Compliance Improvement- The Science of Better Service

Compliance service is designed to improve experiences for your customers while building timely payment plans that satisfy court ordered sanctions.  It starts with a vision for the program.  This includes understanding why you got started in the first place.

What are your goals?  Do they align with the work you want to accomplish?  Does it meet legislative and locally ordered mandates?  Are you properly funded to meet your goals?  Are you properly staffed and resourced to perform the work? Do you regularly communicate goals with your team, and do they understand the mission?

Before you set goals think about what you are doing today to ensure better compliance.  What kind of results are you seeing?  Follow the process from the courtroom to each case type and each judge handling court dispositions.  Are you waiting for the defendant to come to you or are you meeting them the day of sentencing?  Include in your review a look at how and when notices are delivered for payment reminders and past due enforcement.  Are you mediating solutions with customers to keep them paying?  Do you keep track of the payment plans created and managed in your program?  Do you review the results and then create planned adjustments with your team?  What can be better and how can you make that happen?

The Beginning- What are your goals?

Most programs look for increased revenue from paying customers.  While this is a good start a better compliance program looks at revenue but also focuses on keeping customers involved through simplified payment plans, nudging involvement through notifications, and for a path to negotiate with customers to resolve debt obligations.  If your customer keeps paying revenue goals can be reached.

Simplified & Soon

The primary objective of every compliance program is to get your customers involved in a regular contributing payment plan.  The best way to get things started is to make payment plans immediately available right after disposition hearings to your customers. 

Compliance Service has options for providing payment assistance either by customer service outside of the courtroom or through virtual services. 

At the same time make payment plans easy to understand and provide interaction that is convenient and approachable.  Make enrollment forms simplified by capturing only the information you need to create a payment agreement and notify your customer with electronic reminders.

Nudging Notifications

If regular customer payments are important send reminders.  Don’t wait till they are late.  Providing a chance to pay before being late saves late penalties.  Nudge them to keep up instead of waiting to impose enforcement action.  This keeps your customer in compliance, reduces the possibility of additional sanctions, and reduces the enforcement work that your office is involved in. 

Notices should start the day of payment plan enrollment.  Thank you for signing up, here are your responsibilities, here’s the next payment date and amount, and here’s an online way to make it convenient.  Ten days before each due date send out a reminder with due dates and payment options.  And when payments are made, send a thank you for making payment with the very next due date available. Encourage participation. 

That may seem like a lot of noticing.  But with electronically stored contacts and digital noticing, email and text messaging can reach your customer quicker and limit your operational costs.

Don’t forget to consider call service.  Calls can be placed either by live operators or by automated calls to prompt customer involvement.

Negotiating Timing & Terms for better outcomes

Negotiations are an important tool to satisfy payment obligations.  There really is no constraint to what can be negotiated in fines and costs, except for victim restitution.  Florida Statute 938.30 (9) provides Clerks the authority to compromise and settle debt as part of their collection responsibilities. 

The important thing to do is examine your resources and need and make a commitment to get started.  Look at large balance payment plans on older cases, first time default cases, and customer-initiated requests for negotiation.  Your role is to bring the plan back into compliance and satisfy the debt. 

Tracking Results

Once you’ve put a program together results will begin to pour in.  Both good and bad outcomes can shed light on how your compliance office is performing.  It’s important to track those results so that you can plan as needed.  You may not really know how big your program is beyond assumptions if you don’t take the time to measure it.  Look at how many plans are initiated on a weekly and monthly basis.  Keep track of the frequency of late payments.  Include the number of enforcement actions required for defaults such as license suspension actions and collection agent referrals.  Declining enforcement actions should be included as primary goals for every compliance program.  Less late, less penalties, better payment performance.  Understand the workload and keep your customers involved in regular plan payments.

Talking about the work

Once you regularly track your program you can tell your compliance service story.  Communicate to your office, your judges, and the community the importance of keeping people on track and what it takes to make your program successful.  It is important to gain public trust in compliance and collection services.  When judges understand the program is motived to help customers succeed, they are more willing to assist in solutions.  And program success also demonstrates good investments in community service that will encourage better support for your program.  Talk about the program often and at all levels. 

Then it’s time to repeat the process over again and again.  It doesn’t stop.  Things continue to change.  People, rules, technology, budgeting all may change which would require a new or revised plan that you work through the process once again.

The good thing to know is all you really must do to get started is have a dedicated plan towards compliance with people willing and able to do the job.  The rest is in the plan itself.  Doing nothing won’t solve the problem and is rarely a winning strategy.  Jump in. 

Need help planning your compliance service solution?  We ask lots of questions and help you find the answers that fit your compliance needs.  Contact us at Compliance Improvement Services.  We are an educational partner provided by The Florida Clerk of Courts Operations Corporation