can you prove appropriate support was offered?
Ben Booth, CEO of MaxContact, says,
“The era of 'trust us' is over. Regulators, customers and stakeholders all want clear evidence, not assurances, that customers are being treated fairly, that vulnerabilities are quickly identified, and that the right support is provided. Our research shows that more than half of contact centre professionals have already uncovered compliance breaches outside their routine quality assurance sample. That suggests many organisations have less visibility into customer interactions than they realise.”
He adds,
“The challenge isn't that businesses don't care about customer experiences; it's that expectations have changed enormously. Businesses must show clear evidence of fair treatment and customer outcomes, but most of them don’t have the capacity to capture that level of visibility across every single interaction.”
“This isn’t just a compliance issue. When half of organisations say they have already lost a customer, contract, or sale due to a compliance issue, the commercial implications become impossible to ignore. Businesses need to be able to demonstrate what happened, why it happened and how customers were supported at every stage of the journey. There’s too much at stake for FCA - regulated businesses to hope that they are doing enough. Now is the time to prove it.”
To address this challenge and help businesses reduce the gap between confidence and evidence, MaxContact has launched AutoQA, which is a new capability within its Conversation Analytics platform. The tool integrates into their existing customer engagement technology. It enables organisations to run automated compliance checks across every customer interaction, creating an evidence trail that supports audits, complaint investigations and regulatory reviews.
Quality assurance scoring is driven by each organisation's own existing QA scorecards and compliance criteria, with every assessment linked back to transcript evidence from the customer interaction.
As Ben says,
“The question businesses increasingly face isn't whether they intended to do the right thing. The question is whether they can prove that they are doing it.”
For more information about MaxContact’s AutoQA, please visit maxcontact.com.
