Ascent Announces Deal With Inifity CCS

Ascent, a specialist debt collection and recovery law firm, is pleased to announce the signing of a contract to use Infinity CCS’s QA and scorecard software Infinity Quality to audit processes and case files as well as calls.

Use of the software gives Ascent real-time visibility of compliance data, KPIs and metrics, enabling it to improve the service it offers to both the customers it deals with every day and the major financial institutions for which it primarily works.

Ascent’s Chief Executive, Niall Gilhooley said: “As far as we know, we’re one of the first companies in our sector to invest in this type of software to continually monitor and improve our processes. Our business is complex and there are many steps which need to be completed accurately and on-time to bring every case to a successful conclusion. As a regulated business it is, of course, essential for us to be able to demonstrate the highest possible degree of quality and compliance to our regulators. It’s equally as important that we provide the very best service we can to our clients and the customers whose cases we are processing.”

Ascent provides a wide range of specialist debt recovery services for major financial institutions and SMEs, through its operations Ascent Contact, Ascent Legal and Ascent Service and Enforcement. The company’s focus is on ethical, fully compliant debt recovery, which promotes sustainable solutions for customers throughout the process. All of its work streams will be captured using Infinity whether that be a mortgage arrears visit from a field agent, a debt collection call by a negotiator, or the progress of a litigation in which, even at that stage, the company would hope to secure a sustainable outcome acceptable to all concerned.

Team Leaders use custom-built scorecards set up in Infinity Quality to quality check the data in files against client SLAs and carefully selected KPIs which evidence compliance to our industry standards and regulations. The accuracy of written and verbal communications, as well as the timeliness of actions that need to be carried out to move each case towards resolution is also assessed driving quality standards across the organisation. Robustly checking the work this way enables Ascent to spot any errors early and easily escalate problems toward a swift and proactive resolution.

Niall Gilhooley continued: “Infinity Quality not only gives us a faster and more reliable way of catching and fixing process errors, it also allows us to make available consistent and transparent compliance data. This is important in demonstrating and quantifying to the financial institutions who are our major clients, and to our regulators the OFT, FCA and Solicitors Regulation Authority, that we are compliant and meticulous in our work.”

A whole set of custom reports is available at the push of a button, and it is even possible to track compliance performance in real-time against any number of custom defined KPIs and for individual clients.

Niall Gilhooley summed up the benefits to his business of Infinity Quality: “Having this kind of feedback available business-wide and in real-time gives us a 360-degree view of our performance. It allows us to benchmark internally and identify where we can improve, either by tightening up processes or with additional training ensuring that all times we are being fair, consistent and compliant, and delivering value for our clients.”

Infinity Quality is a hosted software solution, which allows it to be easily scaled and implemented. Customer scorecards, reports and metrics can easily be set up by non-technical staff, giving Ascent’s Operations Team complete control.

Carl Adkins, Founder of Infinity CCS, said: “Infinity Quality software is used by many clients in different industries for scoring calls in order to monitor for compliance in customer communications. While Ascent will be doing this with our software, they have been forward looking in understanding that the processes which happen around calls are just as important – if not more so – and also need to be checked, scored and reported on in the same consistent and transparent manner. We believe many more companies in regulated industries will start to follow their lead.”