2.14.5 or Higher - How-to Guide for Call Caps and Communication Tracking in Beyond ARM

2.14.5 or Higher - How-to Guide for Call Caps and Communication Tracking in Beyond ARM

How-to Guide for Call Caps and Communication Tracking in Beyond ARM

Beyond Release Date: Sept 30, 2021
Published Article Date: Oct 1, 2021

Purpose

We’ve added Call Caps and Communication Tracking to Beyond Build 2.14.4 and higher for the purpose of Regulation F going into effect Nov 30, 2021, and the 7-in-7 portion of the rule. This How-to Guide will walk you through changes made in your system, example scenarios for attempts, and steps to build the new Consumer Contact action.

Call Caps and Communication Tracking

When an account or consumer is opened in Beyond, agents will be able to see at first glance what has happened with that consumer in the last seven days. Next to the command box to the right, the number of attempts or contacts in the last seven days are shown.

[PLEASE NOTE] It is important to understand what Beyond defines as an attempt. Beyond shows all communications that are not considered a contact in the attempts count.

This attempt count is based on how collectors work the account with the new Consumer Code action. See information on scenarios of communication attempts and contact details in the section below. This is what agents will see in certain scenarios of no attempts, less than 7 attempts, more than 7 attempts, and one contact or more.


No attempts Scenario

Less than 7 attempts Scenario

More than 7 attempts Scenario

One contact or more Scenario

Attempt and Contact Details

To the right of the 7-day snapshot, there is a “See Details” link that when clicked will display the different types of communications that have been made in the last 7 days. 


Agents will also have access to a new “Communication Tracking” history aux screen on the consumer screen. Agents can navigate to it by hitting the “Aux” button on the consumer and selecting “Communication Tracking”.

The communication tracking history will appear in a pop-up window that will show specific action items that have been taken on the consumer. This screen shows a summary of activity from the last seven days, all-time activity since the consumer was added, the date and time when each action was last performed, and how many days in the past the consumer was worked by a collector.



[PLEASE NOTE] This is the first phase of this project. We will be adding a detailed view to show each attempt and contact with its specific data.

New Consumer Contact Action

New Action Node

We have created the Consumer Contact action event node that replaces the Legacy Action event node and the Action Line Code action event node in Action Maintenance. This node tracks communications at a consumer level and will provide better insight into how consumers are being worked.

You will find the new node in Action Maintenance in the Action Designer.

This node has a couple of new components and ways it can be used. You will be able to replace all Legacy and Action Event nodes with the new node and have it behave in a similar way to what you are accustomed to.

New Action Summary Report

The MTD Action Summary Report has been replaced with a new report that is in Report Designer and shows in the Active Reports section in Beyond. This report can now be scheduled to run as often as you need it to and with any date range. It can be a daily report, weekly report, or monthly report depending on your needs.



New Input Screens 

There are 3 User Interface (UI) options for having an input for this new action.


1. Consumer Contact Event UI

This option will allow agents to select what action they performed on the consumer. This UI is like the Legacy Action and Action Line Code actions. 

We also added the ability to add phone numbers or email addresses to the action being performed. If new numbers or emails are added here, they will be added to the Consent Screen. These new numbers or emails added will not have consent already set. 
Example Phone Call Action: If an agent selects ORC (Outbound, Right Party Contacted, Commitment Avoided), they will be able to select what phone number was used to call the consumer.

Example Email Action: If an agent selects E (Email), they will be able to select what email address the email was sent to.
If multiple phone numbers are called, agents will need to have a separate action added for each phone number to track the proper number of attempts for the 7-in-7 section in Regulation F. These actions will all be tracked in the Communication Tracking Aux screen on the debtor screen. Refer to the Communication Tracking section of this document.

2. Email Phone Prompt UI




This option will allow you to select which action code to use without agents seeing what options they need to select in the Consumer Contact UI. Setting up dedicated action for the different actions taken will save time for collectors. Refer to Preset Action codes below. 

If they do multiple things on the consumer, it will require them to run multiple actions. The action code used will determine what collectors are prompted to input.
  1. If an agent uses an action with ORC they will see a “Phone number used for call” prompt as shown above.
  2. If an agent uses E for email, they will see an “Email address used” prompt as shown above.

3. No Input Screen

This option is like option 2 above, just without the prompts for the email or phone number used.



System Action - COMTRCK

There is a system action that is provided; the action code is COMTRCK and you can allow agents to use this action from the action line. If needed, you may copy the COMTRCK action and make changes to add any additional nodes that suit your needs.


Preset Action Codes

With this new action node, we have combined the functionality of both the old Legacy and Action Line Event nodes into this one node. As discussed above you can select a variety of options for different UIs to use. The preset action code will allow you to set up actions for collectors with what action was performed on the consumer without using the Consumer Contact UI.

This will help with any possible confusion as to what action to log and help save time for collectors to move on to the next consumer to work.

When building out your actions you can select what action to perform in the properties of the action node. The section is located under the Node Info, labeled as Action Code, as seen below.


When you click on the three dots to the left, a pop-up window will open containing all the possible communication combinations that the new action can perform. 


Once you select the action code you want to use, it will be set in the properties section. You can continue to build the action with other items like history comments, status code changes, or jackdate changes. 

This will be up to you to decide on what your workflow looks like.




Build Actions to Make Decisions for Call Caps, Attempts, Tracking, and Automation

We have added functionality for you to be able to make decisions on the number of communications, call attempts, and contacts made on a consumer. This will help with some automation when using certain workflows in Beyond, such as loading project queues or dialer queues. Below are 12 steps to take to build the new actions. 

This is more of an advanced feature in the system, and you may need additional assistance to set these up. Contact DAKCS support to assist with this advanced feature.

Step 1

To use these new values in your action, you will need to start with the Assignment node. This assignment node will allow you to set some variables that you will need to use later in your action. The assignment node is in the Action Maintenance toolbox, in the general tab.

Step 2

After you have brought the assignment node into your action, and connected it to the start node, you will need to double click on it to get to the properties section or click on the bottom left where there is a “Properties” tab. Once there you will have a spot that says “Assignment” and has a (Collection) value. 



Step 3

Next, click on the (Collection) value and click on the three dots to the right. This will bring up a window to assign the variables and their values.

Step 4

In this window, the first thing you will need to do is set up all the variables you want to use. To do this, click on the Variables button and it will open another window for your variables. 


An example variable for this scenario would be for Call Attempts. You would select “New” and input the name of your variable. There is an option to have an initial value for this, but in this example, we will leave it blank. Then click “OK”.


Step 5

After you have set up all the variables you want to use, you can close the Variables window. Next, add an expression by clicking the “ADD” button. This will give you a “NEW EXPRESSION” and we will show how to set that in the following step. 


Step 6

Click on the Expression box on the right-hand side of the window and click on the three dots to the right. This will open a window with built-in expressions you can choose from. 

For this example, we will select “Count Call Attempts”.

We added the following expressions for using to make decisions on call caps and communication tracking:
  1. Count Call Attempts
  2. Count Call Contacts
  3. Count Consumer Portal Sign-ins
  4. Count Email Communications
  5. Count Letter Communications
  6. Count Text Message Communications


Step 7

Once you have selected the expression you want to use, either hit “OK” or double click to select it. This will bring you back to the Assignment window where you will see that your expression is set and now named “Count Call Attempts” and has a set days amount of 7. 

You can change that to look at any number of days in the past and at the number of Call Attempts that have been logged. 

Step 8

Choose the variable that you defined earlier. To do that, click on the Variable field and select the proper variable from the drop-down list. Your assignment and expressions should look something like this example below when set properly.


Step 9

Once all your assignments are done, you can click “OK” and continue building your action. You can always repeat the previous steps to add additional variables later if needed or continue to do one at a time. 

Step 10

To use the variables and assignments in your action, you will need to use “Decision nodes” in the action. Once you have added the decision node into the action, set the condition with the data points you want to make the decisions based on.  

By clicking on the “Conditions” section and the three dots to the right, you will have a “Create Conditions” window pop up. Select the “Add Condition” button on the bottom left of the window, and an options window will allow you to set your variables. 


In this part, set the criteria for your Decision Node. In this example, we will add in the “Call Attempts” variable created earlier in the steps. 

For this, you will select the Left Condition as a “User Defined Variable” and in the bottom dropdown for that section you will set it to the Call Attempts variable. Next, set the middle section “Comparison Operator” to “Numerically” and choose which operator you want. In this example, we will set it to “[>=] Left is greater than or equal to the Right”. 

Step 11

The last step is setting the “Right Condition” with a “Constant” value that you will need to determine based on your internal policies. For this example, we will set it to 7. This condition will return - True if there are at least 7 call attempts in the last 7 days. If there is not, the condition will return - False.

This is what the final decision should look like. Once complete, click “OK”.


Step 12

After clicking ‘OK’ you will see the Create Conditions screen where you will see the condition created above. You can add other conditions in this to have it look at multiple items or create more decision nodes to filter the results based on different criteria. 


We’ve walked you through the steps to complete a Decision Node. Now you can use the completed node and implement it into your actions. This will help you make any workflow decisions necessary based on the number of call attempts in the last seven days. 

At this point, continue building out your workflow based on your internal procedures and policies.

Contact Info

Please take a few minutes to look over the latest Release Notes. To schedule an update, reach out to Julie Newson by phone at 801.394.5791 x 269 or email julie@dakcs.com. 

For questions about Regulation F and the REG F: Focus Group, please contact Justin Devine at justin@dakcs.com or call 801.394.5791 x297.