The High Cost of Regulatory Compliance

Hugh Garber

Dealing with compliance regulations has become a reality for collectors no matter the industry. Non-compliance risks are real, can be very damaging, and VERY costly. There are an overwhelming number of regulatory requirements out there and maintaining compliance can be a complex and time consuming ordeal. It is not just government regulations either, collectors are asked to adhere to client and/or business partner requirements, as well as have their own internal business rules and policies that need to be followed too.

There are lots of things to consider when we talk about compliance costs for outbound collections communications. Maintaining compliance can be a very complex and time consuming challenge. And every organization needs to determine their own combination – and balance – of risk tolerance, effort, and cost of maintaining compliance.  You need to be able to control the intensity and frequency of your outbound contact strategy in order properly manage compliance.

Like many companies working to keep up with today’s rapidly changing threats, your organization is likely working on various governance, risk management, and compliance initiatives. You’ve probably seen scary headlines in the news about organizations that are accused of breaking the rules, and even scarier dollar figures associated with penalties if they are found to be in non-compliance.

I remember the story of the $250 Million class action lawsuit that featured a national pizza chain and their misuse of text messaging. The chain collected mobile phone number as part of their order process, and then sent 500,000 promotional SMS messages to those mobile numbers.  The problem is that they never asked customers for permission to send them future text messages, so a hefty class-action lawsuit, and plenty of bad press prevailed. So what happened?  Well, the final result is that the pizza chain agreed to pay $16.5 Million to make the lawsuit – and the story – go away.

At the end of the day nobody wants their organization to be the next compliance headline. And nobody wants to be the person responsible for lawsuits, huge fines, bad press, or the negative customer backlash resulting from a compliance violation. Aren’t we in the job of collecting money, not causing the loss of money?

Join me on the Genesys 30-minute webinar on March 18th, Compliant Contact Strategies and get a sneak-peek new self-service Compliance Rules Builder for governing outbound communications across Outbound IVR, dialer, text, and email channels.