Did you know that CUnet has an entire team called the Marketing Operations Quality Control (MOQC) team that is dedicated to monitoring affiliate websites for non-compliance, branding violations, and adherence to the Program Integrity regulations?

Did you also know that the MOQC team monitors third party call centers for compliance needs?

While many higher education marketers are familiar with our web monitoring compliance services, we thought we’d take some time to talk about our call center compliance monitoring, as it is an important part of the compliance service that we offer to clients.

When it comes to call centers, we don’t simply examine compliance according to Gainful Employment (GE) regulations; we also consider compliance through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations. In 2012 alone, the MOQC team reviewed 1,585 calls for compliance and consistency–that is over 327 hours!

How does this call center review process work, anyway?

Step 1

CUnet randomly selects 10% of affiliate calls and requests those recordings to be uploaded to a secure site.

Step 2

The MOQC team reviews a sampling of calls, and scores the advisor on compliance standards and their adherence to a pre-approved script.

Step 3

Violations are tracked in workflow systems and are assigned back to the affiliates for review and remediation.

If multiple compliance violations are documented, inquiries from that call center will not be accepted until an approved remediation plan has been established to prevent future violations from occurring.

What kind of issues does the MOQC team listen for when scoring calls?

Here’s just a sample of some of the things we listen for:

• Did the call center representative identify themselves as calling from the affiliate company/website?
• Was the call center number provided to the prospect?
• Did the call center representative attempt to match appropriate schools and programs based on the prospect’s interest?
• Was the consumer incentivized in any way?
• Did the call center representative address any off limit topics, such as financial aid?
• Was the school name, school-specific degree, and program name provided to the prospective student before submitting the lead?

In addition to reviewing calls, CUnet assigns the affiliate a score for each call and examines if the call center poses a major risk for not only CUnet, but for our clients.

Through research and awareness concerning GE regulations, vendor call centers, and government legislation, CUnet’s MOQC team covers compliance needs. Through meetings with our internal policy experts we are mindful of the ever-changing landscape of government regulations, and are committed to providing schools with the highest level of service and compliance offerings available.

Are you interested in learning more about our compliance services? Contact your account manager or sales@cunet.com.

Tags: call center, call centers, compliance, For-Profit Colleges, Higher education marketing, MOQC

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2012 at 12:17 pm and is filed under CUnet, Transparency & Compliance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.